SU Follow Me advice for complete SU dufus

[DangerousDave]

Hi all
Am doing the SU design for some fitted (Dan Tovey-esque) MDF units and want a crown moulding between units and ceiling. Have built up the moulding using various shapes and made it into a component. Stuck it on top of a section of unit and tried to stretch it round using follow me tool, however it all goes a bit Pete Tong when I try to take it round a corner cabinet; its hard to explain but the edge 'face' disappears and part of the moulding 'continues through' the 45 deg mitre :shock: . I'll post a pic when I get round to uploading a screen shot to Flickr. I seem to remember seeing a post from Dave R ages ago about using follow me for mouldings but I can't find it. Sorry if this is a dumb question, I'm sure its something simple I'm not doing
Ta
Dave
:sign3:

 

[DangerousDave]

Here we go. Also, for some reason a series of horizontal lines have appeared on the face of the moulding and it stays grey, even though I haven't selected it. I had to explode the component to get the follow me to work, maybe it's something to do with that? :?

 

[SketchUp Guru]

The horizontal lines indicate that you've exploded the curves of the profile.

The mistake a lot of folks make is exploding the molding profile component in order to run Follow Me. Try this instead: Place the molding profile component at the end of the run. Double click on the component to open it for editing. Get the Line tool and trace the top edge of the cabinets where you want the molding to run. That is the Follow Me path.

At this point you can do one of two things, either select the path line segments and then get the Follow Me tool and click on the profile or Get the Follow Me tool, click on the profile and drag along the path. the latter doesn't always work so well but you can try it.

If you have horizontal lines in the extruded molding, run over them with the Eraser tool while holding Ctrl[/i[. After you've done that, if the molding is blue gray, select all of it and right click on it. Choose reverse Faces.

Keep in mind that to make changes to components you have to open them for editing. It doesn't matter what the component is. Either that or you explode it as you did but then its not a component anymore.

Good luck with it.

 

[Steve Maskery]

If you are getting lots of horizontal lines, another way of dealing with them is to Weld the line segments before you manipulate the profile. Weld is a free plugin. Just select the line segments and click Weld. You should select only line segments that form part of the curve - if you include lines that make up a hard angle, then that edge will not show when extruded.

It's bit of a faff to do this, but it does save an awful lot of cleaning up afterwards.

S

 

[SketchUp Guru]

Ah, thanks Steve. I should have added the thing about welding the segments.

 

[DangerousDave]

Thanks chaps, got it sussed. Excellent advice as always Its so much clearer editing a component rather than exploding it to make changes. Don't know why I didn't think of that before ( (homer) D'oh) So, is that weld thing a bit like just forming a sub-component in a component?
Dave

 

[SketchUp Guru]

Dave, glad you got it worked out.

The weld thing is not like creating a subcomponent. It makes a string of line segments behave as a single entity.

Consider this. The Circle tool by default creates a 24-sided polygon. You can do the same thing with the Polygon tool. The difference is that the segments in the circle are welded together. Select one and you select them all. Extrude the circle with Push/Pull or Follow Me and all of the edges between faces are automatically softened and you don't see them. Extrude the 24-sided polygon, though and all of those edges are visible.

Welding segments does the same thing to a collection of line segments that the Circle tool does (or Arc) but the segments don't have to follow a regular curve.

 

[DangerousDave]

Cheers Dave, think I get it now :? . I'll have a hunt for Weld and have a play around with it. Is it a Ruby Script?

 

[SketchUp Guru]

Don't hunt. And yes it is.

Weld.

 

[DangerousDave]

Cheers Dave, you're a star Thats it downloaded and installed in the plugins folder. I'll have a play around with it later. Many thanks for the help
Dave