Two disks and a dowel

SketchUp Pro
#1

K_7_WF.skp (350.7 KB)

A cabinet has changed,to disk shelves pivoting on a dowel. It’s also introduced a slew of unique problems however.
[all this is displayed in “Bottle shelves” scene]

Everything was laid out with guidelines; all the guidelines were dimensioned; all lines were drawn using the right/left/up (R/G/B) arrow keys to ensure they were restricted to the coordinate axes.

From the back of the counter (this will have to be changed) I drew a construction line to its end and 2 construction lines 4" in from the back and front edge of the countertop. I drew and extracted two 4"circles with a 3/4" center hole (yes I should have made the first a component, but getting the second in place was a problem). Then I drew construction lines from the centers of these circles to their radii, in correct Red/Green directions and down their edge. Then I drew two rectangles from the edge of one of the disks to the edge of the second. At first it was confusing because when I drew the rectangles they never quite met both the guidelines. But I realized the problem and was able to verify their accuracy by temporarily implementing 2-point perspective and noticing the vertical edges of the rectangle (exactly?) hit these points.

Given perfect circles, the two edges of the rectangles should have contacted the disks perfectly, guaranteeing me an area I could extrude to end up with a solid area between the disks. They never did, and close inspection of those juncture points showed me that the 12-faces of the rectangle never did. Before grouping various entities (the disks, the rectangles) I noticed there were places in the side rectangles that touched the disks (dotted) and places they didn’t (stayed clear). But now all that grouping work has made it impossible to see those relationships because getting to them is nested so deep in the group that by the time I can isolate them nothing else is available to view them against (also the problem that prevents me from extruding the dowel back up to the top of the cabinet).

I imagine I could be sloppy; just extend the rectangles part way; and fill in the center, but SketchUp’s capable of more.

Is there a simpler way.

#2

Try this. Stop nesting groups and components. Unless it’s 100% absolutely necessary, don’t do it. Don’t even make a component at all unless you 100% guarantee you need multiple identical instances of it. You’re making things far too complicated.

Just group geometry to make pieces. Then put the pieces together if they aren’t in place already. Once they are all in place, select them and make a single group of them if you need to have it all contained.

#3

You aren’t creating your circles On Axis. This leads to errors.

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#4

I see. I just did it by dimension.

I also see that this will work if the two circles being connected are the same size. How does this work if the second circle is not the same diameter as the first (so that an edge doesn’t fall on the connecting line)?

#5

This throws a monkeywrench into the works. I purposely grouped everyone of these entities (I wish people would use ‘entities’ instead of components for ‘things’, ‘components’, and ‘groups’) because I didn’t want to get myself in trouble with components. Right now, I just had to explode one mass nesting. But, doing as you suggest en-masse takes away all my abilities to organize the entities in the outliner–I have to devise an alphabeticizing system (with spaces) to restore outliner-like organization.

Whoops! Didn’t realize that in exploding this small subgroup I would lose its supergroup (“New Cabinets” i.e., practically everything) as well!

#6

My trial period is coming near the end. I still have a lot to learn and will continue to work with SketchUpMake until I attain the proficiency I need.

I want to thank all the folk who responded to my posts–you guys really know your stuff and are very generous with your time.

Sincerely

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#7

As long as your use is non commercial you can continue to use SketchUp Make 17 desktop. It has some limitations but the interface is much more similar to Pro than the current web version. Make sure you backsave copies of your existing files in 21 to version 17 before your trial ends. Make 17 is available for download here:

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#8

Thanks. I’ll do so.

1 Like