I agree with Dave when he says that if your workflow is to draw pieces in situ and leave the joints at the end, this could not be the most useful plugin to have in your library. Then, at least for the plugin I wrote about, there's no chance to customize the dovetails as they come equally spaced through the height of the drawer.

Anyway, I also realize that this might be a useful plugin for many woodworkers that look for a soft approach to SketchUp and are happy to have a plugin that gives them a quick response to some of their needs.

I personally don't feel the need to use it in my drawings but...that plugin is cool, isn't it?

Luca

Lovely and cool design Massimo! I like the Thea render!

Hi Simon,

Thank you for this hint, it will be very useful, too!

Luca

@gaieus said:

Well, the native SU arc tool allows specifying the chord length, the segment count and the bulge or radius but not the arc length.

Knowing the chord however, you could define (mathematically) an arc length, too so I guess it could be done with ruby (but please, do not ask mehow)

Yes, that's what I meant

@TIG: Thank you TIG, that's a useful plugin for me.

Luca

I'd like to draw an arc of a predetermined lenght. Is there a simple way or a plugin to get it quickly without doing math every time?

Thanks,

Luca

@gilles said:

Did you know this one?

another one to add yo the list of my uncountables duh! in the last two years...

Another big duh! for me, to realize just yesterday evening of this very instructing topic. Must surf more carefully through this forum.

Since I found this an interesting discussion, at least for me, I made this video, showing how I drew the molding door on Jeff's hints. I hope it will be useful and interesting for someone.

[flash=800,600:7ro5mgri]http://www.youtube.com/v/D4yh_df7flo[/flash:7ro5mgri]

I also knew that site and found it very interesting to see his approach to woodworking.

Thanks for sharing.

Luca

Everything is clear now, I like this!

BTW it was a very interesting discussion.

Luca

Mac, nobody's stupid here, sometimes written words may lead to misunderstandings.

Honestly...I think that there's not safety issue in routing that door in a workshop, whose measures are (just to be clear) 568mm by 328mm. A pretty normal door, I'd say. What's the problem when you safely clamp the piece on the workbench and rout with a hand router, side by side, every time changing the position of the clamps?

For the use of the Follow Me tool, it's alrealdy been stated that it is not accurate for this kind of molding and Extrude by Lathe works efficiently, as well explained in the above posts.

I post you a similar door I did some time ago, in the real world. My ten fingers are all there, and safety was never compromised.

@jean-franco said:

Hello,
attached how I would do that frame door in my workshop.
Moulding will be done piece by piece (rails and stiles) and without any risk.
Just a question of method with a jig for the top rail.

[attachment=1:p1b69xr2]<!-- ia1 -->'s door_640.png<!-- ia1 -->[/attachment:p1b69xr2]

[attachment=0:p1b69xr2]<!-- ia0 -->Sportello_mac1+Jean-Franco.skp<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:p1b69xr2]

I know this is going off topic, but I in my opinion, assembling the frame and routing next is safe and pretty fast. If you want corners instead of angles you can just remove them later with a chisel. Your is another available method, safe as well, but a little more time consuming.

Off topic closed.

@mac1 said:

@unknownuser said:

@mac1 said:

For general interest here is the widow to scale using the follow me tool and better modelling practice.
Started extrusion further from bottom corner.
Use 2nd order Bezier to form better tangents than the arc tool.

mac, i think you're missing a key element of this thread.. the corners are rounded.. not square as in your drawings..
i think it's been stated a few times in this thread by a few different people that follow-me is ok for angular intersections.. the problems arise when the path is an arc/curve

[attachment=0:tkmtx0re]<!-- ia0 -->sporty_ello_diff.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:tkmtx0re]

Look at my above post=> I model as I build. I have stated more than once the OP has indicated to build as separate components and that is dangerous or at least I think so. I will not post anything I think can lead to a safety issue. Maybe you can build and cut the profiles with a router but I cannot not.

