@pbacot said:

how does one create the evenly warped surface in the example?

Actually, in this case it wasn't so hard - the whole structure is made of strips that correspond to 5 degree rotations (of the central "layer"). The Soapskin & Bubble Ruby looks really nice though. For me, the important thing was when I realized that I could rotate the edge of many different rectangles at once.

First, I made a single rectangle that was as wide as I wanted the 5 degree strip to be, but 1/6th as wide in the other direction. Then I copied it so that there were 6 of those touching so that they glue together. Then I drew a single line across one long edge, selected this and rotated it by 5 degrees. Then I copied this 5 times to get the stack, selected the whole stack, copied it and moved it and rotated it by 5 degs so that it almost connected. Then I had to by hand move the end points slightly on the original strip (and in the end all of the triangle vertices as described above) so that they connected well with the new strip. Then I discarded the new strip (it was just a template) and copied and rotated the old one (then copied two and rotated two, etc. etc.). Thats a lot of words, but actually fairly fast in the end.

Attached is as new and improved section (as per the suggestions of Alan Fraser) as well as the beginnings of a new one (with 5 rather than 6 segments) in case my description made no sense.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions!

Twisted_erased_2.skp

@alan fraser said:

By exploding the geometry, turning on hidden geometry then dragging the apexes of the triangles together, you will achieve what I have done with the top shape. The green dots indicating the endpoints of each triangle will snap together reasonably easily.

Thanks! This is exactly what I was missing.

@alan fraser said:

If you run Eraser+Ctrl over the entire shape those remaining lines will soften and disappear, forming a continuous parabolic shape...if that's what you want.

That also gives a really nice effect. Thanks for the tip.

Attached is what I'm working on.

LEH_lines.skp

I'm really new to sketchup and am having what I think is a really simple problem. I have drawn many rectangles, and moved them so that their edges meet. I want to have the edges on the outside of the whole thing be thick and the edges on the inside thin. I tried searching help, but haven't found the right thing yet. I can select only the outside edges if necessary, but that would be a pain.