I'm on Sketchup 2017. I've chosen not to upgrade past that because I have some plugins that I was told (actually, by you, I think) that they wouldn't work in newer versions. I'll try the cross section and follow me. Thanks.

I tried drawing a cylinder the right size and then using Follow Me to put in the groove, but apparently I "cant extrude on a curved face."
Stumped.

Forgot to put the second / in- now all is good.

Is it correct that one takes the Pro trial and then after 30 days can licence Make?

Thanks I'll try that

Dave-
I seem to have it working, appreciate your assistance.
We talked about the change from SU Make to SU Free- if I heard you correctly, you said that Make would be continued on offer, but not updated after 2017- did I hear you correctly? Because when I go onto SU.com, I don't see any reference to Make anywhere. Could you clarify? thanx

No, it's not a component.
I deleted the cutter after copying it so I could open the side for editing and then paste the cutter back in place.
Was that the wrong way?

Argh!!!
Made the box. Cut the dovetails.
Marked the curve and made the cutter oversize.
Copy to clipboard. Delete the cutter.
Hide the ends (didn't bother to rotate but I've done it.)
Open a side for editing. Edit-> Paste in Place. Everything now within Edit box.
Edit-> Intersect faces with Selection
"No intersections found between selection set
and the rest of the model"

Tried again- same thing

Probably a simple answer- usually is

Well, I'm trying it without much success-
Drew the boards (just 2 adjacent with dovetails at this point) and made the cutter- seems ok
Think I got the cutter copied ok to the clipboard- paste in place seems to work
But if I select the cutter I lose that selection when I open the component for editing.
And if I have the component open I get an error that there are no intersections in the model.
Guess maybe I wasn't paying as good attention as I thought I was....

Dave-
Thanks again for your help.
In looking at my notes, it's unclear if I make the cutter a component.

Hi Dave-
What you've drawn is what I'm after.
But I don't understand what a cutter is and/or how to use it.
PS- now away from my computer till about 3PM Mountain time.
thanx
a.

Dave- Thanks!
It worked- the key was clicking on the same line both times- I never knew that (and didn't figure that out from the tutorials...)
Now for the second question- (and remember I have Make not Pro)- Imagine a blanket chest 20x20x40 inches. The joinery is either dovetails or finger joints. The sides and ends are 11/16 thick at the top and bottom but bulge in a curve to be 1 1/4 thick at the centre. Kinda like a subtle Bombay style.
So I can draw the curved sides, and I can draw the joinery, but I can't draw them together (faces don't work). I have an idea that Intersect Faces is part of the answer, but every time I try that I end up with no faces at all, or at least losing the ones I want to keep.
I've looked around for a simple understandable guide to doing this but haven't found one that I can pound into this old bone...

Dave- I have this DVD and love it. Based on the DVD, I bought the Wudwurx plugins and after some effort was able to install them. But I can't get the dovetail one to work properly.
My sequence-

1. Draw the 2 boards apart from each other. 2) make them components. 3) Set up preferences (in my case I'm using angle 0 for finger joints). 4) Edit component board 1. 5) select Dovetail, click on baseline at both ends then drag to outside edge. Result- good set of cut tails. 6) Edit component board 2. 7) Select Dovetail, click on its baseline, drag to outside edge. Result- another good set of tails.... Can't get cut pins regardless of what I try!

I've followed the video tutorials on both your DVD and the Wudwurx site and can't figure out what i'm doing wrong, but it's clear I'm missing something.

I have a second question, but I'll save that for when I get this one figured out.

Comments?

sorry should be Re: Dave R

Dave: I am making an assumption that you are the author of Sketchup Guide for Woodworkers Advanced Techniques (I enjoyed it, by the way).
In the DVD you referred to a Woodworks Tool Set. I went looking in the Extension Warehouse but couldn't find anything close to that name.
Where could I find out more info on this set?
thanks
andy

Yes, I tried that and it works.
Appreciate your help.

I have used Sketchup reasonably successfully for some time now. I design on a Mac. Recently my old scroll wheel mouse packed it in, so I've just enabled the Apple mouse that came with my machine. Everything works fine, except: With the old mouse, I could move the drawing around the screen by holding down the wheel and and the shift key and moving the mouse around. With the new mouse (no wheel) I can't find any combination of commands which lets me move the drawing around. Regardless of what key I hold down, when I press down on the mouse, all I get is a bounding box. Does anyone know the fix for this?

I saved a word doc to the drive, then just for fun tried a small SU drawing (159k) and it saved fine. So it looks like it's the file- but I have no idea how to troubleshoot/fix it. And I haven't got time to do it over.

Or alternatively, how can I take a giant file and make it into 2 (or 3) smaller files? I tried to delete a bunch of the drawings and save as a new file but it was exactly the same sizes as the old one.

Do you have permission to write to the thumb drive ? It's my personal machine, so I presume so.

Have you emptied the Trash for the thumb drive so it has space ? Yes, It's a blank drive

If you save the SKP on your main disk, then can you "drag+drop" it to make a copy onto the thumb drive ?? Tried that, and the file would not "stick" on the thumb drive

Have you tried Model Info > Statistics > Purge Unused... on the SKP before saving it ??? Yes, to no effect

So now a new issue has surfaced- I'm trying to save what has become a large (13 meg) SU file to a thumb drive, and it won't let me. The 1GB thumb drive is empty, so there's no capacity issue. I try to Save As (filename), add .skp, and select the thumb drive, but keep getting an error that it failed to save. I know I must her doing something wrong, but can't figure it out.