[Tutorial > Modeling] A Cube with Radiused Edges
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@dave r said:
Here's the text to go along with it.
Howzzat?dave,
just found this wonderful tut. thanks. i hope you do not mind my copying/pasting the text you posted here onto the skippy. this way when i open it again a few months from now i will know what it is about and how it is done.
suggestion: on future tuts do include the text for the sake of clarity.
regards.
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@dave r said:
A SketchUp user elsewhere asked me how to create a cube with a radius applied to all the edges. I did the attached tutorial and illustration. Obviously this could be used for other shapes perhaps with slight modifications.
Here's the text to go along with it.
- Square (12x12 inches in my example) with radiused corners. (1" in my example)
- Pulled up so the height is the same as the radius. Delete upper face. Draw a radius profile on the inside.
- Run Follow Me on the profile. Clean up as needed.
- Heal face on top by tracing an edge with the Pencil tool. Use Push/Pull to pull the face up. (5" in my example. 1/2 the total height of the cube minus the radius dimension. Delete the face. Clean up any visible lines--Ctrl+Eraser.
- Select the geometry and copy it with Ctrl+Move. Move it up above the original. Mirror it with Scale and -1.
- Move the top down onto the bottom. Delete the seam line edges.
Howzzat?
How can i draw the square with rounded corners? Is there a menue for it?
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No, you use the arc tool to create the rounded corners.
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Edson, thank you.
Gai, I guess I missed a step?
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Yeah, but how to add fillet edges on current cubical component that has no radiused edges...is that posible?????!!!!!
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Hi Marko,
You can also use plugins for that like "Round Edge" or "Sketchy Bevel".
Neither will give you the exact same result but most of the times they should be sufficient.
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Another method is to use the follow me tool. Knowing that SU has issues with small facets, I used a 100' x 100' rectangle as the base geometry to create a cube. Didn't find any holes, but close up shows there still needs to be some line hiding if you're after perfection. A 10" x 10" cube after follow me has the annoying little holes in the corners. I upped the arc segments on the smaller cube to 24 vs 12 on the larger cube.
A few of these little boxes and 2 gigs of RAM with a 2 year old video card shows some strain.
Same technique works with other various shapes to end up with a variety of radius cornered shapes, some requiring more cleanup than others.
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Nice version, Walt. I's also in The Daily CatchUp now:
http://news.sketchucation.com/creating-a-cube-with-radiused-edges-in-google-sketchup/
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Dave, I get a BugsPlat any time I want to open this file. Can you open it?
(I can import it into a new file but I guess there are scenes in here which of course, will not import).
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There's nothing you can do about the small faces issue except avoid them. My general method for that is to scale up before performing an operation that creates them. You can scale up and back down or my choice is to make a component of the geometry where it sits, make a copy, scale the copy and do what I need to do. then close the large copy of the component and delete it. No need to scale back down and potentially have to move the component back into place.
BTW, this is an old thing. Now I would use the Round Corners plugin instead of doing it the way I showed way back then.
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I know this may be to easy... but why not use the fredo6 round corners plugin?
Seems lie you can achieve the same result much easier. -
Taylor, the tutorial was originally written before Round Corners and if you'll read the last sentence of my post before yours that was the suggestion I made.
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@jim4366 said:
Well, I have no problem opening the file, (Radiused Cube.skp)
But, zooming in with "show hidden lines", I am seeing in each of the 8 corners a small face that did not fill. The finished cube seems to have 8 little holes in it.
I know that scaling up, then back down, should fill these faces, but was wondering if follow me can be coaxed into working more cleanly?that's actually a fault of the follow me tool as opposed to the scale.. there are work arounds but they aren't quick.. i have a video floating around showing my old workaround that i might dig up. (you either have to followme 360º then cut it up or draw the corner manually which is how i used to do)
nowadays, i use TIG's lathe (via his extrude edges suite) for drawing portions of a sphere like that.
