A Welcome Message to New SketchUcation Members

Gaieus · 4 Jun 2009, 09:15

Hi Oma and welcome. Eric seems to have taken care of you now...

Andre, welcome, too. Indeed, SU seems to be fairly simple right at the beginning and sufficient tool for basic purposes but it's much "deeper" than that of course. Just watch the videos, read the SU Guide and the tutorials spread all over the internet (and of course here), read the forums and of course, ask when you encounter something you cannot find the answer for.

artupato · 8 Jun 2009, 06:35

hello to all
I am a new member.

Gaieus · 8 Jun 2009, 12:58

Hi Angelo and welcome!

TNTRower · 11 Jun 2009, 05:46

Hi guys!

New to the Sketchup tool. I am using this for designing furniture. I build as a hobby and stress reliever. I have been doing the old school route of pencil and paper for years. Decided that this makes it a lot easier. Only been using it for a bout a day and already love it.

remus · 11 Jun 2009, 06:41

Hi TNTrower,

good to hear your getting on with SU

Gaieus · 11 Jun 2009, 11:41

Hi TNT and welcome; I have added you to the woodworking user group so you can see their forum.

lonach34 · 16 Jun 2009, 03:56

I am a newbie on this website, though I have been playing around with SketchUp for a while. I still don’t know a lot about it, but have some idea how much can be done with it.
My major interest is in boats rather than architecture and design. I would like to find out if it is possible, in SketchUp, to “straighten” a curved panel, the side of the boat, to get the flat shape of the panel.
Dories are really simple boats. Take a flat panel, bend it and tilt it at something 45° and you have the flare and sheer that makes a dory easy to build, cheap, capable of carrying lots of fish and above all, seaworthy.
The story is that I built a light displacement dory recently, working from offsets. Offsets are the X, Y, Z dimensions of the sheer and chine lines of a boat at regularly spaced stations. Traditionally frames are set up to these dimensions and the plywood attached over them.
Instead of this method I used “stitch and glue”. A sheet of plywood is cut in half lengthwise, and butted together using epoxy and fiberglass tape to give a 2’x16’ panel. Stations are marked and the height above the base line of the sheer and chine are measured off and cut out. Panels for both sides are wired together at the bow and transom, and then the bottom is stitched on. Thickened epoxy is put into the joints and covered with fiberglass tape. I used a 2x4, ripped lengthwise into four pieces for the gunwale sheer clamps. The bottom is fiberglassed for waterproofing and durability. One of these dories can be put together inside of two weeks of evenings, for less than $300. It is a good boat.
From the offsets I did my best, through trial and error as well as some long forgotten engineering drawing, to convert the offsets to the panel shape. It wasn’t too bad, but there are errors that I would like to eliminate.
I hope that SketchUp will let me get the dimensions correct.
Lonach34

NO 2 & Side Panel.skp

remus · 16 Jun 2009, 06:28

Hello lonach,

sounds like it should be possible to do what your asking in SU.

Dont be afraid to start a thread if you start having problems.

Gaieus · 16 Jun 2009, 08:50

Hi Lonach and welcome.

This boat should be quite easy to build in SU, too, not only in "real life". You need to get used to accurate modelling however. In your model, I exploded some curves and turned on the visibility of endpoints (so that they are easier to work with). Have a look at the below picture however:

I found that one of those vertical, flat panels doesn't even lie on the curve. These small glitches can be very annoying if turning out when your model is more advanced.

I also like boats so please, post more and as those questions if needed.

Shah1 · 19 Jun 2009, 09:35

Hi all. I am new here. I am not a professional but designing is my favorite. I tried many apps of 3D but these are very hard to understand but SU is very easy so I like it very much. I want to learn SU more and more so I am here in between you.
Thanks.

Shah1

Gaieus · 19 Jun 2009, 10:32

Hi Shah and welcome!

Never mind not being a professional - I'm not one either and still enjoy SU.

big brade · 21 Jun 2009, 01:22

Hi, All I am a newbie SU 7. I wanna learn sketchUp fast, help me !

Gaieus · 21 Jun 2009, 09:22

Hi BB and welcome. I'm sure you'll get much help when you encounter some problem.

gclyde · 21 Jun 2009, 14:01

Hi Folks,

I am another newbie to SU. I have spent the last week watching loads of video tutorials too - in no particular order, which makes the brain go a bit fuzzy!

