Yep! I totally agree. I wish that the new versions of sketchup would not always default to the newest version to save. This is really why. This constantly causes me trouble when I go to use a computer connected to a CNC cutter I have access to. Have to remember to save as ver 2015 or it just doesn't work. And I suspect it's forced obsolescence, not a mandate that the versions be incompatible. Aaargh!

Oh and Pilou, that 6 is exactly the kind of thing I'm working from! That much I have, it's when the center of the bottom loop of the 6 becomes a closed cone that I get my problems.

Hello and thank you for both of your suggestions.

Tig, I have retried with a confirmed perpendicular face and a bit of a starter rail too. In this case it seems as though it didn't do the trick. And thanks for the suggestion of the Upright Extruder plugin by Eneroth. It definitely seems to have treated the process differently, but unfortunately perhaps produced even more internal geometry to clean up. If you had other recommended plugins to try I'd be interested to give them a go - I don't see any obvious ones in the plugin store.

slbaumgartner, you got it right on. The thing is that if I could just click "intersect geometry" and erase a bunch of interior lines/faces I would do it and be fine. The micro lines are the killer here though - they take forever to find and they are quite insidious - on both inside and outside of the form. I did start at 10" but have run into short lines before and about a week back shifted to 10' scale to try to minimize the scale issues. Still very small holes that literally disappear when I zoom in continue to exist.

I find myself wishing there was some way to select a shell form and then just eliminate all interior geometry from that, but neither I nor Solid Solver or Solid Inspector can really make a closed form here.

I think my next plan is to draw a more simple plug on top of where the inside of the conical space should go and try to use trim to cut this away from a block with the outer form of the letter. But I can only do this as a workaround since this is not time-sensitive, it wouldn't work in a normal circumstance.
As I say, thank you both for your suggestions. I appreciate them and any other ways that you might suggest I approach the problem.

follow me problems.skp

Hello,
Thanks for taking a look at this issue. I had tried to solve this problem with Joint Push Pull previously and posted over there.
I have a project where I need to extrude letter forms from a line - not a real shape or I would use the editable 3d text tool.

So, Im making these letters very thick, thicker than they are tall - say 8' tall letter extruded to 10' deep. This works fine for anything without curves: A, F, X, 4, 7 etc.
And it is possible to make work with letters that have radial curves such as U or R. I got a pretty good S too.

But what is driving me crazy is the non-radial curves in my alphabet. G, C, Q - etc.

I had tried to extrude the bottom of existing letters, but now I have returned to just the rail of the letter with a triangle the proper shape of the cross-section of the letter. Really the problem seems to come from when follow me is applied to a non-radial curve and produces irregular interior geometry. That is, with a radial curve in essence you get a cone with a single vertex. But with a changing curve, wow - it produces a bunch of interior geometry and I can't for the life of me figure out how to fix these.
Does anyone have a suggestion of how to accomplish this or better ways to go about it?

Thanks!

follow me problems.skp

@gilles said:

Hum...

Je pense que le résultat recherché est plutôt ça.

[attachment=1:vs5eal7t]<!-- ia1 -->G2.gif<!-- ia1 -->[/attachment:vs5eal7t]

Hello. Sorry, my last post didn't seem to accept the image.
Gilles, that is excellent! Yes, the thicker version is what I am trying to do. And I see there where you are making two follow me shapes intersect each other. I had hoped to extrude the thinner versions that I already had to the big fat ones rather than remake all of them from rails though. My problem seems to come more from a single one extrusion that intersects itself.

But Fredo, the newer version certainly makes a big improvement. I've attached a comparison on the "O" here. IT seems to work far better, leaving much fewer dense areas to fix. I will see how it works on the more complicated letters as I move forward. My only issue here is that I will need to fill in the edges where faces intersect other faces made by extruding the single letter form. Is there a way using the present form of the plugin to make planar intersections automatically produce edges?

Oh, and I think that you are right on, Piliou! I have a bit of wonky model making to fix!
Thanks!

Hello!
I think I have tried what you are demonstrating. Here I pull up with normal JPP as your gif shows on the top face. I do see that a number of the faces are triangles and others are quads. Do you think this is the problem?
Here's another pic.
It looks to me that the issue is more about the extrusion causing intersecting planes.
When I did it before I used the followme JPP option pulling the flat face on the bottom, but it surely resulted in intersecting planes too.
I wonder what other approach I might take.
Thanks for taking a look!

Hi.
This is a fantastic plugin that has made models possible for me in sketchup that I thought would never work.
That said, I'm posting here because I am having trouble with the follow me pushpull part of this.

I have a project to extrude letters from a line form down to a near cubic form. 8" tall letter in edge form extruded by 10".
Linear letters work great! T, 4, N, etc all are fine. But curves, man, they're a problem.

Looking around I tried to find ways to complete this kind of extrusion, but everything seems to cause messed up internal geometry. And I tried the basic follow me, curviloft, extrude by rails, etc.
The best tool for the job seemed to be the follow me function of this tool. As I say, works great on linear geometry. But due to the non-radial curve of the letter forms O, G, Q, 6 - I'm just driving myself crazy here.

I'm absolutely not sure if there is a better way to do this, or if I am using FollowmePushPull Interactive properly here.
If anyone has any suggestions, or if I should post this elsewhere, please let me know.

Thanks for any help!

sketchup doc

Hi John,
Thanks for giving it a try. I just duplicated what you said and sure enough: Splat. Out of curiosity, are you on windows or a mac and using su14 or 15? And did you try with the two that I made? Can you tell me if outershell works for you with these?
I'm not sure what to do now, it seems like there is something really strange going on with my machine. Trimble sure has gotten a lot of Splat notices from my way lately.

Thanks for looking at the model. I think that you both were right that these were made in an odd way somehow. I found internal faces despite these being solid groups! Is that even possible - shouldn't be, right? And yes they had been constructed of components, but I thought I had exploded them and made them unique before making as group. Very strange to me.

So, I returned to the original 12gon beams that make up the forms and removed everything and reconstructed them entirely from group joined to group into an individual rhombic dodecahedron. Great. Then I was able to use the union tool to join one of these to a copy of itself for a solid group of two of these. Great.
But then I went to make the line of ten! Looks all good but splaat. I can't figure it out.
I've attached a two part unjoined pair of unique groups that causes SU to splat every time for me. What could I be doing wrong?
Thanks for looking.

mesh rhombic array working 12gon no internals_unique groups.skp

Yep, that did the trick! Thanks much.

Hello!
I have been trying to assemble arrays of solid groups or components and running into problems.
I've made a two-unit rhombic volume that I want to join with copies to form a cube of repeated units.
I managed to join the two together with an outer shell, but now trying to form a line of ten of them crashes SU every time I try.

It appears that using these solid groups also results in splats with the other solid tools. I can't figure out why.

If anyone wanted to try it out, I would be interested to find out if you had problems or not.

Here's what it looks like:

Thanks for any advice!
BTW, I am on a year old imac.

mesh rhombic array working 12gon vers14.skp