Both of these suggestions certainly help.
Is there a way to turn off inferencing, turn on smoove, but lock to an axis all at once?
It seems as I try to press the shift key it messes up the other settings. Also it appears that the smoove toggle will highlight the spline vectors somehow, but that is the only indication it is "on". Some indication in the status that shows the mode you are in (I believe sketchup native tools do this sometimes) would really help. As would some extra buttons in the tool panel to set these things on/off in a more permanent manner.
I have played around with the different spline types and I'm still a little confused about the trade offs between them. I also have questions about the spline type will affect the surfaces to be generated by curviloft.
I am trying to create a model of an actual physical shape. In this case it is a hull of a classic lines rowing skiff, for which I have real tooling (a hull mold), but no digital model. I want to achieve a highly accurate (relative to the real physical thing) model. I have done a photogrametry study and produced a mesh (over 1M triangles) that is overall accurate enough to trace with some splines, and with some final adjustments against real physical measurements should get me a model that I can design accessories, fixtures, etc against. I want to digitally produce (by cnc/3d printing) masters for those parts that can then be surfaced to produce molds for production in composite material (carbon fibre,etc.)
I have chosen to make the investment of time/$ in Sketchup. There are lots of shop and planning things it is certainly well suited for. For boat design it is clearly reaching beyond its normal domain. But I don't need to do load/stabilty calculation, etc. I need good fair organic surfaces, that I can design more good fair organic shapes against.
There is discussion here about joining of organic surfaces: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-uniform_rational_B-spline#Continuity.
Any advise that can be given on what types of splines, suitabilty of curviloft or other extensions for this, settings to consider, etc is greatly appreciated.