Best practice for drilling multiple holes?

Box

If it was me, I would create single components for each size tube.
Make these components a uniform length containing one hole on each side.
Hide the edges of the open ends.
Then make your lengths from these copied components.
This way you can make any length you want as long as it is a multiple of your original component, and only have to make four holes.

Component copy.JPG

Dave R

I would agree with Ben. This would also help to keep file size down. All those edges and faces in the holes will add up quickly in full length pieces.

If you do this, delete the end faces on the component so when you hide the seam edges, the back face color doesn't bleed through. You make another component of just the end and add that to both ends of the section of tube.

square tube.png

Gridbeam Solutions

Thank you, thank you, Box and Dave R! That WORKED, and it's SO easy to build! A zillion times easier than making repeating holes, even with the nifty plugin Gaeius suggested.

Basically your idea is that I make all my components from the same repeating components: 1 tube unit, and 2 ends (one flipped 180 degrees so all sides of the object are "out"). I was wondering whether SketchUp could do something like this... I imagine that will keep file sizes small, even though rendering might take awhile with all those holes.

Here is a screen shot along with my first successful drilled beam model. What do you suggest to further reduce the file size? Bear in mind that a single gridbeam project might have 24 or more of these beams in various lengths, plus panels and hardware.

(FYI, the holes currently have 24 sides, the corner radii 12.)

Thanks,
Joy

A screen shot of my first stick. It looks great!

My first gridbeam piece, made from 2 instances of the body component, and 2 separate end caps.

Jim

With SketchUp Pro, you can also create a Dynamic Component of your product which allows changing the length of a beam much more quickly. You can use the DC even in the Free version.

beam.skp

Dave R

Jim's got a good point. This could be a handy Dynamic Component.

HT stick MASTER 1a.png

As for reducing file size further, you could reduce the number of line segments in the arcs. My version of you tube is on the right. The tube segment you drew has 768 entities (edges and faces), while mine has 560. I used six segments on the exterior arcs and three on the inside arcs. You could reduce the number of segments used in the circles for the holes and further reduce the entity count. Of course the ends have similar reductions. You could probably even get away with 4 segments on the exterior arcs.

pilou

And if by hasard you want make some randomly elements from a familly of components you can use this tricky plugin by Sdmitch
Replace Randomly components
Very cool to use!

Gaieus

Guys, if you just make a one-hole-long piece a component and stick these components together to get a whole length piece, you do not gain anything compared to making a single piece as long as necessary and drill holes as components into them. In fact, poly count will increase this way even more significantly.

Dave R

But file size won't.

Gridbeam Solutions

My simplified tube looks good!
Dave R: I did as you suggested. This version has 5-segment outer arcs, 3-segment inner arcs, and 16-segment holes, for a grand total of 446 faces. That reduced the file size from 176 to 104 KB for the 2-hole component (made of 2 instances of the 1-hole block, plus 1 each of 2 end caps).

The holes in the 1-hole block are 4 separate holes that I pushed through. Would using a hole component instead make a significant difference in file size?

Gaieus, the time savings of not having to manually punch 4800 holes to make this batch of punched tubes (not to mention 7200 holes in my next batch of tubes) makes the duplication-of-segments methods VERY much worth doing. So I'm VERY glad the guys suggested it.

Jim is right: a dynamic component for gridbeam sticks would be terrific! I don't have SketchUp Pro; would someone be willing to make this from the sub-components in the attached file?

The component, which is made from a duplicated tube body unit plus 2 end caps.

Dave R

Joy, just for clarification, you could create a long section with multiple holes in it without punching them all by simply copying the single-hole element as needed without making it a component first. Then delete the coplanar edges. Or you could take your existing component copies and explode them to end up with a long piece of tube with all the holes.

Hopefully someone will make your DC for you but even if they don't, you've got something very simple to work with.

Jim

@gridbeam solutions said:

I don't have SketchUp Pro; would someone be willing to make this from the sub-components in the attached file?

