Hey all... I'm a total noob here. I've done some playing around with a 3-d program called anim8or, and had heard of SketchUp on an old tv profile, most likely about the whole autistic user thing (it's been a while since), but only decided to download and try it today.
I'm currently obsessed with some serious modifications of Nerf Maverick guns (trying to make one self-contained semi-auto, using compressed air or CO2), and designing and implementing Steampunk mods to them. I thought I might be able to use SketchUp to 'trial and error' my appearance mods (the Steampunk stuff), but of course that means I need to:
- Learn how to make things in SketchUp
- Learn how to manipulate things in there as well, and
- Make an accurate model of the toy as it exists (pre-mod)
Sadly, I've always found it difficult to learn by going through tutorials (though the starter ones I went through were well done, but I'm impatient 
), and generally prefer to dive into a project I actually WANT to do, and then start over as necessary to undo irreparable errors as I learn how to do things... I know, horrible way to learn, eh? But I usually get frustrated with not learning things that ACTUALLY immediately apply to my desired project, just to get to where there might be things I DO need for it... sigh. 
So my problem is this: After having figured out that I had to cut the inside hole of a cylinder BEFORE pulling it into 3d, THEN make it into a component, I made the 6 barrels of my maverick, then had a heck of a time getting them even close to the right locations (leading to first question: is there any way to get it to allow me to move to wherever I want the object to be, instead of snapping to axes, object points, random passing dust motes, etc?), once willing to leave them where they lay (including the one that insisted it was aligned with an axis, but was visibly a small amount lower than the others), I then added the secondary cylinder to bind them together as a unit, but this needs to pass through each cylinder... leading to my second question. Is there some way to erase a segment of an arc, without losing the remainder, and thus allowing me to get rid of the parts of the cylinder on the inside of my barrels, while keeping the parts binding the outsides together?
Sorry it's so long, and I'll be happy to edit/move/delete this whole thing, if this is too much for this part of the forum... 
Thanks in advance for your patience...
Asuka
(P.S. How do I add an avatar to my account? I went to where I THOUGHT my account info et al would be, but couldn't find an option to customize avatar... or anything else for that matter... 
)