@Leggy said in adding thickness:

I'm getting some weird results with P/P

Do you mean with Joint Push/Pull?

@Leggy said in adding thickness:

then the same with the inner circle and rectangle, but got a conflict on the inner and outer skins

Which Curviloft tool did you use? I drew in edges between the rectangle and circle to divide it into four quadrants and used Skin Contours on one quadrant at a time.

@Rich-O-Brien thank you.

The bolts tighten up enough for what these need to do but I probably should have extended the that side so I could complete the hex recess. I expect then I could tighten the knob enough to break the clamp.

Use Joint Push/Pull for that.

Or you could use Offset on the top and bottom edges of the tapered section. Then use Curviloft to generate the faces for the inner surface. Just work on the tapered section. Once you have the faces on the top and bottom you can extrude them with Push/Pull

BTW, make sure all of your faces are correctly oriented. You have a reversed face on the bottom. Also reset the model axes and move your model to near the origin.

@tuna1957 thank you sir.

Here's a cutaway view.

LOL! It does look a little like a cannon.

Another little engine. These are addictive.

For reference, the flywheels are 100mm diameter.

@icorrea I don't think it has anything to do with the number of curves in your model. It's a fairly simple one. I agree with Rich. If you are having problems it's most likely the graphics card or its drivers. What version of SketchUp are you using?

Share a screen shot of what you see. This is what I'm seeing. A few exposed back faces (blue) but no problem working in the model.

Practically impossible to tell with so little information. What operating system are you using? How large is the bevel you are trying to make? Share the .skp file so we can see what you are working with. Have you tried it with the current version of SketchUp. Presumably you have a current SketchUp subscription so you can update to the current version of SketchUp at no charge.

A project from my printer:

These are some clamps to go onto round tubes. There are two sets for two different sizes of tubing. The larger ones were modeled first. Rather make new ones for the smaller tube I just modeled a sort of filler as a separate solid. The original design didn't have the fulcrum (cylinder) but I added it, again as a separate solid. I decided not to merge them so that the clamps are easier to modify if needed.

@sararchi said in Animating multiple component copies simultaneously along path:
... while I suppose you animated exactly one position change.

Well, no. There are 24 scenes in the animation and 12 shelf component instances visible in each scene. It's a different set of 12 for each scene and my animation amounts to a single rotation of the shelves.

You could add in the gap if you need it.

Thank you!

Yes. My model is based on a small desktop machinist's model. I believe it was based on a real one but I have no idea how large it would have been.

Another machinist's model. A 2 cylinder engine for a paddle steamer with reversing qear. The paddles are articulated so their angle changes as the wheels rotate. Still need to time the valves and properly align the eccentric straps with the eccentrics and of course add screws and nuts.

Rendering straight out SU2026 with a wee bit of simple post processfor the soft shadows and background color.

@Mike-Amos

Thank you!

@Rich-O-Brien thankee sir.

Edit to add another video.
PaterNoster2.mp4

I was curious about animating this sort of thing. I created a very simplistic model to set up the animation and got this. Since all the objects are components it would be a simple matter to flesh out the shelves and the structure. I just did a native animation (tags & scenes), though.

Pater Noster Shelf Animation Concept.mp4

@Gili It works perfectly in SketchUp 2025 and 2026. I've been using it a great deal. I used it repeatedly the other day to set up the linkages on this paddle wheel.

What version of SketchUp are you using? That will help us to know what tools you have available. What have you done so far?

These are all M6 for 3D printing.

Here's an internal M6 thread.

I modeled all of these using the method I showed in the video I posted here:

https://community.sketchucation.com/topic/164552/help-with-a-thread/20?page=1

@mrcjryan I get to see a lot of LayOut files from a variety of users, mostly when they are having difficulty with things like rendering times. Most of the fixes are actually done to the SketchUp models to streamline them. My standard process with the SU file is to do the following, in this order:

Fix incorrect tag usage to ensure ALL edges and faces are untagged.
Use Materials Tools to remove materials from edges unless they are required in scenes. (I often find the edges in the model have materials that aren't otherwise used.)
Also with Materials Tools I will remove back face materials for the same reason. In some cases I wind up undoing this step.
Purge unused content.
Check for excessively large textures and reduce them to something reasonable.
Depending on the model I might run CleanUp3 to merge coplanar faces (reducing the number of edges.)

Those steps simplify the model and reduce the file size. The simplification means that LayOut has less work to do to render the viewports and thus improves the speed.

Look seriously at any entourage you insert from the 3D warehouse or other sources. Avoid high-poly components. Take the time to clean up the entourage components you add to your models or reject them and look for simpler ones. You probably don't need a detailed strainer in the bottom of the kitchen sink, nor racks and convestion fans in ovens, nor punts in wine bottles. Distill everything down to just what you need to tell your "story". Some of this may seem time consuming but I guarantee you it will pay back in time and effort saved as the project goes forward.

It also helps to turn off tags for any objects that are not visible in a given scene.

In LayOut, leave viewports set to Raster render as much as possible. Raster rendering is much faster than Hybrid or Vector. In most cases there's probably no need to render as Hybrid. At least do a test PDF export to see what you think of the output. Make sure to disable the Output Override in Document Setup>Rendering.

I would tend to use Vector rendering for Hidden Line plan and elevation scenes because dimensioning is easier but for persective views Raster is almost always adequate. If you decide you need Hybrid, save switching to it until the end and only do it for viewports that really need it.

If you like to show textures in elevation and plan views, start out by using a Hidden Line style/Vector rendering while dimensioing and while updates to the model are still likely. Change to Raster or Hybrid to display the materials before export.

If you enable Output Override to render viewports during export you can leave viewports with displayed textures rendered as raster.

Also, keep the LayOut file clean. Purge the unused references. Make sure you start every project from a clean template. Don't reuse an old project for a new one. Do not override the Camera properties for viewports. Ensure you are using the correct SketchUp reference files. Do not copy from SketchUp and paste into LayOut. If you are using a Mac it's easy to wind up inserting the backup file instead of the original work file because the only thing that differentiates the backup from the original is a tilde at the end of the filename

Last week I worked on a LayOut file for someone that was very slow. The file she sent was over 1.3 GB. It had more than a half dozen SketchUp references and images from old projects. She was just deleting the viewports and images from the pages but never bothered to purge. In her case she also had several SketchUp reference files which included the original, a backup, and in several cases she had files with multiple tildes indicating she'd not been editing the original model file. She complained that viewports weren't updating (she thought LayOut was just being slow) but it was because she wasn't editing the file linked to the viewports at all.

If you are inserting images into your LayOut projects make sure they are of reasonable size for the dimensions they are displayed on the page. There's no point in using very high res images if they are small on the sheet.

Sorry. This got longer than I intended but ...

I hope it gives you some ideas.