Mac, I'm sorry but I don't understand what you mean in your post. What is dangerous and can lead to safety issues?

Could you please reformulate it?

Tks,

Luca

Hey! That's really cool!

Thanks Mark!

Yes, what I meant is that it could be a problem if you have odd angles as in my door, with several values after comma. If you can easily manage it with the plugin, you could have some trouble with your last method.

Yes, that's a good way, but only for "regular" angles, as you said.

@unknownuser said:

@brandy20 said:

I tried Jeff's method and works very well, so I'd be interested in seeing if there is another alternative to that, using native tools.

yeah, there is a way to do it with native tools and it's not too fun.. i used to do it like that before the Lathe and RoundCorner plugins were written..
i'm pretty sure i have a video of the process online somewhere.. i'll look around for it and post it if i find it..

[well, another way to do it natively would be to draw a sphere then erase 7/8 of it (in the case of a 90º corner).. that's only going to work if your corner is a simple degree (meaning 30º, 45º, etc... not ~47.3948573º).. it's probably the fastest non-ruby way]

...and I suppose it would be a very time consuming method, so why not to use those great plugins available for SketchUp?

@unknownuser said:

@mac1 said:

For general interest here is the widow to scale using the follow me tool and better modelling practice.
Started extrusion further from bottom corner.
Use 2nd order Bezier to form better tangents than the arc tool.

mac, i think you're missing a key element of this thread.. the corners are rounded.. not square as in your drawings..
i think it's been stated a few times in this thread by a few different people that follow-me is ok for angular intersections.. the problems arise when the path is an arc/curve

[attachment=0:3m3v0f7e]<!-- ia0 -->sporty_ello_diff.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:3m3v0f7e]

That's what I meant! Tks!

I'd like to steer back to the real issue with the Follow Me Tool that made me open this post. AND the problem arose when I wanted to use the follow me tool to have a molded curve on the outside and a 90° corner on the inner part.

If I wanted to mold a profile like in the attached file, that would not have been a problem with the Follow Me tool, and I think that the reason is pretty clear to all: Follow Me actually follows a path and cannot give you a curve on the outer edge and a 90° on the inner. We can try to get closer to a 90° scaling up the model and increasing the number of segments, but we we'll never have two orthogonal segments. That's it!

So, I think that, in my case, to have good results, we can try two different approaches: either use Charlie's one, that breaks up the path inserting a "quarter" (as he explained initially in this post) or go for Jeff's method, that uses the EEbl plugin.

I tried Jeff's method and works very well, so I'd be interested in seeing if there is another alternative to that, using native tools.

No_problem_FollowMe.skp

Molded door, using Extrude Edges by Lathe. Works very well and the workflow is pretty fast.

I'll also try Charlie's trick.

@unknownuser said:

@brandy20 said:

I knew about TIG's Extrusion Tools but never found an application for me with the Lathe tool. So I spent some time in getting to grips with it. I think it is a very good tool but I'm experiencing some troubles with the angles of the curved top molding. After having extruded the two corners at about 79,371° ( )I found the centre of rotation of the arc (Point a centre) and tried to extrude every section corresponding to each segment of the arc. The arc angle is about 21.258°, there are 12 segments for the arc, so every extrusion should measure 1.7715°. But I can only write 3 values after comma, this means adding some more imprecision to the angle. After three extrusions I notice that the segment of the extruded profile is not following the segment of the arc. The difference is very small but, after 12 extrusions the difference increases and this causes (at least to me) problems when intersecting geometries to clean up the molding.

Where am I wrong?

instead of measuring and entering angles etc for those (unless you know the angle is 90.0º, or 25.0º etc.... try this:

-start the lathe tool
-choose rotation axis
-enter desired # of segments (12s <enter> for 12 segments etc..)
-enter 0 (zero) which will allow you to graphically choose the angle instead of entering the # in degrees..
(if the extrusion is rotating in the wrong direction at this stage, type <shift>C which will reverse the direction)

Jeff, that's great, thank you! It works very nicely,