Lining things up
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As Cotty says, you can also add center points and align them.
My suggestion tends more toward the general and fundamental application of the Move tool. Both are useful to know.
I redrew your ring and tube on the right. You can see how well they fit together and because the vertices are aligned, it is a simple matter of moving the ring onto the tube by grabbing at a vertex on the ring. Yours isn't so easy in that respect and cotty's suggestion is really the best for that one.
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Dave R. and cotty,
Thank you both for your help with this. I have been experimenting with the "add a center point" plugin and it is really making things much easier. I had previously been trying to establish a center point using the guide lines and it was a nightmare. The ID of my "ring" is slightly larger (0.010") than the OD of the tube, and I wasn't previously able to get the two components centered simply using the move tool. I suppose if the ID of the ring and OD of the tube were the same it would have worked in a similar fashion to the video suggested by Dave R.
Thanks again!!Jamie
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Even when the ID and OD aren't the same you can use the same method I showed. If you watched the video you could see stacking cylinders which is really the same. The center points do make it easier but I think you'll find that you won't always be able to have center points for alignment. Making certain you've got the polygons representing circles all drawn the same way will go a long way to helping.
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He imported them from a solidworks file though Dave, not always possible to control your circle edges and alignments when importing from other file formats. So yes, its good to be versatile both ways, knowing how to use the built in tools, and sometimes the not built in tools.
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Chris, I understand and I did say it's good to know both ways.
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I increased the number of sides on my tube to match the number of sides of the circle imported from Solidworks and have been getting much better results. I am still curious why I am unable to find the center (without using the "set center point" plugin) of the circle of the "ring" imported from Solidworks. I have tried to explode the group and edit the individual components but I just cannot infer to the center of the circle. I hove around the perimeter and then move to the approximate center but it is never picked up.
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@jamie boutin said:
I am still curious why I am unable to find the center (without using the "set center point" plugin) of the circle of the "ring" imported from Solidworks. I have tried to explode the group and edit the individual components but I just cannot infer to the center of the circle. I hove around the perimeter and then move to the approximate center but it is never picked up.
As pbacot says it is not a circle within the meaning of SU. The fastest way (without the use of a plugin) would be to redraw one line segment of the "circle" to create the face and use the center of this face for inferencing. After the alignment, you can erase that face again.
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Peter and Cotty have it covered. That's one of the reasons I wrote:
@dave r said:
The center points do make it easier but I think you'll find that you won't always be able to have center points for alignment.
You're still not out of luck, yet. You could construct the center with crossing guidelines as you mentioned before (this is easier when there are vertices aligned with the axes) or you might be able to infer the center off some other part of the the component.
For example, in this model, we could use the center of the dome to center on the guide point on the end of the tube. And, by locking the move direction with Shift or the cursor keys, we could get things lined up quite easily.
It might take more than one move operation but it can be done.
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Sketchup probably just sees a collection of edges, not a circle. If you draw a circle, entity info will call it a circle, and you can use inferences on that. Imported circles are not necessarily SU circles ( IDK if they ever are). You might draw a matching circle over, but please note: intersecting HARD edges will break it up into arcs or edges. Not always helpful
but that's how it is. -
Everyone- thank you for your help with this. I am having a much easier time lining things up using these tips and techniques. I think my major stumbling blocks were:
*the lack of a common center due to the imported Solidworks files
*the differences in the number of sides of the circles I was trying to align
*not knowing that SU would not recognize a Solidworks circle.I have also abandoned the size difference between the tube and the ring and am now keeping the OD of the tube and the ID of the ring equal to make things easier.
I have attached an image of my results rendered using Kerkythea.
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Nice work!
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If you have to assemble the same component more than once you might find it useful to change the location of the component origins to better suit locating them. When you drag a component in from the Components browser you'll have ahold of it at its origin. You can place the origin at a logical point to make it easier to insert. I do this for things like drawer and door pulls to make them easy to place on drawer fronts and doors. You can see that at the end of this and here as well as here.
