Shape bender

timr

Hi All I want to extrude a tapered triangle along curve.What I want to achieve is a tianlge 54mm along the base tapering to 34mm at the far end of the extrusion. The path is a curve around 400mm long with a rad of 395mm. I've tried using the shape bender plug in but it doesn't work I seem to get a straight extrusion with a kink in it. Any ideas on what I can do?

Tobobo

Tim,

Have you read through the shape bender thread?

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=18210

The answer could be in there, also people find it easier to answer questions like this if you can post pictures and a .skp file.

jeff hammond

sort of confused about your triangle dimensions but here's my guess:

[in cm instead of mm.. sketchup doesn't like tiny measurements.. you can scale down to size afterwards]

see if you can get shape bender to work on this file.

gilles

If you want accuracy in your drawing follow those steps:
_Draw the line on red axis the same length than the arc ( not the radius, the length)
_Draw the shape to be bend the same length than the arc
_Make this shape a group or component
_Select it, call shape bender
_Select the line
_Select the curve
_wait a few, press enter

Done, it works fine for me with your dimensions.
EDIT: attach your file so we can what's going wrong.

bend.skp

timr

Thanks for the replies,

I,ve attached the file so you can see what is going on.The file shows the dimension I want but also I've scaled it up with the same results. Sometimes it will bend but only one way, the arrow key won't reverse the direction. others like this one give no bend and I also seem to get a straight with a kink. Jeff your file seemed to work fine

shapebender.skp

Gaieus

Interesting that I also had that kink - no matter how I tried to move the whole ting elsewhere, explode the group and re-group it...

I made another attempt with curviloft below however.

shapebender.skp

timr

I'd just tried curviloft which works well however my triangles edges seem to have been softened, unlike yours do you know of any reason for this. I would prefer the sharper edges.

tuesday.skp

Gaieus

Mine softened as well - curviloft does this all the time as mostly you'd make "curvy" shapes with it. Simply lower the smoothing angle (right click > Soften smooth edges) and it goes back to normal.

gilles

When you see the green preview shape press the down arrow key.

timr

Thanks for all the help all sorted nom