@dave r said:

There was no face to extrude. I drew a line segment along an edge and the face filled in. Then Push/Pull had something to do.

I'm curious how you drew this because there are a lot of co-linear line segments that ought to be single lines.

Yes, this is exactly how I got the part to extrude, about a half-hour after posting this. One or more of my line segments must not have been co-planer.

As to how it was drawn: I initially tried to draw it 'free hand' in Sketchup, but kept screwing up the drawing plane. Next, I drew it quite easily in Layout with the cool grids supplied. However upon exporting as DXF, and importing back into Sketchup I just could not get the real-world scale to work.

Finally, I switched back to Sketchup, put myself into an ortho-view, and drew several guide-lines spaced (horizontally) at +1/4" and +5/8"; with perpendicular guidelines to create the line vertices I needed to complete the profile. I then just used the line tool to draw from guideline vertices to guideline vertices. Finally, I made a 'group' of all my line segments, and copied the group with an offset of 1/4" (the thickness of my sheet). By joining these two groups with short line segments at each end, I assumed I had a closed face.

Each resulting 'sheet section' is actually repeated (in the horizontal plane) 4 times, for a single sheet dimension of 36". In the real-world these 36" sheets can be as long as 45-ft!

I used the resulting sheeting to cover a barn-like structure (actually a high-school batting cage), and the sheeting is quite commonly used here in the Lone Star State.

Closed polygon to be extruded.OK,

I am trying to model a fairly simple piece of sheet-metal, but it has a specific profile. I've drawn the profile, and copied the profile with an offset of 1/4" (still too thick, but it will do for a starting point), and then joined the two profiles with short line segments.

So now I have a 'closed polygon'.... but I can't seem to use the 'push/pull' tool to extrude my sheet!

I've used this tool with several other projects without any problems. Is there some trick to making my 'profile' extrude into a sheet? Are there some restrictions to what can be extruded using 'push/pull'?

Below is a simple picture of my closed polygon, with profiles included:

If you could help, I'd appreciate it! I've also attached the SketchUp file.

@gaieus said:

To elaborate Dave's advice; you can only position a texture/material on a single face. "Not single faces" are (and the "Texture item thus doesn't even appear in the context menu):
[list:3i32cga8][:3i32cga8]groups/components - like in your case. Dave explained how to solve this.[/3i32cga8]
[*:3i32cga8]curved/smoothed surfaces - let them be "really" curved or even just coplanar with a softened, dividing edge (in fact, these edges should be deleted instead of being dealt with like below). With curved/smoothed surfaces however you can do the following

• Go to View > Hidden geometry; this will reveal the "facets" building up a curved surface
• these facets can be manipulated like single faces - i.e. in this case you can position a texture on one
• Now select the Paint bucket tool and pres the Alt key > the tool will turn into an eyedropper/sampler tool
• sample the positioned material on the above "one" face
• Turn off hidden geometry (again; uncheck it in the View menu)
• Paint the whole, curved/smoothed surface with the positioned > sampled material.[/list3i32cga8]Sounds to be a lot more complicated and longer than doing it with a little routine...

Thanks for this Gaieus!
I cannot tell you the frustration I've had when trying to tweak some textures on certain surfaces that 'appeared' flat. The "Texture" part of the right-click menu just did not show up (as in the post above). All of these problem-surfaces (it turns out) had some kind of rounded edge-treatment applied (using follow-me). Using your advice, I was able to go back into several of my models and turn-on hidden geometry. Voila! -- I was able to isolate my flat-surfaces ad scale my textures the way I wanted.

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

(sketchup.google.com)

This is the Heirloom Hope Chest orginally publised by Wood Magazine in Issue 142 (june/July 2002). I built this chest as a Christmas present to my wife in 2008.

From the original plans from Wood:

From my model: