Total Newbie just joined!
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Greetings and Salutations, everyone!
I just discovered the wonders of SketchUp, v.8, and I have to say it looks like a great program so far. I've made a few things like a house, a rocket, and some other simple stuff. I see that there is a huge amount of potential, and so I went looking for a good place to learn, and beg a little help from time to time.
I'm afraid that my ambition far outweighs my skill and experience, so I hope you'll all indulge me and remember that I'm a total n00b.
Anyway, I have this item I'd like to try to draw in SketchUp, albeit with a couple of minor alterations, and I haven't the first clue how to go about doing it. I've attached a picture, in the hopes I can generate some discussion, suggestions, and even ideas as simple as where to start!! The basic shape of the item is going to be a doozie, at least for me.
Thanks, and I'm glad to be here...
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Hi Lancer and welcome. I'm new here too and also a noob to Sketchup. Here's a link to a download that helped me getting started. http://www.tutorialspdf.com/sketch-up-5-0-tutorial/
It's for Sketchup v5 but the same basic principles are for all versions (I believe). It helped me tremendously. Once you learn the basics of what you can achieve, you'll be modeling those rings in no time. My suggestion is learn the basics by following along with the guide and when you are comfortable, you can look into some plugins that will help make some tasks easier too.
Hope this helps.
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Hi Mistro11,
maybe this topic could helpfull for you.
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=28586
Charly
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@charly2008 said:
Hi Mistro11,
maybe this topic could helpfull for you.
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=28586
Charly
I missed that one thanks for posting it. This seemed to be meant for Lancer's sake but I'll take it too.
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Hi Mistro11,
Have confused the names in my post. It was addressed to Lancer525. Sorry
Charly
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Wow, guys... I've been on bunches of forums over the years, and I have to say that this was one of the best welcomes I've ever had!!
I've viewed the tutorial, but it seemed a bit too simplistic for me to translate any of it to what I've been trying to do. For some reason, I just can't figure out how to get the basic shape of that ring to work out.
I'm trying to do a solid signet ring out of that shape, without all that silly little filigree work around the top of the bezel, and also to make the bezel a little thicker. But I have to get the basic shape of the ring first!!
I've also run into another problem that is irritating, and may be a show-stopper. The "round edges" script plugins I've seen all won't work with Version 8.
Maybe I'll just end up buying some blank wax forms, and try carving it by hand...
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Hi Lancer and to repeat the others, welome.
A very important tip regarding your model (and probably a cause the round corner plugin not working): SU often fails to create faces when they have extremely tiny edges (about 1 mm or 1/16"). The general solution is to scale the whole model up by 10 (or even 100 sometimes), work on it and when finished, scale it back.
Metric users have the advantage that they can change their template to (say) metres, "imitate" to work in millimetres (by typing the values in) and at the end, change the units back and scale the model down. This can help with avoiding the need to count those values.
Back to the round corner plugin; did you also install the LibFredo library (needed for a couple of specific plugins by Fredo)? It also needs to be activated under Window > Preferences > Extensions.
Finally, if you also needed that silly little filigree work, there is another fine plugin you can use (but again, only on a scaled up model):
http://www.drawmetal.com/tapermaker
and when you are at it, check this one out, too:
http://www.drawmetal.com/curvemaker -
Here's one of several possible methods of work. You always have to remember that SU is essentially a low poly modeller; it was never designed or intended to deal with small-scale, high poly detail. Nevertheless you can generally achieve a decent result with surprisingly few faces. In fact, the fewer the better, as this kind of organic stuff can rarely be done without getting in there and doing a whole load of cleaning up in the wake of various automated scripts.
This model is huge, ready to be scaled down when complete. I've also deliberately left some cleaning up to do on the underside...to illustrate why you should avoid generating too many polys. You'll notice that the bevel script doubled the number of segments in the ring...so I started off with it being noticeably facetted.
You can also see that despite it only being beveled, not round-cornered, it still looks reasonably smooth in a photoreal render.
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