HELP!, calling Dave! the Sketchup guru.

[mailee]

Thanks for the info on the Follow me tool Dave I have got it now and the layers are working a treat. I am afraid I do have another question for you though regarding Sketchup: When I draw a pelmet for the bottom of my cabinets for example like a skirting board section and then try to 'mitre' the ends with the rotation tool everything goes haywire with lines running from the curves and pulling everything out of shape? I have also tried just clicking on the lines and curves and pulling them but to the same ends! Have you any idea of how to do this process please as it is driving me mad. So far I have had to butt the corners up to each other but this is a trade off and doesn't look too good. As you can tell I am a novice with Sketchup having used Turbocad and Autocad in the past. Many thanks. :?

 

[SketchUp Guru]

Hi there,

No worries on asking questions. There are a couple of ways of handling it.

One way would be to draw the board and then add a cutting plane where the mitre needs to be. I did a quick sketch and screen shot that should explain it.

Use the protractor tool to set a 45° construction line of the corner to give you a guide for drawing the cutting plane. After drawing that, run Intersect with model and finally delete the unwanted part and heal faces as needed.

You couldmake the two mating pieces separate groups and slide them together so their corners overlap. Then edit each piece individually tracing the intersection of the two and then deleting the waste but if there's any detail such as an ogee profile or whatever that can be quite time consuming.

After the mitre is cut make a group of the piece of skirting. Copy it and mirror the copy using the Scale tool and typing -1. That will make the piece of skirting for the opposite side. You could also make the front piece by copying and mirroring the side piece and adjusting the length. If you want help with that part, too let me know.

 

[mailee]

Oh Dave, many thanks mate, it works a treat. You did have me confused at first speaking of drawing a cutting plane? I looked high and low for the cutting plane tool and then realised by trial and error it just means draw a rectangle and intersect the model with it on the line of cut. I guess that was just me being dim really. Once I managed to do that it was plain sailing although I would never have thought of the intersect with model until you mentioned it. now I am Mitreing the ends of my plinths and cornices easily. Many thanks again Dave and sorry to be a pain. I have to admit it is far easier to actually build the things than it is to draw the plans.

 

[SketchUp Guru]

I'm happy it made sense to you. Don't worry about asking questions. I don't mind answering them. Keep in mind that there are a lot of tricks with SU where you can think like you're doing it in wood. How would you have made that mitre in the actual skirting board? Essentially it works out the same way.

Suppose you want to "drill" a pocket screw hole. Draw the "drill bit" and intersect it with the model. Remove the drill (delete it) and you're left with the hole. The same sort of thing can be done with Follow Me to "rout" an edge profile or cut a rebate or dado. If it's a straight run, use Push/Pull if it's not a straight run, Follow Me.

Feel free to ask if you have more questions.

Dave