One thing that I'd wish for is for a set of video tutorials that are in some sort of logical order, taking the newbie from the start to the end of a new project. For example, I am particularly interested in drawing construciton drawings for new houses, and need to draw 2D scaled plans for printing onto A3. Anyway, I will add it to my wish list.

In the meantime, I jumped straight into drawing a rather large building in SU, but finding it difficult to do mcuh internal work. I now know that I should have made groups, components, scenes and layers

I am now faced with either re-drawing the building, or backtracking in order to introduce all of the above.

Please open the attached file and see what I have done so far.

Regards
Gra

Star Theatre

remus · 21 Jun 2009, 18:28

Very good start graham Looking at that model i'd say youve got a fairly good grasp of the basic modelling tools, as you say grouping/componenting your model would go a long way to cleaning it up, though.

Another thing to be aware of is that you should always try and keep the front faces of your model pointing 'out.' A bit more detail: faces have a front and back side, in SU these are coloured white and blue respectively. You want to try and keep the white faces pointing out wherever possible. You can do this by right clicking a face(or selection of faces) and selecting 'reverse face.'

gclyde · 21 Jun 2009, 19:06

Hi Remus,

Thanks for the comments. I am also finding it very hard to work inside the building. For example, the exisitng balcony is stepped, but I can't get in to complete the 'push n pull'. Any suggestions?

Also, I need to instal at least 2 flights of stairs and to introduce a basement room to house the boiler. I have also a swimming pull to instal.

I would like to produce multi-layered walls, but not sure how to go about it. Will the 'Push n pull' work with multi-layers?

Sorry, there are loads of questions!

Gra

Gaieus · 21 Jun 2009, 19:21

Graham,

The very first thing that you MUST do in order to properly organise you model is to group certain elements (or make components of them especially if there are more than one instances of them like windows, doors whatnot). Before this, don't even touch the layers because you will end up in a big mess.

Make your groups/components in a "logical" way. Say make a single group of all the walls on the first floor, make a separate group of the floor itself etc. (only you know what YOUR logic should be here). You can then examine and edit all the group/component hierarchy in the Outliner (Window menu). You can easily hide/unhide groups/components in order to access interiors and be able to insert staircases for example.

Only when you have already made your groups/components, "place" them on different layers to control visibility (and only that with SU as layers do that but don't separate geometry from each other).

If this means to restart your model then don't hesitate to restart. No-one (I believe) succeeded with his first model. You can even copy certain elements from one model into another one so you may even "rebuild" your more proper model by using simple Ctrl+C to copy in one model then Edit > Paste in place in another one. This is also good to add geometry into an existing group if you accidentally left something out.

gclyde · 21 Jun 2009, 19:28

Thanks Gaieus,

It was my first attempt. But got stuck!

It took me hours to do too....the thought of re-doing everything is daunting.

I do take your point about creating groups and layers etc. I kind-of know that now. Is there an easy that I can do that with what I have done already? I am still getting to grips with groups and layers - the penny has not quite dropped yet though!

I am sure that I will get there with a little help and guidance from you guys

Gra

Gaieus · 21 Jun 2009, 19:58

It's never very easy to make logical grouping from a complex set of geometry but never hopeless (although sometimes takes longer than redoing...)

What you can use is what I suggested (let's say this is with the walls):

select as many faces of the walls as you can easily
right click > Group
now select the rest
press Ctrl=X (this will cut it out)
double click on the group to edit it
go to Edit > Paste in place (you can assign a shortcut to this operation to speed up modelling - see Window > Preferences > Shortcuts - I use Shift+Ctrl+V for this but y6ou can go with anything you like)
repeat these steps until all the faces and edges of your walls are in this group
NOW make a layer, name it Wall (or something)
right click on your wall group > Entity info
change the layer from Layer 0 to Layer Wall
uncheck the visibility of your wall layer and the wall disappears.
now do the same with something else that you think should logically belong to each other (say the floor) and turned into a group...
Ir, at the end, you end up with a couple of stray lines that don't seem to belong to any groups, don't worry just delete them. When grouping geometry, edges that are shared with geometry outside of the group will be duplicated so you are pretty unlikely to erase something important.

x2ferp · 22 Jun 2009, 07:12

Hello masters, im happy to be part of this forum. i had a hard time logging in but finally i made it. one thing i would like to ask, when i view most of the topic i cannot completely relate myself to it because a statement always showing up like this;

"You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post."

Is this normal? or is there anything that i forgot to clik on or do something in my account? hoping for your enlightenment and answers. thank you very much.