I’m an illustrator and I use SketchUp to help with my illustrations, not for architecture or anything like that. I’m drawing the interior of a cheap spacecraft and in my sketch there are wires and cables everywhere, all over the place, no apparent order to where they are at all.
i’m on iPad, so can’t use plugins, does anyone have a useful trick for making a lot of cables quickly without having to make them one at a time? Any help is appreciated.
Make 5-10-15-20 of them with follow me. Make sure they are groups or components individually. Then rotate / mirror / etc. and group them together, then repeat rotate mirror, etc.
Extensions:
Wire Tool - SketchUp Extension Warehouse
Clothworks - SketchUp Plugins | PluginStore | SketchUcation
@Renegado is on iPad.
Ah yes. Helps to read all the way to the bottom. Well then other than FollowMe, there may be models available online that you can place around your scene. Example of a free one I found on CGTrader. Good luck!
wires.skp (4.3 MB)
I started making the path using the line tool. here I’m using the endpoints in the style panel to see where lines end.
from there, you move some of the endpoints to make your cable a little bit less straight. with the line and 2pt arc tool you can also detail it more, break some curves and all.
cleanup, weld the lines, and run a follow me.
I would do like Mike says, first make quasi straight cables like I’m showing above, just copy your path 15 times and adjust the small lines differently.
once you have these 15 cables you can place them, overlap them, rotate or mirror them.
then, make 10 more of hanging cables, some with a tight curve, some a long one. once you have a bunch of ready made cables, you can simply duplicate them as needed to populate your model. it’s like sculpting, start by placing a few big ones / bundles, and add more around
look at actual cables in your house, they are not floppy ropes that dangle, they hold a certain rigidity, it’s especially true if they’ve been rolled / folded by a machine or an idiot (why do you think all my cables hold such weird shapes?)
