I tried the follow me with a cross section before i posted - couldn't get it to work.

However, I have cracked it! I constructed a doughnut with follow me and isolated a thin section from its centre with an extruded circle and then intersected the two faces and deleted the outer bulk of the doughnut. Phew.

I'm off to try your method again.

how would i approach drawing a cooling tower? I realize there are many in the warehouse but I'd like to learn how to construct a relatively simple shape myself (a tube with a 'pinched waist').
thanks!

I have a flat rectangular block of 2mm depth by 20mm square.
I have drawn a circle on its surface and i want to make a hole through it by push/pullig the circle.
As i P/P the face of the circle, it will extrude above he surface but its behavior going through the block is erratic. it will seem to do nothing and then appear on the other side of the block. sometimes i get the error 'cant PP hrough a curved surface' (its not curved)and i don't get the message to say its in line with the opposite face - even if i enter the exact width numerically.

any ideas?

that's a really nifty approach.

Thanks for everyone's help on this topic.

I have to say, though, that for such a sophisticated drawing package it still seems strange to me that it can't do something that the most basic MS office program can do with it's drawing tools!

@jean lemire said:

Hi Merlin 7777777, hi folks.

See this SU file for ideas.

Thanks for this - it's shown me several useful things. Please could you explain the smoothing part at the end for me - don't quite understand.

@dave r said:

Do you have a lot of gaps or just one? If there are a lot of them, perhaps the CloseOpens plugin from Smustard would be a good idea. If it is just one or a couple of gaps, you could simply draw in the joining lines with the Line tool.

That's exactly what I need. Unfortunately i don't have any funds for this. Is there something similar which is free?

@dave r said:

Do you have a lot of gaps or just one? If there are a lot of them, perhaps the CloseOpens plugin from Smustard would be a good idea. If it is just one or a couple of gaps, you could simply draw in the joining lines with the Line tool.

@honoluludesktop said:

Below the input box is a "Upload attachment" tab.

aha! - thanks for this

thanks for this driven. It looks like a useful tool but in this case an arc will give me the corner I need.

I just wondered if there was a way to draw the rectangle with rounded corners in the first place?

I'm trying to extrude a rippled surface from a flat shape made of a line of touching arcs and a line to close the shape.

I can't find a way to actually join the lines into a closed shape. Is there a way?

I hope i've explained myself - can't find a way to include an image here.