@dave.
this might sound odd (or maybe not?) but i remember this post from way back.. that exact picture in the OP is what got me hyped on rendering.. (and i still like the clay look.. most of my present day renders are still clayish but it all started with your picture )[edit]- found the video in this thread:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=268160#p268160the thread was when su8 first came out and they used an obvious FredoRoundCorner box as an example solid because otherwise, this same problem would of shown up and prevented the box from being solid
(or maybe they drew the box with one of the workarounds? nah..)
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I remember vaguely, that someone showed that you could create the round corner cube using the perimeter of a filleted square lying on the ground plane xy, as the followme path and place the same thing vertically and centered above it. Select only the edge of the ground plane object and click follow me on the face of the square above it. In fact, I just did it. I made the fillet corners with TIG's 2dtools fillet.
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@mitcorb said:
I remember vaguely, that someone showed that you could create the round corner cube using the perimeter of a filleted square lying on the ground plane xy, as the followme path and place the same thing vertically and centered above it. Select only the edge of the ground plane object and click follow me on the face of the square above it. In fact, I just did it. I made the fillet corners with TIG's 2dtools fillet.
that sort of works but you still run into the follow me error..
check the skp:(this is the same problem as trying to offset a radius in sketchup. the end segments are treated as single lines instead of being considered as part of an arc)
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Well, I'd also use the plugin now just wanted to teach somebody how to do it with the native tools first (the "prize" was that I showed the plugin after the success).
You know guys that I am "old school" from certain points. Best is to master SU first of all and then become lazy and use the plugins.
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I examined my skp and after scaling it up 10x, zooming almost to clipping, I noticed a chevron shaped overlapping condition at the top and bottom faces of the cube at each corner with hard line edges. Selecting and deleting an edge resulted in the adjacent face disappearing. Going a little further with stitching vertices closed the open faces. Obviously, the closure did not result in uniform "contours". However, I did get closure, and I presume, watertight.
So, some "error" does still occur, but in my case, not a residual open face--unless I did not scale up enough. -
Those little chevron-shaped faces are common with Follow Me when you run a profile around an arc of the same or smaller radius. If you scale up, select all of the neighboring geometry and then run Intersect Faces>With Selection, you can safely delete those faces and the unneeded edges without losing the adjoining faces.
It occurred to me some time ago that what is happening is similar to what happens when you wrap a piece of packaging tape around a similar shape. You'll get little flags sticking up. It's also similar to what happens to a bed sheet at the corners of a mattress but you don't cut off the sheet; you just make hospital corners.
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Yeah, I know about hospital corners.
My wife is a healthcare professional. Maybe sketchup needs a hospital corner plugin 
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@dave r said:
Those little chevron-shaped faces are common with Follow Me when you run a profile around an arc of the same or smaller radius.
fwiw, the error always happens.. it's just more noticeable in situations where the profile length is equal to (or longer than) the radius..
@unknownuser said:
It occurred to me some time ago that what is happening is similar to what happens when you wrap a piece of packaging tape around a similar shape. You'll get little flags sticking up. It's also similar to what happens to a bed sheet at the corners of a mattress but you don't cut off the sheet; you just make hospital corners.
i expect something like that to happen when the profile is longer than the radius but it should not happen when it's equal to or less than the radius..
the problem lies in the fact that sketchup uses segments instead of [math based curves].. i understand that it's nearly impossible (or absolutely impossible?) for sketchup to determine where a straight segment begins to blend to a curved section.. it can only see it as a kink.
however, i think if the curved section is recognized by SU as an arc then it should be able to deal with it in a proper manner but it still fails..here's a skp showing what goes wrong:
this same error happens over and over with quite a few tools/plugins.. sketchup, as far as i'm concerned, is extremely accurate but anything dealing with offsets (the followme tool for instance, is making offset lines) is where sketchup falls flat on it's face (if accuracy is key).. this single flaw is what led me to begin learning a nurbs based app a year or two ago..
i still do most of my designs in sketchup (and actually, a roughed out version of the more difficult stuff happens first in sketchup) but when it comes time to do construction drawings for the more complex curved based structures, i go to nurbs..
it's a pretty good setup actually[EDIT- well, i might of said that wrong.. i use sketchup for quite a bit of the complex stuff as well but i stay away from the and as well as any of the methods that will generate these errors.. often leading to a bit more drawing time but it's worth it]
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