@tak2hata said:

Hi,Dave.
Please uploade the model of that problem.

Thanks.

Tak,

Thanks for the offer to help. File is uploaded.

I no longer see the "tear-off menu" for your plugin, though it responds as if it should still be working. It has always been the case that I never know if it's going to "punch" a hole until either it does so, or it crashes. Should it be capable of punching a group of holes through the selected solid face? And how does the user know when a face of that solid has been successfully selected?

Mahalo - Dave

this one crashes or does nothing when I try to make any more holes.

@dave r said:

What diameters do you want. The diameter/radius of a circle is measure to the vertices, not the flats. How far out from the center are your holes supposed to be? As they are positioned now they won't hit the larger circle at all.

I said before and I'll repeat, there's no need for a plugin to put holes in your wheel.

My 1/2" would-be-holes, all eight of them, are on a 9" diameter - 4.5" radius - as shown in the files I attached, assuming they posted OK. The circles you're prolly looking at were my aborted attempt to diagnose the problem: while attempting to recreate the same conditions, SU apparently decided it would no longer draw a 10" circle, whether by mouse-click or data entry, as I complained initially, though that problem seems only to occur on odd days of the week. The other (working) drawing I attached, with the wheel and one of eight holes punched, has a disc of 10" diameter.

If there is a way to punch such holes, well...what is it? If there is a simple method, it seems to be well-hidden from Google searches. If there IS an easy way, why would users like tak2hata be writing plugins to try to come up with a way to do this - in active forums, I note? - see http://sketchucation.com/forums/posting.php?mode=quote&f=323&p=479539

cast alum wheel - 1 of 8 holes made.skp
@unknownuser said:

I know I must be reading this wrong, and I don't have a correct visual representation of your project. However, from what I understand this sounds like a 10 minute modeling project. So if you could show an image, I would like to see what I am missing or give you a hand.

I model pipe flanges all the time, 6 to 24 holes, 3" to 48" diameter. Takes all of 10 good minutes to model. And your description sounds similar to a pipe flange with the holes near the center instead of next to the rim.

Would like to give some help.

Ken

Ken,

I'll attach the file from where I last crashed ad nauseum (with one hole made, seven remaining.) Yep, should be very simple. This isn't an important project for me, but I got into it partly to see what I could learn about Sketchup, so the appearance that doing something this simple can lead me down so many dead-ends seems a major warning-sign.

It would indeed be similar to your pipe-flanges (but couldn't you just use the vast engineeringtoolbox.com plugins for just about any such component?) The wheel itself was a pretty simple profile that I extruded circumferentially using the follow-me tool along a circle of the right diameter. Biggest problem for me during that process was convincing SU to draw circles in the plane I wanted (shift key only seems to work sometimes...as often, I would sure like to see some hints in the text-bar for tool modifiers, rather than me having to look up or guess as to whether it might be shift, alt, ctrl, etc) SU also often seems absolutely boneheaded in not being able to find/snap to the origin as a center for a new circle - leaving me to resort to drawing construction lines to help to clue it in.

Also attached a test attempt at the point where I gave up - when SU wouldn't draw a circle of my specified diameter. This problem doesn't reproduce now, for some reason. I suspect that various problems may result from the "hole on solid" plugin, but without that and the bizarre lack of a built-in tool for such purposes...what's a guy to do?

Thanks for your interest and offer to help.

circles of delusion - should have been 10'' diam.skp

I'm not a new user, but I AM about to decide that my time is worth more than the persistent fractal time-suction that seems a requirement, to work around the Sketchup frustrations I've been running into. This has been happening far more frequently with a recent project that I could have done in an hour or less in Vectorworks, back in the day.

Case in point: Trying to create a cast-metal wheel with a wide surface that tapers in thickness down to a plain disc center, with that disc being radially "drilled" for bolting to a spindle. Eight evenly-spaced 1/2" radial holes are required for this design. To show that seemingly-simple facet of the design has been an /appalling/ time-suck.

First attempt required a workaround to get SU to do radial duplication of the 1/2" circles representing the holes. Put me down for a couple of hours of forum-reading, dead-end methods, youtube videos...finally got that to happen.

