I’m building a reciprocal frame roof for an elliptical building.
I modelled the roof separately for a circular building. Now, I need to cut off the excess, at 4’ plan.
I offset an elliptical 4’ ring, thinking that would be the way to do it.
Now, I want to “cut off” the logs at the surface of the elliptical ring, which I will then delete.
I tried “Edit —> Intersect Faces…” but I get a spinning beach ball forever, no matter what I do.
Thinking it was too complicated, I tried “View —> Hidden Geometry” and selected just the elliptical ring segment that one log was passing through, but still got a spinning beach ball for at least ten minutes.
How many segments did you use for the circle you extruded as the log? It looks like a lot. Maybe reducing the number of sides would help your computer keep up with what you are asking it to do.
Are the logs solid objects (groups or components) is the elliptical ring a solid object? If so you could use Trim from the Solid Tools to trim the logs with the ring.
How many segments did you use for the circle you extruded as the log? It looks like a lot. Maybe reducing the number of sides would help your computer keep up with what you are asking it to do.
I was afraid of that. It’s a fairly complex model of a real log. It looks pretty, which I’m sure is not great to work with.
When I try Solid Tools, both the logs and the elliptical cylinder says “not a solid” when I try to select it. The elliptical cylinder is a group. The logs are components. Is there something else to do to an apparent solid to make SketchUp recognize it as such?
I’d like to avoid simplifying the logs. If that’s what I must do, so be it, but I’d like to be able to do it with the logs, as I don’t think it will be simple to re-create the logs from complex-cut cylinders.
Yeah, so it looks like there’s a ton of geometry to deal with and it wouldn’t be surprising to get the spinning beach ball.
If youwant to use the Solid Tools then you’ll have to fix what it is that prevents the objects from being considered solids.
In order to be considered solid, a group or component must contain nothing but geometry (edges and faces) so not nested groups/components. Also every edge must be shared by exactly two faces. So no stray edges, no holes in surfaces, and no internal faces.
You could use Solid Inspector 2 to interogate the objects and find out what is preventing them from being solids.
If that’s the case, you will need to be patient and let SketchUp have the time to do what you are asking.
In a polygon modeler such as SketchUp or Blender a solid is defined as " all edges have valence = 2" (and of course all faces have normals pointing outside the enclosed volume).
There are more verbose descriptions, but this one covers basically everyting.
Would you mind to share the log component? I would be curious to have a closer look at it in order to understand if it’s “workable” in some way.
It was certainly the complexity of the lovely log model I carefully picked for beauty over practicality.
I replaced the logs with cylinders, and “Intersect Faces” worked in about a second with all “logs” selected. I should have known better! I think I’ll just paint them with some long wood grain without altering geometry.
