Hello SUers,

I posted yesterday with a problem that I solved fairly quickly just after posting, this time around I've put a bit more effort in to resolving my problem, but I'm still @ a loss. I'm trying to make a spiral metal staircase, pretty much exactly like this one:

I've managed to make the stairs themselves & the central pole, but where I'm having trouble is the metal that supports the stairs on the outside edge. I've tried making a cylinder then making a rectangle, rotating it, the intersecting it with the cylinder then deleting any extraneous faces/edges. this didn't quite work, the remaining 'slice' doesn't follow the stairs. I also tried making a cylinder, cutting it so that a quarter of it remains (looking @ it from the top), then bringing the lower left edge that runs from the centre to the edge upwards, and the same around the otherside. again, this didn't quite work.

this is the mess that I was left with after the cylinder slice method:

any ideas?

Thanks

thanks, that's what I did, used the rectangle tool making smalle rand smaller shapes until the face was complete, then just removed excess lines. the other tools will come in handy when i make things that are more complicated, thanks!

Hello, I'm new to sketchup and I'm messing around in it by trying to recreate some local buildings that had PDF floorplans available online. It has certainly been a learning experience!

I have one issue now though, I've closed a 2d shape but it's not being autofilled as shapes are usually. I suppose this means that there's an area where two lines don't quite meet. How can I go about finding that area easily?

here's a jpeg to give you an idea. thank!

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/4480/floorplan200.jpg

edit: actually got it sorted, just made a bunch more shapes then cut away the extra lines!