Outside vs inside edges - different thicknesses

leh · 26 Sept 2008, 18:06

I'm really new to sketchup and am having what I think is a really simple problem. I have drawn many rectangles, and moved them so that their edges meet. I want to have the edges on the outside of the whole thing be thick and the edges on the inside thin. I tried searching help, but haven't found the right thing yet. I can select only the outside edges if necessary, but that would be a pain.

leh · 26 Sept 2008, 18:16

Attached is what I'm working on.

LEH_lines.skp

Anssi · 26 Sept 2008, 20:22

Hi

The thicknesses of individual edges in SU cannot be set. The visible thickness of lines is determined by their character and position. Lines dividing surfaces or at corners with both sides visible are thin, and other edges are thick, as well as edges belonging to different groups or components, even if they meet.

Looking at your model, exploding the components made the surfaces partially to fuse, achieving what you want, but when you look at your model closely, some of the edges in it do not quite meet, so exploding does not help them.

Anssi

JuanV.Soler · 26 Sept 2008, 20:24

There is no way yet to get different thickness of the lines in a drawing in SketchUp.
There is a ruby that will transform ordinary lines to dash_ones. And maybe there are more rubys to help.
I think you could try in the Ruby Forum.
Salud
Edit : Anssi we were at the same time posting

Alan Fraser · 27 Sept 2008, 14:55

By exploding the geometry, turning on hidden geometry then dragging the apexes of the triangles together, you will achieve what I have done with the top shape. The green dots indicating the endpoints of each triangle will snap together reasonably easily.

At the moment...on the ones I haven't done...the lines are thick because they are not inside edges, they are still profile edges...because the strips are still separated by a small gap. "Gluing" them together will fix this and you will see them go thinner as the geometry connects.

If you run Eraser+Ctrl over the entire shape those remaining lines will soften and disappear, forming a continuous parabolic shape...if that's what you want.

LEH_lines.skp

JuanV.Soler · 27 Sept 2008, 16:12

work around, that it is called.
good Alan,

pbacot · 28 Sept 2008, 17:27

how does one create the evenly warped surface in the example?

Alan Fraser · 29 Sept 2008, 10:14

@pbacot said:

how does one create the evenly warped surface in the example?

Either manually, if you are a masochist, or using the Soapskin & Bubble Ruby.
http://www.tensile-structures.de/help.html

Anssi · 29 Sept 2008, 17:52

@alan fraser said:

@pbacot said:

how does one create the evenly warped surface in the example?

Either manually, if you are a masochist, or using the Soapskin & Bubble Ruby.
http://www.tensile-structures.de/help.html

Or the Sandbox from Contours tool.

Anssi

pbacot · 30 Sept 2008, 19:10

I tried it with the sandbox with two curves. And due to the segments in the curves, the resulting warped plane had ripples all over as planes were formed from segments on one curve to the other.

Alan Fraser · 30 Sept 2008, 19:58

This is what you get with Soapskin on the default settings.

SSB.skp

leh · 30 Sept 2008, 20:34

@alan fraser said:

By exploding the geometry, turning on hidden geometry then dragging the apexes of the triangles together, you will achieve what I have done with the top shape. The green dots indicating the endpoints of each triangle will snap together reasonably easily.

Thanks! This is exactly what I was missing.

@alan fraser said:

If you run Eraser+Ctrl over the entire shape those remaining lines will soften and disappear, forming a continuous parabolic shape...if that's what you want.

That also gives a really nice effect. Thanks for the tip.

leh · 30 Sept 2008, 20:56

@pbacot said:

how does one create the evenly warped surface in the example?

Actually, in this case it wasn't so hard - the whole structure is made of strips that correspond to 5 degree rotations (of the central "layer"). The Soapskin & Bubble Ruby looks really nice though. For me, the important thing was when I realized that I could rotate the edge of many different rectangles at once.

First, I made a single rectangle that was as wide as I wanted the 5 degree strip to be, but 1/6th as wide in the other direction. Then I copied it so that there were 6 of those touching so that they glue together. Then I drew a single line across one long edge, selected this and rotated it by 5 degrees. Then I copied this 5 times to get the stack, selected the whole stack, copied it and moved it and rotated it by 5 degs so that it almost connected. Then I had to by hand move the end points slightly on the original strip (and in the end all of the triangle vertices as described above) so that they connected well with the new strip. Then I discarded the new strip (it was just a template) and copied and rotated the old one (then copied two and rotated two, etc. etc.). Thats a lot of words, but actually fairly fast in the end.

Attached is as new and improved section (as per the suggestions of Alan Fraser) as well as the beginnings of a new one (with 5 rather than 6 segments) in case my description made no sense.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions!

Twisted_erased_2.skp