Hi forum,

I just picked up the helicopter-project I was working on the past few months and am determined to finally finish it. However, there is still one problem that is holding me back: As the following pictures will expain, the helicopter has cooling air vents on the engine housing, which is curved. Doesn't sound too complicated, but I just can't seem to come up with any ideas on how to do it. Here's what I mean:

This is the model. You can see the curved turbine housing, still missing the vents.

This is what it is supposed to look like.

I just can't think of any way to get this done. Can anybody help me out?

Thanks in advance,

Kevin

what exactly do you mean? When you open sketchup, it shouldn't need to open a browser window. If for some reason you need it to open a browser window and it has to be firefox, make sure you have firefox set as your standard browser in windows.

according to this link, this problem is usually caused by outdated versions of the Visual C Runtime libraries. The link refers to a similar problem with IE 8, so it has nothing to do with SU Podium. However, the link might be interestingm to you, as long as you havn't read it already. (Its the first one that pops up when you google the error message

Yes, PLEASE post the .skp or at least some images. As far as I can tell from the model you posted, what I would do is the following. Create a single slat with the right shape, and most importantly the right length, then turn it into a component. Then you position it correctly, select the move tool, press and hold Ctrl and put the next one in. I know doing this 40+ times is a pain in the rear end, but its all I can think of now. You could also create one slat, select move, hold ctrl, move it along the red/green axis for as far as you want then type 40x and hit enter. that way you would only have to adjust the vertical positioning of the slats.

@unknownuser said:

@bunnyack said:

b) it won't keep the original surface, so I can't archieve my goal of giving the fuselage some thickness.

push the <tab> key during jpp (and a few other of fredo's tools) in order to get an options menu.. there you can pick 'thickening' for a solid offset..

Thanks Jeff, saved my day

Not only did it keep both faces, it also stopped sketchup from crashing at 79%. Problem solved.

Hey forum,

I am trying to connect two identical (exept one is scaled down a little) curved faces to eachother to create a wall with a certain thickness. I currently have them placed like this:

I tried curviloft to connect them, but it would give me an arror message saying "ERRORS (22) in contours have been detected (needle eye, spine) Do you want to fix them?"
When I click yes, sketchup crashes within seconds and I can't figure out what exactly the errors are in order to manually fix them.

I also tried Tools On Surface (joint push pull), but it would:
a) make sketchup crash halfway down the way and
b) it won't keep the original surface, so I can't archieve my goal of giving the fuselage some thickness.

Does anybody know how to do this right?

Here's the model: front fuselage.skp

Thanks in advance,

Kevin

@dukejazz said:

"I rotated the circle half the angle between vertices. I used a default 24 sided circle so I rotated the circle 7.5 degrees. I drew a line along the red axis to to split the circle in half and deleted the bottom half as well as that diameter line."- Dave

Dave your right

Bunnyack here the fix segment
[attachment=1:1mbh0vnp]<!-- ia1 -->Heatshield_dj.skp<!-- ia1 -->[/attachment:1mbh0vnp]
[attachment=0:1mbh0vnp]<!-- ia0 -->pic_0125.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:1mbh0vnp]

Thanks, pal In this case, lathe worked fine for me, though. And thanks for the explanation, Dave.

@unknownuser said:

.

lathe

@bunnyack said:

I'm sure I must be missing something really obvious

nope.. you're not

Thanks, Jeff. Instantly soved my problem.

Hey forum, quick question:

Has anybody experienced this before?

I create a shape, a circle, cut the circle in half and use the follow-me tool to guide the shape around the half circle. Perfectly routine stuff, when suddenly:

What the hell, Sketchup?
I can't believe I'm being held up for so long by something that seems so simple, yet I can't seem to find whatever is causing this... I'm sure I must be missing something really obvious

Does anybody have an idea as to what could be causing this? Here's the file: Heatshield.skp

Thanks in advance,

Kevin

@hellnbak said:

Not sure if it's my best, but it was definitely the most fun! The Hannibal 8 from the 1964 movie "The Great Race", starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood.

The detail on that one is amazing

@mac1 said:

@bunnyack said:

@unknownuser said:

@bunnyack said:

I'm not blaming curviloft, I suspect its me doing something wrong while creating the ribs

how & with what tools are you using to create the profiles?

.

I simply create square planes in the right dimensions (just like done in the tutorial I linked above) and then use the arc tool to round them off on the corners.

You should not be doing that. The drawing gives you section planes a,b,c,d,e etc for the the profiles of the fuselage.They are not symmetrical with is cenetr line and what I was trying to tell you above.

Yeah, I noticed that the hard way... I should have used the given section planes, but now I've got it done anyway. Took a little longer but it looks good, IMHO:

@box said:

All those lines are simply how you have the softening settings set, triple click so all the surface and lines are selected and adjust the softening settings, window/soften smooth.

