I think I understand a bit what is gong on. I gather that LayOut is a separate program that works well with SketchUp. When I saw the term LayOut in the documentation, I assumed it was a module within SketchUp. The documentation gave no hints otherwise.

I just searched for "round Rectangle" in the help search box and was sent to the page below. There was no indication this page applied to a completely different program, and NOT SketchUp. After all, it still says SketchUp at the top left of the page.

The documentation could be MUCH clearer that the functions are not actually part of SketchUp, but rather a completely different program that I may or may not have.

I think your documentation assumes users are psychic. Let me assure you that VERY few are!

Seriously, it is in the help file! Is the help file wrong?

I'm using the web version and can not find the round rectangle tool.

Help suggests using UpArrow or DownArrow while using the rectangle tool: Does NOT work!

Help suggests menu: Tools->Rectangles: I can't find this menu!

The images show the only menus I can find.

Thank you for the little demo. It showed techniques that would have taken me a while to figure out.

It seems that many of you think I may have never used a drawing program. I've used plenty. There are differences between them, usually minor. I don't read the manual when I start using another, I just jump in and check the help file if I have an issue. Contacting a help forum is very rare, for me.

I did use sketchup a bit, a decade ago. It wasn't quite suitable for my needs at the time, so I never became particularly proficient.

Sketchup has one "feature" that is vastly different from any other drawing programs I've used. I'm sorry, but I can't help thinking of it as a bug. When two separate objects touch or get close, (I don't know the exact criteria) through some black magic, these two objects become some kind of half merged object. They are not truly a single object, as you can select part of the object with a window selection. And yet, they are not truly separate objects, as moving the window selected part of the object drags the common points and distorts the edges of the non-selected part. This happens to drive me completely bonkers! I can't think of any possible utility for it!

I will eventually need to merge the objects, when I have the separate pieces aligned where I need them. I don't want the software to partly merge the objects while they are in the wrong position, because then I can't move therm to the correct position without distorting edges to to some nonsensical position.

When I tried to make my shape, I made the 45 degree semicircle first. I then made the thin rectangle, and tried to move the rectangle to the semicircle. I hoped it would merge, but it didn't. I assume snap to grid prevented it from getting close enough. Next I made a small square with the upper left corner at final square correct position. I then dragged the bottom edge of the square to it final position. The final step, to drag the right edge of the square to it's final position caused great havoc. The crossing points of square and rectangle and semi circle dragged the edges into bazaar shapes.

In most drawing programs, order you make individual pieces and bring them together matters little. In ketchup, the order matters a great deal. Some orders make the process a cake walk, other orders make it nearly impossible to get the desired result. Now that I know what intermediate shapes to avoid, I can come up with ways to make what I need.

One question: Is it actually possible to disable the stickiness function?

Once again, thanks for your assistance.

How would you make this object? It consists of a square, a rectangle and a half circle. The half circle diameter and rectangle length are the same as the square diagonal. I've tried several ways. I always end up with gaps, as in the Zoom View. I can't get rid of the gaps. I set the precision to the max, that did not work either.

I want to merge the three objects into a single object, not a group.

Thanks

That does not work, either.
I did notice that some of the points of the different original objects were not actually connected, just very close. (Had to zoom way in to see this) I fixed those, but that did not help.

I can select the object, which gives a blue outline. When I click the pull tool, the object becomes un-selected. When I move the pull tool over faces of other objects, the face becomes selected with blue dots on the face. But for my object, it's face is never selected. No blue dots. I'm guessing this is because, it is not a closed object. When I zoom in as far as I can, all of the edges appear to be connected.

Is there some sort of heal command that will make the very close but not quite connected points actually the same?

I drew TopViewNotSolid in 2D perspective, as it was less confusing.
I changed to 3D perspective and pulled the top faces to 3D, at least it looks like I did.
I tried to combine these into one object, I got "Not a Solid" error.
The bottom view shows that it is not a solid.

How do I make it a solid?

I have to say, it would be nice if the help system could translate un-group to explode, for me!

So, I made the totally independent object, the half circle a group with one object in it. This did prevent it from having its points from being auto-healed. I have to say, this seems inside out. Why not just let me group things when I'm ready to do that?

What exactly is the group shortcut? I search the help and it would not say. It gave a list of default shortcuts, (a VERY short list) and group was not amount them.

Finally, what is the un-group command? Searching help produces nothing useful.

So, what is the vaccine for this "Auto Healing" BUG?

(Which , by the way, sounds a lot like this Dr. Who episode: https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Nanogene#:~:text=Nanogenes%2C%20also%20known%20as%20nanobots,or%20guarding%20planets%20and%20technology.)

How can they be considered the same, I didn't group them, I just made them touch.

See the three files. After the stretch down, several points are added to the selection that should NOT be there. After stretch right, you can see several points half circle moving. No points in the half circle should be selected!

When selecting an object that touches another object, the selection ALWAYS grabs a point, or edge in the other object. Moving the original object will cause the extraneous point to be moved also, distorting the NOT supposed to be selected object.

I have tried to subtract the unwanted object with Ctrl-Shift. This never works.

