The "Duh!" thread (aka the Doh! thread)

jgb · 10 May 2012, 19:44

I found that by holding down the "primary mouse button" while using the rotate (protractor) tool, it will inference to the perpendicular of a line. Simply Brilliant!! I've always wondered how to rotate about an axis without constructing a bunch of lines and faces

Well shiver me boots. I often need to construct a face/shape/line perpendicular to a non-axis aligned line, and went through all sorts of temp construction to do it. even resorted to "Pipe-along-path" for some.

So now, for those who may not see the power in this "duh" moment, is how in just a few mouse clicks, make a face perpendicular to any line orientation.

Put the PROTRACTOR tool somewhere on, or even at the endpoint of the line and hold down the primary mouse button. When the protractor aligns with the perp to that line, release the button, select any angle, click and select any angle away, say 90 deg and click again. Now you have 1 guide line perpendicular to the line at some random angle.

Do this again, but put the protractor ON the intersection of the guide and your line, and set another guide line at some angle away from the first guide line, say 90 deg away.

You now have 2 guide lines perp to your line.

Pencil tool 4 lines from any point on each guide, and a face will form that is perpendicular to the line.

Use that face as your construction canvas. Bonus, the face is NOT intersected to the line so the whole line is still intact, until you intersect them.

rv1974 · 13 May 2012, 07:37

One can assign shortcuts to the 'Numpad' keys!
A huge gain, especially for lefties.
Doh!

ArCAD-UK · 30 May 2012, 09:51

Just discovered in Layout 3 that if you select a block of text and right click (PC) there is a "Size to Fit" option which retains the text block width but extends the box height to show all the text. The amount of time I've spent manually adjusting my text boxes when the contents have been edited...

rv1974 · 30 May 2012, 13:43

The 'Lock\unlock aspect ratio' at material edit drove me crazy for years.
Clicking it wont change visually its state (stupid bug!). To see it changed one should move
the cursor off the button.

iecovert · 11 Jun 2012, 13:07

%(#400080)[ALL toolbars can be mounted on the top OR the side! Not just the SU tools.

I've got an increasing number of toolbars mounted up top since that's the way they first show up when a plugin is installed. The decreasing workspace was becoming an issue. The original SU toolbars mount vertically, so I set out to figure out how I could make the new Ruby and plugin toolbars mount vertically too. That seems to make more sense with a widescreen monitor. Spent several hours searching through the forums, help topics, and eventually digging into various Ruby scripts trying to figure it out over the past two weeks. Then last night I was moving a floating toolbar window and grabbed it a little to close to the edge and... it "stretched" out vertically. Finally...]

Aerilius · 1 Jul 2012, 19:57

(This belongs probably also into the developers forums:)

window.onerror = function(errorMsg, url, lineNumber){ return true }

This catches WebDialog script error popups (should they still sometimes occur after thorough testing)!
Why didn't I find that before?
Note: It needs to be assigned directly to %(#000000)[window] and not attached like %(#000000)[$(window).bind("error", function(){})].

Gaieus · 1 Jul 2012, 20:06

Interesting. I do not have that "duh moment" reading this.

jeff hammond · 7 Jul 2012, 13:19

@gaieus said:

Interesting. I do not have that "duh moment" reading this.

same here… more like an "uhhhhh moment"

ken · 9 Jul 2012, 01:09

I guess I could call this "The Well I'll be Darn Thread". I have used Sketchup since V 4. And I know that the text tool will give me info on geometry. Like length, area, but today, surprise, I used the text tool on the apex of an angle and I got the following, the degrees of the angle in the text box. Never saw that before, and I would have an illustration to show you if I could get the text tool to do it again.

Ken

Gaieus · 12 Jul 2012, 09:21

I was reading a topic and realized that I did not understand a word.
Then looked up and also realized I was in the Developers Forum.

thomthom · 12 Jul 2012, 10:38

@gaieus said:

I was reading a topic and realized that I did not understand a word.
Then looked up and also realized I was in the Developers Forum.

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TIG · 12 Jul 2012, 11:22

Didn't you mean

010110010110111101110101001000000110010001101111001000000110111001101111011101000010000001110101011011100110010001100101011100100111001101110100011000010110111001100100001000000110001001101001011011100110000101110010011110010010000000100001

Rich O Brien · 12 Jul 2012, 11:42

01101000 01101111 01110111 00100000 01110010 01110101 01100100 01100101 00100001

TIG · 12 Jul 2012, 14:17

It wasn't... but

0100011001100101011000110110101100100000011010010111001100100000011100100111010101100100011001010010000000100001

mrossk · 12 Jul 2012, 14:51

I think I got geek all over me

pilou · 12 Jul 2012, 14:57

thomthom · 2 Aug 2012, 07:36

@unknownuser said:

Found a cool one today.

Copy a line over and type 6" to set the distance. Then type *10 to array it 10 times.

What I already knew was that you can type *8 or *4 or whatever to adjust the number of arrayed items.

However I just found out that if you type 3" or 10" it will keep your array but adjust the spacing. Pretty sweet!

-Brodie

Duh!

That is sweet!

The manual doesn't even mention this!
http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=94863

Heaps · 2 Aug 2012, 11:35

It even works with circular arrays - just type in the angle in degrees

brodie · 2 Aug 2012, 12:30

Found a cool one today.

Copy a line over and type 6" to set the distance. Then type *10 to array it 10 times.

What I already knew was that you can type *8 or *4 or whatever to adjust the number of arrayed items.

However I just found out that if you then type 3" or 10" it will keep your array but adjust the spacing. Pretty sweet!

-Brodie

broomstick · 4 Aug 2012, 12:48

@unknownuser said:

Found a cool one today.

Copy a line over and type 6" to set the distance. Then type *10 to array it 10 times.

What I already knew was that you can type *8 or *4 or whatever to adjust the number of arrayed items.

However I just found out that if you then type 3" or 10" it will keep your array but adjust the spacing. Pretty sweet!

-Brodie

This, sir, just made my day!