How to force a surface
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I've been playing around designing things, and now I have a wireframe of what I want, but now I need force sketchup to make surfaces solid. I figure there is something like I select the 4 sides and then say connect or something like that. Thanks
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Hi Mike,
There are two conditions for SU that need to be coincidental to make a face:
- the lines (to-be edges of the face) need to form a closed loop (i.e. no gap between endpoits)
- the lines (edges) need to be "coplanar" (i.e. lying on the same plane).
If you have an opening which would otherwise satisfy the above conditions, you can "force" SU to heal that face by tracing any of the edges from end point to endpoint with the line tool (i.e. redraw an edge).
If this doesn't create the face, either/both of the above conditions are not satisfied. To test if the edges are coplanar for instance in case of a rectangle, draw a diagonal line and if theface fills, probably this was the problem.
You can also go to Window > Styles > In model (the little house icon) > Edit > Edge settings and at the bottom, turn edges to be displayed "color by axis" to quickly check out the culprit line.
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That's my problem then, I'm working with curved surfaces, like threads on a screw. Definitely not coplanar.
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Hi Kanonfodder, hi folks.
To add to Gaieus's post, the lines must also be in the same context. For example, if 3 lines of a rectangle are in a group and the fourth line is outside the group, even if the endpoints are connected and the lines are coplanar, the face will not close.
As for drawing curved surfaces like screws, you need to approximate them with a serie of faces that are all connected by common edges. Smoothing theses common edges will give the appearance of a curved face. Practice with a simple cylinder to get an idea. Draw a circle and pull the circular face to get a cylinder. If you show the geometry that is normally hidden, you will see that the cylindrical face is composed of rectangles that are arranged in a circular array. Each of the edges that are common to two rectangle is smoothed. Try to unsmooth theses edges. You will get a rough looking cylinder. Smooth them back to see the nice smoothed look reapears.
Read the help about smoothing edges.
Search the forums for screws, helix, spiral, etc.
Just ideas.
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