Thanks Dave: Your profile sure looks better than mine. You are correct I did use the line and freehand tools. The troubles I had were:

1. When trying to position the image on top of the stock face it would not slide smoothly into position but instead would only move in jumps and land a little off from where I wanted it to land. Would it work better to trace the profile out in a clear area, delete the image and then drag the drawn profile onto the drawn face? I will try this with your profile and see if it will position and stick without a fuss. …..Well it positioned okay but it did not stick. How do I get it to hook up with existing lines?
2. When trying to trace with either the line tool or the freehand tool the cursor would not go where I wanted it to go. SU seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to placing points. By adjusting settings in window/model info the mouse action seemed to improve a little but not good enough to make tracing easy. Is there a combination of settings that will make mouse action smoother?
3. Most of the time after tracing a profile the profile face would not form indicating the tracing was not continuous and hooked up at both ends. Or perhaps some of the profile got drawn above or below the face. Is there a way to restrain a string of segments to a face and force them to connect to an edge?

Will practice with the arc tool and see how that goes. Thanks again Dave for your help.

Earl Creel

So far no word from Whiteside. While waiting I have learned a little: Whiteside’s catalogue is available for down load from their website. It is a pdf document. However, using a screen capture utility you can select profiles in the catalogue right off of your screen and save the partial screen shot as a jpeg. The resulting file is small, something less than 10KB and SU seems to love jpeg files. Maybe this is as good as it gets. It is a procedure that makes cutter bit profile acquisition easy from any source that you can get to show up on your monitor.

The other thing I have learned is that to get the graphic image in your model is one thing but to get it traced into the model is a whole different can of worms. Hopefully when I get smarter it will turn out to be easy. Can one of you kind souls please point me to information that covers the very basics of tracing over a curved line in SU. (See attached skp.)

The screen capture utility I use is Printkey2000, for a long time it was freeware but the free version is now difficult to find. The website where you can buy the latest version for $20 is http://www.geocities.com/~gigaman . There are probably many other screen capture utilities that will work just fine but this is the only one I have experience with.

While wanting to learn how to trace correctly I still have a desire to make my computer do the work. Why can’t a simple curved line generated from an image file that appears on my monitor screen be captured, processed by my computer and put back on my monitor screen as connected line segments within SU ready to be pasted into my current model at the location of my choosing?

Earl Creel

SU Help Request.skp

@gidon yuval said:

Yes, the grain orientation is a great idea but as with some of the other ideas in the replies so far it has more to do with rendering and design than with production tools.
We'll get to design and rendering tools later. What we're working on now is more along the lines of the tools that will assist in production planning. For example, say you'd drawn a unit 90cms long with 6 drawers and you decide you want it 110cms long. We're working on a tool that will streach the unit without screwing up the scale of the parts. In other words, the parts will rearange themselves according to the new dimmensions with only those parts that have to be lenghthened changing thier dimmensions and only along the relevant axis.
See what I'm saying? That's a tool that will be a huge help insofar as production planning goes. It has little to do with the aesthetics of the piece.

I like this this idea, call it "Board Stretcher.rb" I see at least a four step process: (1) when activated a dialog box would open asking stretch/shrink and distance and horizontal/vertical. (2) The section plane would appear locked into the chosen orientation. (3) You slide the plane to the location about which you want the adjustment to ocurr. (4) The tool would check to see if there are lines passing through the plane that are not normal to the plane and if it finds any it would indicate so otherwise it would proceed to adjust all line lengths to make the change.

In actual use the tool user would often need to decide how many adjustments to make. For example if you want to make a chest of drawers an inch wider but did not whant to change the drawer widths you would stretch the model twice moving 1/2" each time with the cut planes running through the drawer opening stiles.
Earl Creel

How about a "Golden Checker"? A tool that would check the length to width ratio of all rectangular parts above a certain size (area) and flag those that are not close (an ajdustable setting) to the golden ratio of 1.618. Most of the time you can't do anything about it but sometimes a few doable changes will improve the looks of a piece.
Earl Creel

Simple sturdy doors. The only hard part would be finding suitable MDF with veneer face. Don't see much of that around here. I have a cabinet maker friend who I occasionaly build drawers for who would will probably give a big thumbs up to this construction method. He has made his living for years building cabinets. Building mostly for family and friends, I loose money on every project.

Gidon I am just learning Sketchup so couldn't resist messing with your model. I selected the bottom rail and used the move tool to see if it was stuck on good. It came off easy! I found no glue or biscuits. GRIN

Earl Creel

Thanks to all who have replied. I am getting a little smarter. It looks like some profiles are available in one format or another and with varying degrees of difficulty could be cleaned up and loaded into Sketchup. I am particularly interested in Whiteside router bits because I have some, others are available locally and all are available from Routerbits.com in about 3 days. (and the are arguably the best bits available)

I have sent an Email to Whiteside customer support hoping to connect with someone who understands Sketchup. My aim is to have them post on their website all their router bit profiles in a form and format that can be used in Sketchup without the need for additional work. Here is where I get in over my head because I don’t know exactly what the best format would be for seamless direct use by Sketchup. SKM files perhaps? Also don’t know if a Ruby plugin would be needed to handle the profiles. Maybe a new tool called “Profile Insert Tool “??? Anyone have ideas as to what would work best?

In the real world I often do not use the full profile of a bit. Adjusting bit depth and moving the router table fence can change the profile of the cut edge considerably. This same effect should be easy to model by simply adjusting where the profile is stuck down in the Sketchup model. Any part of the profile extending beyond the face to be extruded could just be erased.

Will post further on this subject if I make any headway with Whiteside. If Whiteside will do this other bit makers will probably follow.

Earl Creel

All married men fall into one of two groups, those who will admit they are hen-pecked and those who lie about it.

Yep Gidon that is the process I want to be able to do, except I don't want to draw the profile, I want the bit makers to give all of their bit profiles to us in a file format that can be downloaded and placed into sketchup. Then we could select any available profile in the component browser by looking at the thumbnail and also identified by the manufactures part number. Clicking on the profile would insert the profile into the model and all that would be left to do is drag it into position, select the path and click it with the follow me tool. (no profile drawing required)

If after generating the edge profile you decide it don't look quite right for your model you could just backup and try another profile. Of course you had better like the profiles of bits you already have or you are going to run up your router bit bill.
Earl Creel

Newbie here. Trying to learn Sketchup thanks to Chiefwoodworker. I keep coming up with bright ideas for Sketchup. This is my latest: It would be nice if the major brand router bit manufacturers, such as Whiteside, Amana, etc. provided profiles of their router bits that could be loaded into Sketchup. I think they would need to be SKM files and accessed through the component browser, but not sure about that. For all I know this may already be available. Anyone have any choice thoughts on this? Seems like it would be a win/win/win situation. Sketchup model makers, woodworkers and the makers of router bits would all benefit. While wishing lets include the makers of shaper cutters.
Earl Creel

It looks fine to me just as it is. However, the cheese looks heavy and if it is going to be cut while on the stand then strength of the stand may become an issue.
Earl Creel