Inference and arrow keys

CWatters · 14 Mar 2008, 20:51

I'm familiar with using the arrow keys when drawing a line (eg to keep the line parallel to an axis) but I have a problem doing a similar thing when drawing a rectangle ...

Say my viewpoint is a bit high and I'm looking down at 45 degrees onto an empty scene.. I want to draw a vertical rectangle (like a door) but sketchup infers the horizontal plane. Why don't the arrow keys work like they do when drawing a line? It's easy if there is other geometry around, guide lines or axis to infer from but not otherwise.

I can fix it by moving my viewpoint so I'm not looking down quite so much but then I have the problem with horizontal rectangles.

Am I missing something?

Charlie__V · 14 Mar 2008, 22:02

CWatters,
If I understand correctly, this should only challenge untill you have at least one horiz. & one Vert. plane drawn.
After that you can reference either the horiz.or vert. and then hold down shift to lock the inference direction.
I realize I may be saying the same as your OP,but after 1 horiz. & 1 vert. plane are drawn to reference,this seems to function the same as the arrow keys, only using the shift key to hold the intended direction.

Best,
C

CWatters · 15 Mar 2008, 22:39

Thanks for the reply but the shift key only seems to work if the new rectangle is in contact with geometry from which a vertical inference can be taken. Doesn't seem to work if the rectangle is free standing. I'll have to experiment a bit more.

Gaieus · 15 Mar 2008, 22:43

Remember that there are infinite number if vertical planes (as well as horizontal ones). How should SU know which vertical plane you want to draw on?

But if you simply go to any of the side/front/back views (i.e. looking horizontally instead of looking mostly down), you can easily draw vertical rectangles (and circles and polygons).

Jean Lemire · 16 Mar 2008, 14:26

Hi CWatters, hi folks.

If you really dont want to orbit untill you are looking more horizontally than vertically, just draw your rectangle on the horizontal plane and then rotate it by 90° around one of its sides to make it vertical.

Just ideas.

CWatters · 16 Mar 2008, 23:41

Humm ok, I guess switching views is the answer. Not a big deal.

I'm still very impressed with SU. I'm an infrequent CAD user so I can't justify buying a really expensive product. Other free progs I've tried have been hard work. If anyone is interested here is my first project. It's not perfect and there are a few things I'd do differently if doing again but I'm happy..

Stable and fencing

Gaieus · 17 Mar 2008, 07:16

Well, a couple of things I'd criticise - but indeed only to help you. If you have a look at the screenshot (in monochrome view), you will notice that

there are "thick" lines (called profiles) on the walls of your house - which means that the lines are not on the face of the wall (well it would not necessarily mean that but there cannot be intersection found either so tey are most probably not). Try to use the inference engine as much as you can (see above posts)
there are both white (front) and blue (back) faces in your model. Alway reverse back faces (right click menu) so that you end up with a "clean" model with only front (white) faces.
I managed to orbit into a posture where you can see some faces with white/blue (mixed) look. This is because there are two faces "competing" for visibility (aka "Z-fighting"). This usually occurs when you place a group/component or another shape onto a face and the faces do not merge.
Both things may cause serious problems in certain cases so try to avoid them (like as I said above, reverse faces or in this latter case, muse components that cut holes in the walls).

Nice model, anyway! And I hope you don't take the above criticism for anything else than help.

CWatters · 18 Mar 2008, 22:16

Thanks for that, very helpful.

The horizontal weatherboarding lines were done in a hurry and some ended up stood off the surface by an inch in the plane of the window frames rather than on the surface of the walls. Could to better if I tried.
I didn't know about front and back surfaces so thanks for that. I've been looking for a problem with the materials or something like that to explain the colour difference!
Yes I built it slightly oddly. Basically I built a plain box then fitted an oak frame the same size into it so there will be coincident faces and lines that aren't merged properly. That's ok for my purposes.

I'm doing ths model because I need to get approval from my local council to build it. They only want 50:1 elevation drawings and an isometric sketch to approve the appearance. Sketchup's sketchy line styles will be great for the isometric. Once the basic style is approved I'll probably go back to an earlier version which has the frame seperate to help with the design of that. Currently the roof has no structure.

Regards,

Colin