Here's the DC. I could not keep the quote marks in the Component names - I got an error when trying to edit Components that used them, so I had to remove them. Let me know if you'd like it modified in some way.

To use (in SketchUp Free) open the Component Options window from the menu Window > Components Options, type in a value, then press Apply (or Enter.)

You can always open the Component and explode everything inside it, then run TT's Cleanup script if you'd like to then disable the DC and reduce the poly count.

Beam.skp

Gridbeam Solutions

@jim said:

@gridbeam solutions said:

I don't have SketchUp Pro; would someone be willing to make this from the sub-components in the attached file?

Here's the DC. I could not keep the quote marks in the Component names - I got an error when trying to edit Components that used them, so I had to remove them. Let me know if you'd like it modified in some way.

Thank you, Jim! This is GREAT! I just tried it out and it is SO EASY!

I have modified the component name to "1.5-inch aluminum gridbeam", as the beam width and hole spacing are important to users. (There are other sizes and materials of gridbeam.)

I notice that this component's "length" parameter operates in multiples of the base unit, rather than actual measurements. If I want to make a beam 1 foot long, I must specify a length of 8, rather than 12" or 1'. I don't know much about dynamic components -- is there a way to make the component so users can specify the length in feet an inches? Making the length specification more straightforward will make the component easier to build with, which will make it more accessible.

Again, thank you VERY much, Jim, for creating this gem!

Gridbeam Solutions

Another newbie question: How do dynamic components work with parts list generators? I'd like to be able to generate a parts list for a project -- NOT a cutlist, as I want to list the component sizes -- something like this:

3 count 1.5-inch aluminum gridbeam 4 feet long
4 count 1.5-inch aluminum gridbeam 2.5 feet long
4 count 1.5-inch aluminum gridbeam 2 feet long

How might I do that using dynamic components? (I'm on a Mac, so not all parts list plugins work for me.)

Jim

@gridbeam solutions said:

is there a way to make the component so users can specify the length in feet an inches?

Yes, but it becomes more difficult if there need to be partial units. For example, using the 1.5" base unit, would the DC need to work for a length of 5"? If so, then a fractional-unit component would need to be introduced.

Jim

@gridbeam solutions said:

How do dynamic components work with parts list generators?

Several reporting scripts already exist, and it would be fairly trivial to write a script customized to your Components.

Dave R

Jim, do you have a suggestion for how to make a DC made up of a number of smaller components show up in a report instead of reporting the lowest level components?

Jim

One obvious solution would be to give the top-level Component some attribute. If the report script finds the attribute, the script would just skip iterating the sub-components.

Alternatively, sub-components could be named using a special characters (end_plate, for example) which the script could easily check and not count as it builds the report.

Gridbeam Solutions

@jim said:

@gridbeam solutions said:

is there a way to make the component so users can specify the length in feet an inches?

Yes, but it becomes more difficult if there need to be partial units. For example, using the 1.5" base unit, would the DC need to work for a length of 5"? If so, then a fractional-unit component would need to be introduced.

Gridbeam doesn't need partial units. The beam lengths are always multiples of the beam width -- usually, but not always, even multiples.

Thus for 1.5" beam, lengths might be 1.5", 3", 4.5", 6", 4.5 feet, 8 feet, etc. For a beam 2" wide, lengths are always multiples of 2".

Same for metric: If a beam is 40 mm wide, the beam lengths will be multiples of 40 mm -- again, usually even multiples.

Gridbeam Solutions

@jim said:

@gridbeam solutions said:

How do dynamic components work with parts list generators?

Several reporting scripts already exist, and it would be fairly trivial to write a script customized to your Components.

Thanks! I installed Cut List, tested it, and it did exactly what I wanted.

And thanks to the tips you gave Dave R, I now know how to get SketchUp to list only the parts I want counted.

Jim

There is another option to size the Component - the Scale Tool.

In all, there are 3 possible ways to size the component. 1) Enter a value in an input field, 2) Select a length from a drop-down list, or 3) use the Scale Tool. Unfortunately, the 3 methods are mutually exclusive.