That's my problem then, I'm working with curved surfaces, like threads on a screw. Definitely not coplanar.

I've been playing around designing things, and now I have a wireframe of what I want, but now I need force sketchup to make surfaces solid. I figure there is something like I select the 4 sides and then say connect or something like that. Thanks

I'm sure there is a plugin out there that lets you set the pitch, width, and depth. Can I get a point in the right direction at where you could find such things?

Its kind of backwards, if I want a negative push and want to use the keypad, I either push in and type a positive number to get a push in, if I type a negative number here it will do a pull. The opposite happens as well, if I do a pull to start with, then negative numbers will do a push and positive numbers will do a pull.

Thats pretty neat, thanks. It also reminded me of my next problem. When I'm doing a negative push/pull, I can never type in a negative number. No matter what I type with or without the - my result is always a positive. Is there something I'm missing?

I'm sure there are quicker ways so I'll ask. I made a 1/4 of the gear, copy/paste/flip, then copy/paste/flip both for the full gear. I had to make each tooth for the first quarter though. Is there a way to make 1 or 2 teeth, then copy/paste them, but they follow the curve of the circle?

SketchUp Pro and Solid Works? I've been teaching myself some basics with the free version of sketch till the man with Solid Works gets back from vacation. Wondered if there were any formats to move saves between the two.

And with that I could finish my first major attempt with sketchup, I present to you, a camera base.

Thank you so much Jean, that worked great and with nice illustrations. I was so close to doing it that way, but not close enough. I was using the eraser, instead of right click - erase, so it wouldn't remove the face for me.

Well the first box doesn't work fine, but I found how to get that one to work right. Once I cleaned it up, I click on the face that is still there and then click Hide and now I can see through it. I'll play with the other one over the weekend and see if I can get it working. Thanks.