Mac1:

What I meant to imply by the term "efficiently" was the relative amount of manual effort required to accomplished a task within SketchUp. Manual effort can loosely be define as any task which requires a user to work on low-level geometry (faces, edges, vertices) when it is reasonable to expect SketchUp to take care of the task for you. This is important to me for several reasons. First, I have found that it is really easy ruin a SketchUp model by messing with geometry. My preference is to deal with atomic objects and to let SketchUp deal with geometry. Hopefully, that gives a clearer definition of what I meant by the "efficiently". Thanks for your comments.

Dave,

The clouds have lifted! The old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words was certainly true here. The models did the trick. A sincere thank you.

@dave r said:

@unknownuser said:

Using intersect faces constructs geometry where face intersection occurs. But it does not actually split faces or edges so that the intersection geometry is now split so that a single object now become multiple objects. Are there any extensions that will do this? If not, any ideas on how to do this efficiently? Any suggestions?

You don't need an extension or plugin to do this. You just need to use the tools you've got correctly. As Jim indicated, from your image it appears you aren't creating the intersection in the same context as the geometry of the tubes. You don't need to explode them to do that, though. All you need to do is open them for editing and select the geometry inside before running Intersect faces. The intersection edges will be created to split the faces inside the group or component and you can quickly delete the bits you don't need.

As Tim mentioned, make sure you aren't working at such a small size that you wind up with gaps due to short edges.

If you want a surface at the end of the tube where the intersection occurs, you need a surface in the same context at the time you make the intersection. You can copy the intersecting surface, open the tube group/component for editing and use Edit>Paste in place. Then select the geometry and run Intersect Faces>with Selection and delete what you don't need.

Make the tubes plenty long so you can easily select the bit you want to delete with a selection box, the hit the Delete key.

If you need it to be more automated than using Intersect Faces, buy the pro version of SketchUp and get the Solid Tools.

Hey Dave, this is really helpful.

OK, I understand now about the state of the geometry with respect to the component/group and it merely needs to be open and the geometry needs to be selected. I tried it and it works great. So what you are left with is an intersection line, and geometry which has had the edges and faces modified where the intersection occurs.

I think I almost have figured out except for a couple things. First you mentioned "needing a surface in the same context" when intersecting if I want a surface at the end of the tube. Does this mean that if you want a finished end on the tube, then it must be present before intersection is performed - Intersecting objects modifies the geometry it is provided?

This is a huge step forward. So I can essentially intersect and select geometry

I am confused about the the differences of the three different modes in which Intersect Faces can be invoked. Model,Selection and context. I thought it specified the range of geometry processed during an invocation for efficiency purposes, especially where very large models are concerned. Is this correct? There are a number of different opinions as to how these modes work and how they should be used. Could you shed some light on this?

@jim said:

@renaissance man said:

Using intersect faces constructs geometry where face intersection occurs. But it does not actually split faces or edges so that the intersection geometry is now split so that a single object now become multiple objects

From the image it appears the tubes are not in the same context as th eexternal face. Did you explode the tubes before trying to Intersect them?

Great, thanks for the reply. I'll try explthat exploding the objects. It seems to me that this approach may have some drawbacks to it. If I explode the groups and components in order to affect changes to the geometry, how do I restore the groups and components which I just exploded to their former condition? If I have to go back and select the geometry manually, I am willing to do that since it is significantly easier than trying to split geometry by hand.

@cotty said:

The intersection should work, maybe your geometry is to small, try to scale up your model before the intersection.

Thanks for the response. The ultimately, the units should be in mm. However, to avoid the precision problems, all the dimensions are scaled by 1000. However, the actual largest dimension is 34.5mm or 34,500mm in the model. Then, I planned to scale the model down by 1000 and then export the model in STL. Is this reasonable?

Hi everyone, I have been banging my head against a wall trying to find a straightforward way to deal with removing geometry from objects. Currently, I have not been able to find a way to do this efficiently.

I am trying to build an enclosure for a small device and I want to be able to plane all excess geometry off with a extension rather than by hand. The image above shows the enclosure and three tubes which pass through the external surface of the enclosure. I need to find a way to get rid of all the excess geometry on the outside so the the continuity of the external face is preserved.

