Newbie NE Florida
-
Looking for help and found this forum. Thought I'd give it a try.
I recently bought a Printrbot Simple just to play around with and landed on Sketchup to make my 3D designs.
Found Sketchup to be a bit lacking in what I would think should be basic tools so hoped to find solutions from the experts here.
What I find troublesome in Sketchup is a lack of an easy to understand method to align objects which I would think should be a basic simple tool.
Another feature missing is a simple method to slice a solid in half with the result being 1/2 of the original still being a solid with all faces closed. Some of the "work arounds" give me a lot of trouble leaving "holes" in the model etc.
So now that I have griped a bit about what I find to be a really nice program, let's see if I can master it's use with some help from the nice people here.
I am in NE Florida, web developer but more-or less retired so have some time to play with my toys now.
-
Hi Paul, there are basic, simple tools and methods to align objects. Check out the Help files on the Move and Rotate tools to start with. Learn about SketchUp's inferencing, too.
Slicing an object in half is also quite easy. All you need to do is place a "cutting plane" where you want to make the cut and use Intersect Faces. Delete the geometry you don't need and you're done. Or you could use the Solid Tools to do this even more easily but that requires the pro version.
Have fun printing your models. I've been avoiding getting a printer because I know what would happen.
-
Have you tried playing around with section slices to slice the solid? ie make a section slice, right click and choose "Create Group from slice". You can then copy the section slice and mess around with "explode", "copy" and "paste in place" to fill in the holes of the split solid, and make two solids.
Good luck!
Mal
Advertisement