Faces/planes

Gaieus

Yes, groups should drape properly. Try to move your plan a bit above the face you are draping on. The drape tool should "project" all the lines smoothly.

soco

I did that and re-Draped... I lost a few lines but those that did reappear were all on the correct plane. Redrawing a few lines is a tiny price to pay for having nice clean plan to extrude from!
Thanks, again.

soco

Hello again,
Progress is good with the new model! I'm nearly ready to start roofing and was wondering: do you have any tips?
I have the pitch of each roof plane, its starting(lowest)level and its plan dimensions, but not the exact heights of all the supporting walls. I have extruded those walls to the datum of the lowest point of the corresponding roof plane.
What is the best way to bring the (level)top face of walls up to meet a pitched roof undercroft?
If I draw a roofplane so that it projects over the external walls is there an easy way to trim back projections where necessary (using an intersecting face, for example)?

Gaieus

Yes,intersecting will be your best friend here.

First of all, make a group of what you have now (especially the walls) so that when working on the roof, you won't affect them.

Now enter the wall group and copy the very top face (which is "covering" the wall) with a simple Ctrl+C after selecting it.

Then exit the group, go to Edit > Paste into place; it will be placed to the same location and you can work on it so that it can be part of your roof and the roof line will perfectly match the walls.

You can even hide the walls now...

soco

Hello,
I think I've got the hang of SU basics now, mainly thanks to the help I got here!
I'd like to put the model in its landscape context:
Should I start a new model of the landscape, building up the contours etc, and then import the building model into that file? or should I draw the whole thing in one file?
Do you have any tips on the best way to build up landscape? I think I can use the Drape tool to soften out contour edges I have drawn... can I then 'drop' my building into this landscape?

Gaieus

@soco said:

Should I start a new model of the landscape, building up the contours etc, and then import the building model into that file? or should I draw the whole thing in one file?

Either way is just fine (especially with a "not-too-complex" model).

@soco said:

Do you have any tips on the best way to build up landscape?

It depends what kind of "input" yoou have;

contour lines
you want to work from "scratch"
point cloud
you can even import a Google Earth Terrain
etc.

@soco said:

I think I can use the Drape tool to soften out contour edges I have drawn...

Well, I don't exactly understand what you mean here but the Drape tool is for something different; for "drawing" contour lines of buildings, roads etc. onto a softened surface (i.e. terrain/landscape).

@soco said:

can I then 'drop' my building into this landscape?

That would be the Stamp tool (of the Sandbox).

kwistenbiebel

Make that 200 lines.

Rubbish!

kwistenbiebel

The drape Tool sucks big time for projecting lines on a surface.
It only works when you have less than app. 1000 lines.
Anything higher?: Crash guaranteed!

I need this urgently in a project and I am really swearing. Damn Sketchup.

Wo3Dan

@kwistenbiebel said:

The drape Tool sucks big time for projecting lines on a surface.
It only works when you have less than app. 1000 lines.
Anything higher?: Crash guaranteed!....

I just used it to drape an organic shape (3236 edges) = about 2 to 3 minutes.
Turned on "hidden geometry" (now 4733 edges) = about 3 minutes
Deleted all faces BUT ONE => about 3 minutes

The results are exactly the same. Meaning projected (thus coplanar triangulating) hidden lines are not included.
Have you in any way skrewed up how you set things up?

NO connection between whatever you drape and the face(s) you project on.
NO connecting faces underneath each other. Otherwise all will be draped upon.
(this will multipy time needed for all faces underneath are projected upon)

Otherwise I would suggest to copy both subject(s) and horizontal face(s) into a clean
SU instance to do the operation separately.

p.s. My old machine with XP seems to come to halt at about 45% but I give it some time.

Wo3Dan

kwistenbiebel

Thank you for the tip Wo3Dan,
I'll keep those tips in mind for the next time.

As my file kept crashing by using the drape tool, I handed it over to a colleaugue who did it in 1 minute using Rhino.

The trouble with the sketchup drape tool is that it is basically a ruby, and thus has difficulties with large amounts of geometry....and in a lot of cases, DWG site imports are full of it.

Friday was really a day of Sketchup frustration.
Anyone sells a SU stress ball?