The problem front left nose is one tiny line that hasn't intersected properly. Remove redraw it and the window becomes separate. There are many other bad lines but that is the one causing that problem.

Thanks Box, I'll take care of that. Do you have any idea how I got all those broken lines in my model? I basically just lofted a bunch of ribs together to get the outer fuselage and then intersected the windows and doors through it. The ribs all had the exact same amount of edges, so I really have no idea what exactly went wrong...

@box said:

Opened group, clicked once on the skin, copy, closed group, paste(not in place). Drew rectangle, push pulled to middle etc, intersected, deleted excess.

If you look at the junk inside there are some stray lines and broken edges. When modelling something like that you need to keep things clean and it is often easier to make things as components and work on them to the side. That way you don't get loose geometry fouling things up.

Edit: Next time Peter, nudge me, no point both of us doing it.

I just did my best trying to delete all the junk, but I doubt that I got it all and I have the suspicion there might be some "invisible" screw-ups on the left side of the nose. You might have noticed, the lower left window under the nose cannot be selected seperately, even though it seems to be allright. So basically, I am trying to get rid of the left side of the model and continue on working with only the right side.

So this time I scaled the model up by 100, like Peter mentioned, and it actually worked, I can now select both sides of the original face seperately. But hey, here we go again Now I have a bunch of faces dissapearing after the intersection. Looks like this:

Oh, and before I forget, when I try to copy just the actual fuselage, no windows, like in the file you posted, it ends up looking like this:

At this point I'm wondering how it is, that I havn't put my fist through the screen yet.

@box said:

There are a few issues with your model but simplest thing is to copy just the skin and intersect that. The extra bits inside your cockpit cause some problems. There are a few dodgy lines floating around and bits missing so it tends to connect through when it's all together.
Lying in bed with a my very slow, usually just radio pc and a thumball mouse, so can't do much with your model but here is half to get you moving.

That looks much better, what exactly did you do? Just remove all the garbage on the inside of the model?

@box said:

That sounds right but your image shows different faces overlapping, so something seems wrong. I haven't followed your other thread about this heli so it might be something in there that explains it.

The nose seems to have a gray face coming through the selected face. Are you certain you are in the right section. Also I assume you are working on a large enough scale that tiny edges and faces isn't the problem.

Well, the face on the nose cone is simply the "end cap" of the nose, I just hid the outlines of it. I have tried all the modes I could think of but they all don't work, so I guess thats not the problem either. If you want, you can take a look at the model and see for yourself. Is there maybe some kind of plugin for intersecting, I could try?

Here's the model
Huey_1.skp

@box said:

It looks like you may be intersecting in the wrong context. Are you intersecting while in edit mode of the actual helicopter group or component?

Yes, I double clicked the heli's group for editing and then created the box inside the heli-group and intersected in edit mode. Is that wrong? Usually worked fine... I also tried creating the box outside the heli-group and then intersecting with the group.

Damn, this is embarrassing.

I am really sorry for spamming you guys with questions over the past few days
But once again, Sketchup is trying to kill me (at least thats what it feels like) and I have no idea what could be causing the problem. So: I am attempting to split my model in half by intersecting a box shape into it and then deleting half of it. When I pull the box to the right position and intersect, sketchup builds the edges on the surface perfectly, but it won't actually split the surface. So after intersecting, I select the surface that is supposed to be split, but when I select it the whole thing is selected, not half.

Here I have the box positioned to cut the model in half

And here you can see the line that sketchup created, but it still selects the whole thing, when I click it

I have checked, the intersection has been done correctly and there are no visible problems with the line going through the middle of the model.

Does anyone know what is causing this?

Again, sorry for spamming this forum, it just seems I can't place a single line on this project without running into a solid brick wall

Thanks in advance, Kevin

@gilles said:

Play with parameters you see on the picture, READ the documentation.

Also for better results make al curves the same account of segments, use BZ tools, right click on a selected curve then choose convert to/ segmentor.

Again, thank you so much!

for the first time, I'm actually happy with the results I get, and its thanks to Fredo's BZ tools you mentioned. This finally solves a huge problem, which had been holding me up for the past weeks. The body still needs some minor tweaks, but it is finally free of holes and bumps all over it:

You sir, saved my day.

@gilles said:

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13563#p100509

Read the doc!

Sorry will read. And thank you!

@gilles said:

Play with parameters you see on the picture, READ the documentation.

Also for better results make al curves the same account of segments, use BZ tools, right click on a selected curve then choose convert to/ segmentor.

Thanks, I had never tried playing with the parameters, that does help a lot. You mentioned BZ tools, what are they and if thats a plugin, where can I get it?