Scaling model to 1/12 with reduced entities

jgb

2 part question

1st part....My big airplane project. I am creating a rough floor plan and building shell of the manufacturing facility at 1/12th scale. I now need a 1/12th scale model of my big airplane, but I don't need most of the detail in the scaled model (separate drawing).

Scaling down is not the problem. How do I create a scaled model with significantly less entity detail?

If I just scale it down then I will end up with an overly complex model with a lot of extremely small entities, which we all know, SU does not handle very well. I have lots of non-flat sections, that I don't care if they look chunky after the scale down.

2nd part....I need a footprint drawing of the airplane. This is simply a directly overhead shadow that I can outline. I turned on "shadows" but I cannot see how to put the sun directly overhead. The sun angle default distorts the footprint significantly in places.

Thanks in advance...

Aerilius

In short, you want to do two actions, scaling and reducing the number of entities/ the "polygon count" (while keeping the shape as much similar to the original as possible).

There is a script "polyreduce" (copy into Sketchup/Plugins folder). It does not always create a beautiful result, because it can only delete vertices, but not create optimised triangles.

If you are not satisfied, currently you get the best results in Sketchup by cleaning it by hand or remodeling it. Are there details inside the plane that you don't need (like seats etc.), then delete them...

You can also try MeshLab which I think is much better (it can import .obj or .dae (Collada) files)

For the footprint, I have not yet tried, but if you set the location to the equator and the tim to 12:00, the sun should be at top. But I would do it different, as I think you want to have geometry of the footprint to work with (instead of a shadow). You can apply the flatten script to a copy of the airplane and the erase all lines that you don't need.

jgb

Yes, I only need the exterior mold (shape) of the plane, with very few internal (structural) elements. It will be used (at 1/12th scale) for planning the manufacturing stations (sizes and locations) in the facility. Once that is firmed up, I have a partial full scale detailed version of the facility that I will modify and use.

I went to a scaled version because it is easier to navigate and change than at full scale, even if the full scale planning model was low-poly. There is very little detail in the scaled version, and a full scale version would entice me to add details.

I will try "polyreduce".

As for the footprint, I cannot figure how to set my geo to the equator at noon (time I figured). But you got me thinking about scaling the airplane model down flat i.e: 100% scale down the blue axis. Then I'll intersect it on a flat plane (no pun intended ) and trace that outline.

I'll get back to you on both.

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Well, scaling on blue to "flat" did not quite work. First, "scale" only allows a "-.11" scale factor so I tried ".01". It was not flat enough, even doing it twice. Also my dwg was too complex. Scrap that.

Still can't see how to set my Geo to the equator, so I can trace the shadow.

However, since I used to draw boats and calculate the heeled waterline, I tried something like that. I made a flat plane group, and successively moved it up and intersected the plane at various "wide" points on the airplane to get a close approximation of the outermost footprint, plus a myriad of extra lines from the airplanes internal structures that I could not turn off. Spent a lot of time deleting those lines, then hit the old SU 6 problem of non-intersected crossing lines, coupled with Intersects' bad habit of not keeping lines on face as well as omitting a lot of intersecting lines. A LOT of cleanup to do before I can get a cohesive footprint.

Back later....

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Frustrated!!!!!!

I cleaned up the outline, but it will not form a face within the outline. Many lines are just off the z=00000 level, so that the face won't form. Then as I was replacing 2 short lines with one, SU crashed.
Fortunately, SU autosaved just a few minutes prior so I lost almost nothing.

Back on this tomorrow, as I gotta pick up my "warden" at the subway.