So... I have tried a number different approaches with no success. Using intersect faces constructs geometry where face intersection occurs. But it does not actually split faces or edges so that the intersection geometry is now split so that a single object now become multiple objects. Are there any extensions that will do this? If not, any ideas on how to do this efficiently? Any suggestions?

I am writing because I am nearing the end of my rope and desperately need help. I have spent a considerable amount of time verifying that my platform is properly configured , that I have the correct video drivers and the hardware, especially the drive is functioning correctly. I also know about the dreaded clipping and mathematical precision problem. BTW, it seems that expecting people to scale models that would normally use units in mm is unacceptable. Regarding the clipping problem. I have heard that OpenGL is being blamed for the clipping problems. I would point out there are a huge number of applications which use OpenGL and don't suffer from this problem. Applications should not require users to make these kinds of consessions just so the program works correctly.

Corrupted geometry: The geometry gets corrupted at the drop of a hat and the tools required to fix are not available. I am trying to skin a set of closed contours. The contour curves have been checked to ensure they have no breaks, overlaps, needle eyes, ultra short segments, etc. Merely selecting the curves breaks these curves so they are no longer continuous, necessitating they they be "welded" to restore them. Something is wrong here. Sketchup seems to ask frequently if it is ok to fix my model. In some cases I loose geometry and it is exceptionally hard to reconstruct, especially if it is located on the convex surface of an object. Anyone know what is going here? Overall, I keep kicking myself for buying this app. Things like these are killing me because experience has shown that it is faster to go back and rebuild certain parts of the model from scratch rather than to try and fix the damaged model.

Lost geometry: Quite a few times I have run into the situation where I will hide geometry and it disappears. I know the geometry is there, but there is no way I can find to make visible again. I have tried Unhide All, Selecting in the area where it is located, turning on X-Ray viewing model, turning on Hidden Lines, incantations to no avail. This seems really bad. Geometry inside a group cannot be seen (it is close enough, and big enough that it should been visible. The solution that I came up with is to export/import the file in .dwg format and immediately selecting the now visible geometry and I have the geometry back. Anyone know why this is happening?

Autosave: I am working with a 10 MB model. I frequently save my work in order to minimize the time lost when I get a Bug Splat. When I save the file using Ctrl-S, the save usually take about 2 seconds. However, when SketchUp autosave determines that the works needs to be saved, it takes several minutes to save the same file. Any ideas which this happens?

Bug Splats: This software is really unstable 5-10 Bug Splats per day. Not as many with initial release of 2014 as with recent update of 2014. I have done reinstalls of Windows, and SketchUp and have and crashes persist. I know in order to fix bugs you need screen shots, core dumps and files. I am happy to provide them. What are people using to capture screens so they can send in a better explanation of a particular problem? I use a number of design applications and I never have crash problems.

Any help that can be provided to the above would sincerely be appreciated.

Hi Fredo,

I really appreciate all your work on your toolset. Your toolset havs been a lifesaver. I am working on a project where I am having to generate fairly complex objects which will be rendered on a 3D printer. I am at a loss as to how modeling is done on non-Euclidean objects in SketchUp. Your tools have been a lifesaver.

I have a couple of questions. With both curvizard and curviloft after invoking the plugins, the is a green window with blue borders which pops up in the middle of the screen. I cannot figure out how to push it off to the side or minimize it because it obscures the model. How do I move/close this window? Is there a flag or something which enables verbose mode so that verbose information about potential problems gets dumped into a debug file? In curviloft can I generate a circular surface consisting of contours which is closed? (i.e. starts with contour 1, then 2, ..., 6, then finally to contour 1) Finally, under what conditions will weld fail to take a sequence of fragments, which were initially part of a single, continuous curve, and fail to return a single continuous curve? I seem to be spending a lot of time welding curves, which haven't been touched, because something is breaking them into pieces. I am at a loss as to what, other than the obvious causes this to occur.

Thank you again.

Hi Jo,
Your post implies that you have been able to get the OSCoolean plugin to work with SketchUp 2013. Is this correct? Good for you! I, along with the rest of the planet have been unable to use OSCoolean due to version checking code. What was your workaround? The only functionality missing from the free version of SketchUp that I need are the boolean solid features. Are you aware of any other versions that are available either as a download or for purchase?

Best of luck

Greg