Thanks again Boofredlay!

Yes, the path I created was an approximation hence why its not so smooth, do you have any recommendations on how to create a smoother path? Currently I created tick marks along the plan of the stair dividing each step into 9 parts and then created little blocks which I used to raise at a constant slope determined by dividing the riser height into 9 (so 7 5/8 rise divided by 9 is 27/32nds). This led to the stringer with the deformity (blue) however, so I adjusted the blocks by eye to create a smoother line but since it was an approximation, it became a bit warped around the curve.

I am usually reluctant to reduce the number of segments as when I put this into Thea Render, I often notice it doesn't come out quite as smooth as I'd like, however I will definitely try to redraw the profile with less sides, as well as what you mentioned about scaling up.

Thank you again, you've been a huge help!

Best,
Andrew

Certainly! Thank you for your continued help, I do have some updates to what was going on however.

The pinch is caused by the rapid change in slope around that sharp turn, if I was able to straighten out that line on a single plane you would see the slope go from steady to a sudden steeper part to a sudden shallow (for lack of a better term) part. By adjusting that line orthographically, I was able to get it to look closer to correct, however, because I was eye balling it and not going by a specific slope, the new version "wobbles" around the part where I made the corrections. I've attached the sketchup file with the CAD files I'm using. The model I'm up to currently I painted in red, the old model with the pinch I painted blue.

Please let me know what you think!

FoyerStairs.skp

Shared with Dropbox

Dropbox (www.dropbox.com)

Best,
Andrew

Thank you Boofredlay, unfortunately that doesn't seem to be working either, that sharp middle turn still corkscrews and pinches. It could be the hard curve of that corner actually causing the issue but I cant think of how to correct the path to avoid that issue.

Hi all,

I am having some trouble getting the moulding in the image below to follow the curve of a staircase I am working on. Using the Follow me tool doesn't work because it starts to twist. Using Curviloft (Loft around Path) almost works but creates a pinching effect towards the middle curve. And using Shape Bender creates additional geometry and in the closest I've gotten to getting it correct also has that odd pinching effect towards the main curve.

Does anyone have any suggestion as to how to accomplish this? I've attached two images showing what I'm trying to do if that helps.

Thank you!

Best,
Andrew

StaircaseHelp.pdf

Thanks Doppel, I uninstalled VRay and it immediately began running at a normal speed again. The issue was occurring for all file sizes, even upon starting a new file without any materials or parameters at all.

Thanks again!

Andrew

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to get Sketchup working at normal speed while Vray is installed. I wasn't having any issues with Sketchup until I installed VRay, suddenly my files take forever to open (5-10 minutes) and about 3 minutes just to save (extremely annoying when you have autosave turned on). Previously, I have been using Thea Render without any issues.

I've read other posts from years past about it causing the slow down due to being a plug in and adding observers to components and such and it seemed like something might have been in the works to turn off the trackers or temporarily disable VRay until it was needed. Does anyone know of anything that would work? And does anyone know if this issue is persistent on all modeling programs or just Sketchup?

My computer's specs in case it helps:
Alienware Area 51
i7 Processor
2 NVIDIA Titan X video cards
C drive is a 238GB SSD
D and E are both 3.63TB HDD

Thank you in advanced,

Best,
Andrew

Hi TIG,

I'm having some trouble getting the image trimmer to work on the below logo. I'm not all that familiar with programming and have tried to follow previous advice given in this forum but it is likely I am missing something. When I use the trimmer it starts loading and then suddenly stops and nothing happens. According to the guide on how to use this means there are no useable transparent pixels but I do not think that should be the case. I created two different versions of the PNG file, one with the logo as transparent and one with the logo filled with the outside transparent. From my understanding, the first one should work. So far I have troubleshooted by ensuring the EdgeDetector.jar file is executed by Java (it was not when I started, had to set it up). Not sure what the next step may be or if it is just the file. Can you please advise?

Thank you Pilou! That is a great idea, I'm going to try that right now. I actually have that plug in already, can't believe I didn't think of that.

Hi all,

I am looking for a quick way to divide up a face into tiles of random sizes (the height will remain the same but the width will not). So far I am drawing the horizontal lines for the height and then drawing one vertical line and Copy + Moving the line across the face at random distances. This is time consuming however and I was wondering if there was a plugin or something built into SketchUp that would allow me to disperse the lines randomly across the face (while staying between the horizontal lines), perhaps similar to how you can move a line/component from one side of a face to another and type "/#number" to distribute. Any recommendations?

Attached is an Example

Hi all,

I ran into a problem today where I had a wall that I needed to create inset wall panels on. Typically, I just use the offset tool, and push the newly created face back to create the inset. This time, however, when ever I drew the offset, the created shape would come up bold and separate from the original face.

I had no idea why it was doing this, and assumed that even if I had at some point messed up and had the shape off an axis plane, the offset tool should automatically create the new shape along the plane of the original shape.

So I tried to manually create the offset first using the tape measure tool and locking the lines to the guide lines. This did not work either.

At this point I was frustrated, so I took the original face, copied it and deleted the space on the wall (plan was to create the panels as a separate component and just move it into the space), and pasted it outside of my model. I checked the lines to see that they were on the axis planes and they were. Even then, upon using offset the newly created shape was not being intersected with the original face.

At this point, I got extremely frustrated and just started drawing rectangles all over the face. Eventually, one of them stuck somehow and by manually drawing out the offset by connecting lines to that original rectangle, without the ability to use guide lines ( I created them but when I tried to draw lines to them, they wouldn't stick) but with the ability to use the shift key and arrows to ensure the lines were along axis, I was able to get the panels created, made the shape into a component and stuck it back in place.

The model is completed and rendering now but this was extremely frustrating. I am curious if anyone else has ever faced an issue like this and if they knew of a fix. After this one wall, I was able to draw offsets on all of the other walls without any issues.

**Some additional details: this wall was originally two walls that were part of separate groups. Upon moving the two groups into another group and exploding them to combine, the face that I was having trouble with was formed. Perhaps this caused the issue?

Thank you to anyone who is able to help!