Map Rectangular Patterns
-
Searched your forum and some online. I may be using the wrong terms in my searches. I was wondering if you can do this easily with sketchup or should I look at other software. I am willing to read the tutorials and work to figure it out, I just didn't want to invest a lot of time if this isn't the appropriate software. In either case sketchup looks pretty impressive and I plan on using it once I get my woodworking shop together.
What I would like to do is create several rectangles each with a set dimension, say 3X8, 4X6, 5X7 ... and then be able to drop/rotate them repeatedly in a 2d area that has set dimensions and create different patterns. A little bit like you would when planning a room and furniture with cutouts, accept in this case you would be filling the whole space. I saw that I can create a rectangle and give it dimensions, but I would like to be able to easily drag and drop and have them snap to the edges of other rectangles that they are dropped next to. Just dragging a rectangle and placing it yourself seems like you might slowly be off on the dimension spacing, ending up an inch or so over. I would also like to be able to pick them up and redrop them or rotate them.
-
-
SketchUp is perfect for this and fast.
You can move objects as accurately as you wish by typing in your dimension when moving, rotate to any given degree and by using the built in inference engine, you can snap to many points in the room or on other blocks.
You will need to use Groups and Components for your blocks, this way they will not stick and can be moved freely. -
Thanks guys. I thought sketchup would work. I figured coming to where the experts were would put me on track. Groups and components sound like what I need with the inference engine. The copy objects along a path sounds good, since I also wanted to try some patterns versus random appearance.
-
Although SketchUp would be perfect for much-much more complex (and of course, first of all 3D) tasks, what you want is very easy to accomplish and SU will definitely support it.
I have made three components (see screenshot) with your given details. (Since I did not know what units you meant when saying "3x8" for instance but later mentioned woodworking, I decided to use inches but added that as additional info to the components).
I also made the components automatically glue to a face (i.e. you will not incidentally wander somewhere outer 3rd dimension while working in 2d) and to cut opening (so that the inserted components do not cause Z-fighting).
Then drew a big face and started to insert the components to my needs (well the need was to demonstrate something)
But you can go even further - you can then export ("Save as") your parts as fully fledged skp files which later you can modify and import back ("Reload") into your main model. See an archive with the above skp file and a separate folder for the parts themselves attached.
-
Advertisement