By the way, why does sketcup create another file(s) with ~~ appearing after the name of the file?

@jumpersrfun said:

That's some great advice. Thank you! Anyway, I have to redo the whole thing because I noticed that when I line up the edge of a thing, the opposite end gets misaligned. lol. Also, the columns at the base are misaligned with the base. Ugh! Lol.
With the advice you and the others provided here, I should be able to do a proper re-model. I have so many others to model, flatten, pattern, and inflate that I think I'm gonna go nuts by the time I'm done with em Wish me luck this time around!
By the way, where do I go to get this translucent material you talked about?

@pbacot said:

{Edits added} When you draw circles the direction of pulling out the radius determines the orientation of the circle. These circles have a number of sides divisible by 4,so it is possible to snap into orthographic alignment such that a vertex points in each axial direction. When pulled into a cylinder, an edge will stand at the axial position. Colored guide lines during drawing give a clue as to what axis you are drawing on.

If your towers were in good shape, I could have used the rotate tool to just rotate them square. If you check them out with hidden geometry on, they had various irregularities. Something you have to get used to is SU does not have true circles, and drawing cleanly with that in mind (treating circles like polygons) saves trouble and opens possibilities for clean modeling down the line. With the smooth functions they can still look quite circular, especially with more segments, in renderings inside and outside of SU.

Mirror is achieved by scaling the entities with the scale tool, scale to "-1.00" You first make a copy-usually with the move tool copy function. Best to do this with components or a component of the whole mess so things don't "stick" to each other inadvertently. Move the mirrored portion back into proper positions snapping to the original. You can also use the contextual menu command "Flip along" to flip the entities in an axial direction.

For netting, why don't you just apply a translucent material to a rectangle? It will look like screen netting and represent the netting panel that you have to cut and sew like all the others. A component is probably not what you want.

That's some great advice. Thank you! Anyway, I have to redo the whole thing because I noticed that when I line up the edge of a thing, the opposite end gets misaligned. lol. Also, the columns at the base are misaligned with the base. Ugh! Lol.
With the advice you and the others provided here, I should be able to do a proper re-model. I have so many others to model, flatten, pattern, and inflate that I think I'm gonna go nuts by the time I'm done with em Wish me luck this time around!
By the way, where do I go to get this translucent material you talked about?

@pbacot said:

{Edits added} When you draw circles the direction of pulling out the radius determines the orientation of the circle. These circles have a number of sides divisible by 4,so it is possible to snap into orthographic alignment such that a vertex points in each axial direction. When pulled into a cylinder, an edge will stand at the axial position. Colored guide lines during drawing give a clue as to what axis you are drawing on.

If your towers were in good shape, I could have used the rotate tool to just rotate them square. If you check them out with hidden geometry on, they had various irregularities. Something you have to get used to is SU does not have true circles, and drawing cleanly with that in mind (treating circles like polygons) saves trouble and opens possibilities for clean modeling down the line. With the smooth functions they can still look quite circular, especially with more segments, in renderings inside and outside of SU.

Mirror is achieved by scaling the entities with the scale tool, scale to "-1.00" You first make a copy-usually with the move tool copy function. Best to do this with components or a component of the whole mess so things don't "stick" to each other inadvertently. Move the mirrored portion back into proper positions snapping to the original. You can also use the contextual menu command "Flip along" to flip the entities in an axial direction.

For netting, why don't you just apply a translucent material to a rectangle? It will look like screen netting and represent the netting panel that you have to cut and sew like all the others. A component is probably not what you want.

@box said:

If you purge the file to get rid of the netting components it drops to less than 100kb.

I didn't use netting yet because sketchup freezes when I try to do that. Where did you see the netting? I may be missing something.

Wow, that was very helpful. Thanks! I was able to fix the panels which were way misaligned. Also, how did you draw towers into squares? I noticed you used guides for that. And how do you mirror? I didn't see this on the tool palette.

@pbacot said:

I remade the towers which required fixing the holes in the base to match. I put the base on a separate layer to make working on the rest of the model easier.

The towers had various issues. Notice I drew them square to the model so an edge of the tower is exactly at the edge of the panel.

In general there is a problem I don't know all the dimensions so I may have drawn something the wrong size.

I think the way you were grouping the panels was creating more work trying to keep it straight. Here I've made a component of each side that has two tower compoenents and a side panel component, The side panel component is made up of the four pieces, each a component. The jambs are the instances of the same components (as are the towers). I know it seems to get complicated but it made it easier for me to work on--and I think with all the separate material pieces you want, making them each a component is a good idea.

I actually cut the base in half too to save work, but I mirrored it and put it back together.

I left the front and back panels for you to sort out.

Well, I'm stuck. I tried everything to correct the above stated problem with fitting the 2 banners between the pillars. I don't want to start over from scratch and do it properly by the use of grouping or components. Anyone care to help???

Also, should I create the flooring conically (as if it's inflated), or flat like that?

Sketchup freezes and I get the spinning beach ball after I go to the Windows menu, search for component (netting for windows), and when I try to place the netting, that's when it freezes. Is anyone else having this issue?

So here's what I came up with so far in the last two days of poking around in sketchup. So far so good, except, I don't know how to create the cones on top of the pillars. Also, I'm stuck on the side of the square that measures 174", here, the top banners are 120" but they don't fit exactly between the pillars. There's a visible space between the pilar and the edge of the banner. I may have moved the pillars on that side of the square by accident because they measure 121-5/8". I don't know which pillar though. I may have even reduced the diameter of the pillar, I have no clue. How can I move the pillars back where it measures 120"? Please help!

Bounce House.skp

Alright well, if anyone's willing to take on this project, please let me know here, or message me. I really don't have time to do this myself. Thanks!

Boy, looks like I'm gonna have my work cut out for me! So here's a company website (link below) that I want to buy a computerized pattern cutter from in the future once I have the money and a big enough space. Here, they open a whole new can of worms by mentioning other 3D software such as Vectorworks, TouchCAD, AutoCAD, etc., lol. They also talk about a seam allowance plugin for Vectorworks. I have Vectorworks as well and I emailed them about the plugin, but is there such a plugin for sketchup?

Then they talk about how I can use "Optitex to design 2D patterns, and using Runways very accurate 3D simulation, patterns are joined and inflated in the computer." I am really confused now.

But most importantly, one issue which I find most disheartening is that hey emailed me a pdf document (uploaded here) in which they mention that "many of the shapes will look quite different when they are inflated." This is really frustrating. Anyone used Optitex to "inflate," as they say the the joined patterns?

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