That worked BEAUTIFULLY! The RADIANS function is what I was missing out on...

...and yes, I was one of THOSE kids who said "Meh, I'll never need this later in life..." (Time to call my kids and warn THEM!)

Is there any quick and dirty way to connect all the points, or do I just need to use the line tool to achieve this? I need to connect them, then group them all together...

I think I can handle drawing 360 little lines at this point - the hard part is done - but if there's a smoother way of doing this, I'd prefer to go that route...

Thanks for the help!

Taff - thanks for bringing back the nightmare called high school geometry!

Okay, after a brief refresher course and dusting off some formulas, this is how I THINK I am supposed to solve the problem...

In my Excel file, I have two columns:
A - Angle (0 - 360)
B - Radius (variable distances from the center point of the cam)

I need to convert these to X and Y values for SU

I created two new columns, called X and Y (Z doesnt matter at this point....)

In the X column, I used this formula:
=B2*(COS(A2))

In the Y column, I used this formula:
=B2*(SIN(A2))

This gave me some happy little numbers in my X and Y columns, so I duplicated the formula for all rows and I got quite a bit of data. When I try importing it using the Cloud plugin (which I had been playing with for a couple days prior to my initial post) it brings in all 360 points, but it looks nothing like what I expect to see...

I expect to see a series of dots with a smooth, flowing outline - what I get is a bunch of scattered points...

Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated....I am attaching a screenshot of the results in SU.

Im a fairly new Sketchup user, so bear with me if I'm not making any sense...

What I am attempting to do is design a timing cam based on an Excel spreadsheet. I have a list of data that tells how far out the edge of the cam should be from the center for all 360 degrees of rotation, and I need to design a 3D model based on that data.

On my first attempt, I drew a simple circle, converted it to a 360 sided polygon, then extruded the sections to match the Excel chart data. Tedious, yes, but fairly accurate and effective.

The problem is that when I submitted the design, they said that it didn't look right, and after they reviewed the Excel sheet they realized the data was wrong. Needless to say, I was not happy at the amount of time I had essentially wasted.

What I would like to know is if there is a way to have an Excel sheet with the measurements and import it into Sketchup and let it do all the legwork for me.

Basically, I would like it to be able to read the data and say:
Point1: 0 degrees rotation, XX inches distance
Point1: 1 degree rotation, XX inches distance
Etc - all the way up to the 360 degree mark, and then automagically connect all these points to draw the cam pattern...

Hopefully this makes SOME sense to someone here...thanks in advance!

I think I figured it out - I was trying to attach both controls to the same point on the object and I think it was trying to move it in both directions at once. I ended up drawing reference lines on the object itself to break it up, then attached the two controls to the separate reference points on the object and the controls seem to be working independently now.

Im not sure if this can be done or not, and I cant find it in the documentation anywhere, but is it possible to assign two controls to one object?

I want to be able to make a block, put a hinge on one end so that it pivots up and down, and also put a slider control on the same block to move it back and forth.

Every time I try to do this, the block just falls off and/or behaves erratically...

Any suggestions/comments are appreciated...