When I make small models such as a small hollow cylinder I can attach to the wall of my travel trailer bathroom to hold my toothbrush, I want to round off the top outer and inner edges of the cylinder slightly. I create a circular base and thicken it a bit with Push/Pull. I use Follow Me using that base as the path, and a rectangle that has its two top corners rounded off a bit. I use the “Dave Method” - make component, make a copy, scale up the copy 1000x, and round the top corners, then use Follow Me on the original that now has rounded corners. I get a hollow cylinder with defects that I don’t understand. I made a one page .pdf that has screenshots of the stages this modelling passes through that shows the method and the result that I uploaded with this post. I’m using Sketchup Make 2017. Can anyone explain?
FollowMe and rounded corners.pdf (104.4 KB)
Sounds like you are working harder than you need to. Scaling up and back down or the “dave method” are both ways of circumventing SketchUps lower limit in creating faces with nodes that are too close together. Essentially at a very small scale, two points get resolved into one and a face fails to form at that location, often called the Tiny Face Problem. This is happening in your case because you are “scaling back down” before you complete the follow me action. So the follow me tool is subject to the same tiny face limits as the rest of the model, so that operation is failing to form some faces, hence the holes.
However, Good News, when modeling for 3D printing there is a much better way to avoid tiny faces without any scaling involved. It’s a method pretty much universally adopted by all sketchupers who are modeling for 3D printing. Simply set your 3D printing templet to Meters, model in Meters using them like MM. There is no math or conversion necessary, for a rectangle 49mm high simply enter 49 and you will get a rectangle 49m high. Model your entire object in meters. Here’s the best part, there is no scaling necessary, .stl is a unit-less file format, there are no units in the file you send to your slicer. So simply export your file as a .stl as it is, in output options set the units to model units (it probably already is). The file will be output in correct unit-less numbers that your slicer will import as mm, it just appears in your slicer as the right size.
As for this particular model, consider forming the whole thing in one go using follow me, rather than mating up two separate pieces.
Thanks for taking the time to explain why what I was doing wasn’t working, and for your solution. Working in meters to get around the “tiny faces” problem on millimeter sized models is a great idea. I was banging my head against the wall about this for hours. The sun is back out in my world…
FWIW, here’s an example from a recent project that illustrates the modeling in meters printing in millimeters thing. Maybe it’ll help someone else who comes along.
The screws are M6.
Bag plate
Instead of making internal threads in the plate I just ran a tap through with a cordless drill.