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Thanks Dave, I was actually wondering how to set the origin point on components and will definitely check out those resources. I am not sure how these constructions were created in Solidworks and how they will translate to Skectchup, but I assume they are either components or groups or a mix of the two. Is there any way I should restructure these components to better facilitate setting an origin that will be conducive to precise insertion? I plan on using these same components very often and will be creating assemblies with them in specified configurations. I plan on researching "dynamic components' to see if this is a tool I might use creatively to aid with the creation of these assemblies.
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If the example components you posted were imported from Soildworks, I would be considering redrawing them in SketchUp perhaps from scratch or almost from scratch. It would drive me nuts to have to work with components like those all the time.
As far as restructuring them for setting their origins, first they must be components. As far as doing things to establish where the origins are, I guess that depends upon the components and how you want to insert them. You'll have to figure out what makes sense to you as far as insertion points. The drawer pulls in my examples are easy. It's easy to mark out where the centers of the pulls will go on the furniture. In your case It might possibly be different.
I would suggest that you look at Dynamic Components. You might find they'll do what you need to do. I'm guessing that one of the things you're thinking of making dynamic would be the tubes between the joint pieces. I would handle them differently but you might like that method.
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I think Dynamic Components are only available in the pro version. I will have to do some more research to learn if it is a viable option to achieve my goals. How would you handle the tubes between the fittings in order to quickly change to specific dimensions? I have made an entire "side" a group and was able to change the width dimension with the move tool. Can components be part of two groups simultaneously (in order to change both the width and depth of an assembly)?
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Yes, you do need to have the pro version to make Dynamic Components so you'll need to evaluate whether or not that's a good investment for you. It might be if you could use things like LayOut, too. If you are going to be working in fixed increments, the DCs may be the way to go.
If I were doing it I would probably just choose to use the Move tool instead. Most of what I draw is custom, one off things but often I need to be able to edit a drawing to change some dimension(s) It doesn't make any sense to use DCs for those models because of the way resizing works. It's a scaling operation which is the incorrect tool for doing things like changing the length of a rail with tenons on the ends.
One thing I would do for models like the one in the render you showed is to use components only. Actually that's what I do in my own work. Absolutely no use for groups. (The regulars are rolling their eyes over that but in more than 8 years of using SketchUp I've never found a case for my work where a group was desirable over a component.
You can't put a component into more than one group or component at a time but you could make strategic use of components and have a lot of power there. I'll try to make an example for you.
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There are a few align plugins out there. I never use them so I can't speak to their usefulness, but perhaps one of them would help with simple alignment of the round pieces.
If they don't help, you could also articulate your needs and see if someone could write a simple script to help with it.
Jan Sandström (Pixero) wrote one here:
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20080And CadFather took his version and gave it a nice looking toolbar here:
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20233And Didier Burr had also written one:
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11224Not sure which is best, but I'd start with the one with a toolbar personally.
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Alright, so this was quick. I just made up the parts out of my head and I did this all between my last post and this one.
Here are some joint units. Each is a component. I probably missed some combinations, too.
Here's a quick frame. All the tubes are the same except the feet. By the way, the tubes I drew are really cylinders. If you won't see the insides of the tubes there's no reason to have inside walls and the associated file bloat.
And here I've made a longer version of the frame. I simply moved the right end frame work over 6 inches and then extended the length of the front and back tubes. they are all copies of the same component so I only needed to change the length of one of them to have that carry through.Although the joints are nested components, the frames aren't nested in this case and they were easy to handle, you could do something like make a nested component of an end frame, copy and flip it to make the opposite end. Note flipping is NOT rotating. You won't want to rotate the copy of the end for this sort of thing.
I feel a bit sheepish sending you to another tutorial I did but take a look at this link. there's a video demonstrating how I converted a little fern stand into a hall bench.
By the way, I didn't use any plugins in the making of the example for these images here.
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Great model there Dave! Well done,
Chris
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Thank you sir.
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