If I need to stretch an object in two directions, and the first stretch touches another object, a point on the touched object is added to the selection. Now, stretching the original object in the other direction, the extra point is dragged with it, distorting the supposedly, unselected object into some bizarre shape.

How do I get ONLY the object I want?

How do I keep touched points from being added to the selection?

It is currently displayed as feet, inches, and fractions: 9' 3 1/4"
I went to the settings and changed it to inches and decimal, but the dimensions are still displayed the same, as above, in my drawing.

@box said:

Like all tools in sketchup you just start an action then let go of the mouse and type what you want and hit enter to finish.

I use push/pull to start changing a length, then type the TOTAL length I would like. That is NOT what length ends up as!

What EXACTLY does this do?
How do I set the EXACT length I need?

I searched for how to set the dimensions of an object via text and there was no search results. Using push/pull is real cute and all, for rough ideas, but it is painfully annoying to set to an exact number.
How do I do this?
P.S. I'm using free web version

@august said:

Hi Gillian,

The above description of how Shape Bender works provides the answer to your question:

@gilliganu said:

... It does seem curious, to me, that if the shape bender can follow arbitrary lines in 3D, why the orientation of the model matters. ...

The orientation of the model is critically important because that determines how the Source Object gets sliced up so that it can be bent. Most problems with Shape Bender seem to come from people assuming how an object "ought" to bend that unconsciously includes internal stretching/shrinking that is does not match how Shape Bender slices up the Source Object. That is how the orientation of the model matters.

Unfortunately, right now the only "manual" for Shape Bender is this discussion thread, and right now that is 532 posts in 36 pages.

That does explain a few things. My erroneous assumption was that shape bender sliced up the Source Object by planes perpendicular to the reference line. Which is only true if the Source Object is oriented appropriately. It would be nice if the required orientation was documented.

@august said:

On that topic, I was unable to duplicate your bending of the text, where part of the final "t" went off at an angle. It looks a lot like the trouble you were having with the cylinder earlier. If you can duplicate the problem, I would like to know what you did, because if I ever put that SB manual together, it would be useful to know what people have trouble with and what they are thinking when they approach this tool "cold".

I hope this helps,
August

The stretched out "t" was generated by hitting the down arrow, just after the 'proposed' bent object is displayed, and before the return key. The up arrow works fine, by swapping the ends of the reference object relative to the reference line before bending it. In this case, the text will read backwards. I can't recall what the down arrow is supposed to do, though I remember reading about it somewhere. It's not on the help menu.

It is unfortunate that many programmers don't feel the need to document their code. It makes it very difficult for others to use it. I write a fair bit of code myself and I always document it. It is often just for myself, as I often forget rarely used features a few years later. In the programmers defense, many users refuse to read documentation when it is provided. Many won't even read a single line explaining what to put in a box on a web form! An issue I've faced many times.

Gilligan

@chris fullmer said:

Hi Gillian, A few things I noted. It looks like you are modeling sideways. In SU, the red and gree axis form the ground. The blus should face upwards. Unless you modified that purposely, it looks you are working sideways, and that will mess up shapebender for sure.

The other thing it could be is possibly the start and end edges do not line up correctly. If you attach the model to this forum I'll take a look at it and see if I can get it to work. Thanks,

Chris

Thanks, Chris! Rotating everything so that the blue axis is up solved the problem. I've only used ShetchUp for a few hours and I'm not very familiar with many of it's conventions. I'm checking out several CAD programs to see which best meets my needs. It does seem curious, to me, that if the shape bender can follow arbitrary lines in 3D, why the orientation of the model matters.

I can still get it to fail by hitting the up or down arrows once or twice, after the first bent shape appears, and before return. I have uploaded picture and the test case on my website: http://z.gillie.us/shapebender/ IT's the third picture: Bent Text Two. Though teh problem seems easy enough to duplicate, the web page includes a link to a SketchUp file, under the image.

Gilligan

I suspect it's an issue of which way your lettering is rotated.

My text test case is quite similar to your bar example, except in my case, the ends of the curved bar are parallel to the original bar! here is a photo:
http://z.gillie.us/gillie/shapebender Please click the link
(sorry, my site has hotlink protection, so in-lineing won't work)

Also, the bad bent cylinder is there, too. The curve is where the cylinder was supposed to be bent to.

Maybe you'll find time to download my test case, soon.

Gilligan

I have a Mac OS X 10.5 and downloaded shape bender.

I bent some 3D fonts and they look pretty good, but not quite like I expected. The demo video shows that edges and faces that are perpendicular to the initial straight reference line will end up perpendicular to the tangent to the curved line at the respective points. The 3D font cases I tested, these edges all remain parallel to each other and perpendicular to the ORIGINAL straight reference line. While this will be OK for relatively modest bend angles, I don't see how this will be useful for large bend angles.

The other case I tried is to bend a simple cylinder. This failed utterly! Instead of following the curve, the bent cylinder has two straight sections with a 90 degree bend connecting them.

I have posted my sketchup file that shows these test cases on my web site:

http://z.gillie.us/gillie/shapebender/bentText.skp

P.S. I posted this a few days ago, and it did not appear, so I posted it again.
Gilligan