I can see that I should have been visiting the forum more frequently instead of pulling my hair out. Awesome!!!

Dave R
Love your solution but I need to fit it to the other part of my newel. Gilles method looks like it will work. In CAD I'll usually do a sweep of the newel profile then draw my barley twist profile - sweep the barley profile with the correct pitch then subtract it from my newel sweep. I wish I could do it this way (specifically the subtract function) in SU since this yields the most realistic geometry - though again Gilles looks pretty right (just needs more interior radius to be classified as a true barley twist). Thanks

@gilles said:

Made in one shot with screw1_5.rb.

AND it works also with components.

This is what we call a rope twist not a barley twist. The barley twist has another (interior) radius. The rope twist looks like rope - though your method may work for a barley twist as well. David R's is definitely a barley

I'm probably an intermediate user. I'm fine with using plugins. I've looked in vain though to find one that will help

I'm looking for a way to model my stair newels in Sketchup. The attached barley twisted newel was made in my CAD program but I am hoping for a method to do the same in Sketchup. Would appreciate any help.