Editing a curved surface.

[mrbouchez]

Hello all.

This is my first post here at the sketchup forums.

I've been asked to use sketchup at work to quickly work up a model to help customers visualize their project before it is built. I've had some training in college with 3D modeling but not with Sketchup, I really like it's simplicity.

One project that I'm working on has a passive solar heating system with curved glass. By the nature of glass, I think, I can't seem to trim the edges where I need them or hide some "creative trimming" due to the transparency of the glass.

I could use some tips if anyone has anything to offer. I've loaded the model into the 3D warehouse for anyone who would like to play with it or to see what I'm trying to describe. It's titled Single w/ Passive Solar.

Thanks

[remus]

First thing id do is change to monochrome textureing, so you can more easily see what your doing. To do this you jsut need to go view->face style->moochrome. Wheny ou want to change back just go view->face style->shaded with textures.

Once youve done that you'll want to make sure all the glass geometry is actually touching somewhere, so jsut select the upper pices of glass and move thme down inferrign the height from the top of the curved sections.

If the appropriate intersections are not apparent by then you'll need to select all the glass geometry->right click->intersect->with selected. This should then put all the lines in the right place, so you can thne go along and delete all the excess stuff.

Alterantively yu could jsut delete the top bit of glass and draw in a new top pane. Thinking aobut it, this is definetly te easiest solution, although i'll leave the rest in for proseterity

[mrbouchez]

Forcing the Intersecting geometry is helping. I should have made the model cleaner and saved myself a lot of work. I am used to using a Boolean operation and just discarding the extra geometry. I have to admit, Sketchup is a quick way to give ideas shape. It has some issues with rounded surfaces though.

Maybe I should try a Follow Me and see if I can get the glass to fill in the way I want it too. Thats a nice lofting tool but it seems to jump around a lot on me while trying to pick the path.

[remus]

You can preselect the follow me path if you want, just select the path, click the follow me tool and click the face.

As for keeping your geometry clean, dont forget to use lots of groups and components in your model, they help immensely in keeping your model clean.