Then those holes had to be extruded (pushed) to knock the holes through the disc. Getting that to happen wasn't too hard, but the "intersect solids" process (required to produce something that resembled a hole) left an absurd mess of extra lines and arc-segments to be cleaned up, plus at that point, components started to ignore basic "push" attempts (just moved the shapes, rather than extruding them), and was generally squirrely.

All this time, I was thinking there HAD to be a better way. Searching again, I came upon a user's plugin to make holes in solids - which was a commendable effort, but took me several more hours of registering to even get the plugin, and then figuring/testing how it actually worked, since even the youtube vid gave only the minimal details and the developer isn't a native English speaker.

For these hours, I was rewarded with SU crashing every time I tried to make the second hole (of eight). It had LOOKED like it was going to work, but...not so much.

Now trying to diagnose the crashing problem, I took my radial hole-pattern and copied it into a new file, planning to see if the same crashing would recur. But no, I wouldn't even be able to get THAT far: now, simply drawing a circle and specifying the radius no longer works. I specify 5" (or '5.0' even) radius, and I get a 5-11/16" /DIAMETER/ circle. Then I manually pulled that circle to 10" with the mouse, checked the diameter, and...it dimensions to something completely different.

So to conclude my rant, would I be an idiot to expect much less of this nonsense (or NONE, preferably) if I were to fork over the $590 for Sketchup PRO? Seems to me the answer would be YES: it would be good money after bad, more time-suction right around the bend. Any thoughts from Pro users? I only use Sketchup on an occasional basis - it performed much more admirably when I was using it for some home renovation work, but mechanical design so far has made it seem like it's far from ready for prime time.

Tak2Hata,

I've had only a little success in using your tool in my actual project. I'm trying to 'drill' eight holes, on a circular pattern, through a simple wheel shape.

I am guessing that the tool can't "drill" using my grouped "drill" shapes. In my case, this is the eight 1/2" discs that are floated above the surface of the wheel to be drilled (there was no response when I selected the grouped "drill" shapes.)

I ungrouped them, and only then was able to make one hole. And that would be OK - I could do it one at a time - but Sketchup crashed as soon as I tried to make the second hole. I managed to save it after one hole was drilled, but each time I restart and try again, it crashes.

I also of course noticed that after my first test use of your hole-in-solid tool, I no longer see the floating menu. I have been selecting your plugin from the menu, but the only indication it is on is the text in the bar at bottom of drawing.

Any suggestions?

Thanks - Dave

Tak2Hata,

Thanks for the plugin. It was frustrating trying to use this - I watched your youtube video three times, and even allowing for the different (Japanese) Skethchup version, I couldn't get anything to happen...but finally figured it out while writing this!

You replied to another user who had my problem, above:

cjc0306 wrote:
Once I click on the Hole on solid button I cannot selet the items. The selection arrow is shown but nothing gets highlighted or selected upon clicking. SU version Im using is 8.1.16.

Hi,cjc0306.
That flow of tool is like this.
Start this tool.
Click Group/Component.
Click face for hole.
I think you selected face first?

My best clarifying rewrite:

1. create object to be drilled and save as group or component
2. create shapes to use as "drills" that will extrude holes in that solid
3. float those "drills" above the face/s of the solid such that their shadows will extrude the holes in the desired locations
4. turn on Tak2Hata's drill tool (look for floating menu to confirm it's on)
5. note that instruction text (bottom of screen) will say "select first solid"
6. select the object to be drilled (as group or component)
7. the grouping to be drilled will highlight in blue
8. note instruction text will now say "select face for hole"
9. click on the group's face that is to be "drilled" - and note that there will be NO visible response to this - that is, there is no indication that you've succeeded in selecting a face; also, the arrow-cursor will seem "dead" at this point (it moves, but can't select anything other than a drill-shape)
10. keep the faith, and click on any of the "drill" shapes you made previously
11. a hole in that shape will be extruded through the object (I'd add an explosion sound there if I knew how...)

I've only done this once successfully, but I think this is about right. Please feel free to edit/use my clarifications to help instruct others.

--Dave