Hi Peeps, i wonder if anyone can help me, I’ve been trying alsorts and not getting anywhere with this. I have a brewing vessel 45cm in diameter, on the side of which are two heating elements, but they don’t have any covers over the electrics so the wires are exposed, not great for a wet environment, so I want to SketchUp a cover which I can then print, but I cant seem to create a tube of the side of a tube if you see what I mean? The cover tube of say 45mm diameter, must closely follow the line of the diameter of the larger tube (the vessel) so it will be able to attach nicely. Can anyone help me out on how to do this?
as you can see, i am restricted to the limitations of curves it seems, they are mad fo multiple sides. essentially, yhis protusion should be round, with 2mm thick walls all round, then i can delete the large container and make the changes to the element cover like add holes for wires etc before printing.
Yes. SketchUp represents curved surfaces with a series of flat faces.
Since you’re modeling for 3D printing I would suggest that you set the model units to meters and treat them as millimeters. This will allow you use a higher number of sides for circles to get smoother curved surfaces.
Here are some photos of what I’m trying to achieve, a cover for this ex-electric kettle element that was liberated for use as a heating element for a water heater in a home brewery. As you can see, it’s completely exposed at the moment, not ideal. I
want to make a cover that closely follows the sides of the vessel it is in (45cm diameter) and be round to match the element cut out in the side of the vessel. I have simply a cylinder of 45cm and attempted to add an other smaller cylinder off the side of it in SketchUp. That’s all I have. I will try later when home to retry with a scale of 450m for the vessel and 45m for the side protrusion. But the idea is, that once I have the protrusion (which will become the 3d printed cover, I will delete the vessel from SketchUp leaving the cover that I can then work on creating screw holes, a hole for the cable and holes for the small lamps to protrude through.
Here’s a version of what I guess you want. I gave it a flange to maybe have screws…
This is desktop but no reason it can’t be done even in the free web version.
Although I agree with @DaveR and working in meters this is done at actual size and the circles have 96 segments, so it is possible.
elementcover.skp (106.0 KB)
ok i had a go, but even with meters set in the dimensions settings, I still have not curved curves in ketchup web. i will try scaling it down to see if that makes any difference.
I opened your model and box is right, your cylinder doesn’t have enough edges, therefore if you show hidden lines you’ll see you’re perfectly lying on a flat face
yep, got it. what on draft in your pub mate? this is a brewery im building after all! My brewery is almost(or will be) mostly automated. the only attention needed from me, the brewewr, at mash in, where i add the grains and hit Go ion the pc:-)
