Polygon

Anthony

I want to draw a number of polygons that are connected equaly on the sides there must be an easy way to do this but I'm scraching my head

Gaieus

Hi Anthony (and welcome).

What polygons do you want to draw and how do you want to connect them (2D / 3D)?

After making a polygon, the best would be to turn it into a group and then align these polygons with each other using the Move and Rotate tools

Jean Lemire

Hi Anthony, hi folks.

There is no option to specify side length when drawing polygons with SketchUp (SU). SU uses the radius and the only polygon whose radius is the same as its side is the hexagon. Of course, you can draw a polygon side by side and rotate each side as you go around but this needs calculations of the angle and it is prone to errors with numbers that do not divide 360° accurately.

However there is a possible workaround although it involves a little bit of work.

See this SU file for ideas.

Joined polygons.skp

Gaieus

Hi Jean,

What I regularly do if I want a polygon to have a certain side length is that

I make it a group
then edit the group
then use the tape measure tool on its side to give it an exact value by scaling it
Then you can already align the polygon as ou wish.

Anthony

Thanks for the quick reply Gaieus.I'm very new to skechup so I have many moments of frustration followed be joyous moments of revelation.
This problem was posed to me by a friend. On a 2D plain draw a square then attach four pentagons to the square one to each side of the square so that when the pentagons are raised up to meet the sides of another pentagon you have a basket shape.
I managed to do it without using groups however I can see I'll need to study up on them.

Thanks Jean for the heads up on the radius as being the only measure nothing worse than looking for something that isn't there. Might need to look for some formulas in case I run into this kind of problem again

Anthony

@unknownuser said:

What I regularly do if I want a polygon to have a certain side length is that

I make it a group

then edit the group

then use the tape measure tool on its side to give it an exact value by scaling it
Then you can already align the polygon as ou wish.

I've been trying to get this method to work however the values jump around to much I must be doing something wrong could you explain it any better. I found a method that works well but requires a calculator on hand. By by making any polygon value 100 then measuring one side keep note of this value and move the decimal point back 2 places. then measure the length that you want your polygon side to match. divide this value by the one by the one above and you get the value that you need to use when creating your polygon to three decimal points. its accurate but I'm sure your method would be faster if I can get it to work

Gaieus

Okay, the way you can scale / resize things with the Tape measuer tool is this:

Click on one endpoint of an edge
click on the other enpoint
type the length you want that edge to be and hit Enter (the general way to ener a value into the VCB / Mesurement box)
When a confirmation popup appears (wether you want to resize your model), answer yes.
One important note however; this method will scale everything within the context you are working in. So if you scale something that is not grouped, your entire model will be resized but if you scale something within a group (while editing it), only the content of the group will be scaled.

I developed this method with polygons when I was building Gothic churches which have octagonal apses. Certainly I only re-invented the wheel but it works perfectly for me.

Anthony

thanks Gaieus that works great