Posts made by Voder Vocoder

@unknownuser said:

@voder vocoder said:

@unknownuser said:

Any ideas people?

It's pretty obvious, Juju, but you didn't mention that you checked the DB Tools toolbar. Did you?

It's there all right, but what are the icons (the image files contained in the "skin" folder within the plugins folder) for then?

Those images are the icons (command buttons) that appear on the DB Tools toolbar. There are four images in the skin sub-folder--a large and a small icon for each of the the two commands, Clean and Skin. The two that are used for the toolbar depends on whether you have "Use large tool buttons" checked under preferences. I suggest you put the image files back in the skin sub-folder so they will show up on the toolbar.

~Voder

@unknownuser said:

Any ideas people?

It's pretty obvious, Juju, but you didn't mention that you checked the DB Tools toolbar. Did you?

~Voder

Ah.

And what of my other earlier question? When you reported this as a bug during version 5 Beta testing, what was @Last's response? Did they acknowledge it as a bug?

~Voder

@unknownuser said:

@voder vocoder said:

@unknownuser said:

I know Voder, but those Edges should be smoothed.

I'm not sure I follow your point, Coen.

Sorry for my late reply. I usually don't check my own posts I make in the forums. Bad habit I know. I'm usually caught up in other stuff happening in the backend.
Anyway, I made a video explaining what I mean. Please have a look.

I guess I did the same thing you did, Coen. That is, I failed to check back for a reply, and now months later, I find that you replied some time ago. Well no matter; we'll get to the bottom of this eventually, even if it takes years.

I viewed your video. It still seems to me that the failure of the Soften dialog to smooth those particular edges is not a bug, for exactly the reason I stated previously, namely, they constitute the case of an edge that separates two faces that are coplanar within the one-decimal-place precision of the slider. That's what the "Soften Coplanar" checkbox is for.

I just performed a small experiment. I created a wavy surface like the one you did and smoothed it using the Soften dialog, as you did. And as with your case, there were a few edges (which separated what appeared to be coplanar faces) that did not get smoothed. And when I checked the "Soften Coplanar" checkbox, they were smoothed. It seems to work fine to me; I don't know why you think it's buggy.

Tell me this: if not for situations like this, then what is the "Soften Coplanar" checkbox for?

~Voder

@unknownuser said:

I made the wall cabinet a group like you said but yet I still see the lines through

The suggestion was not only to group the cabinet but to hide (Edit > Hide) the specific edges that are showing through from inside the group or component context.

@unknownuser said:

Do you think I should make all my components first before I stick everything into place where I need them?

Yes, absolutely. To realize the economy in numbers associated with use of components, consider using the same component multiple times with no changes other than, say, scaling along the length axis. Construct self-standing or otherwise self-sufficient objects separately, group or componentize them, then insert instances of them into your models where they are used. Much more like real-life than building everything in place where it's going to be used, don't you think?

@unknownuser said:

Its rather frustrating. Do you think it could be a computer problem?

Some of your problems could be related to poor OpenGL support from your OS or video driver. Try going to Window > Preferences > OpenGL and experimentally disabling the "Use Hardware acceleration" and/or "Use Fast Feedback" checkboxes. If disabling either or both clears up the selection or other display issues, then you need to upgrade your video subsystem--possibly just by updating your driver, but possibly by more extensive system changes.

~Voder

@unknownuser said:

Should I just hide the lines that are visible through the wall?

Yes, but first you should make all the cabinets either components or groups so they they don't get stuck to things. The other advantage to doing this is that when you Hide the specific edges that are causing problems, they will be inside the group or component context and thus will be protected from inadvertently Unhiding them with Edit > Unhide > All.

@unknownuser said:

Can anyone really grab the purple surface on the door side to push/pull it? It's not letting me push/pull it

Either use Ctrl-Push/Pull or P/P in two steps, one to bring it even with the outer skin and again to bring it to the desired extrusion length.

@unknownuser said:

I also cannot paint the purple surfaces

I can, so I don't know what to tell you. I will say, though, that you ordinarily would not be painting purples anyway--they are back faces, and in a well-constructed model they wouldn't show. Each visible surface should be made from front faces. All backs (purples) should be turned inward to face each other, not the onlooker.

~Voder

Hi again, Caliliving.

I'm not an architect and I'm afraid that I'm just a dabbler in roof modeling, so I don't know about the classic traps, but I can offer a few suggestions.

However, before I do, I'd make the observation that when I first looked at the house envelope model, I immediately noticed a lot of odd-looking line segments around some of the intersections. So I orbited around to look at it from below and deleted the floor so I could look inside. Yikes, man, what a mess. It was all full of stray edges and faces, apparently left over from a tumultuous modeling process. I sympathize with the difficulty you ran into, but I would suggest that you try to clean up all that stuff as you go so it doesn't accumulate.

As far as the overhang, instead of offsetting the edge all around each roof plane, just go with two adjacent edges at a time, and when you come to a hip or valley, use parallel inferencing to extend the intersection line out so you can miter the overhang neatly on the same intersection. The reason you ran into trouble at the intersection of the front gable overhang with the main roof overhang is that the former is extending at a downward angle while the latter is extending straight out horizontally. The overhang on the front gable may be a foot in extent, but it only extends horizontally by 10-3/4". Bring the gable overhang around until it hits the projection of the valley at that point, and then just follow the edge of the main roof with parallel inferencing.

I've attached another .skp for you to look at.

~Voder

---

HomeExample_voder.skp

caliliving,

Does the attached .skp help?

~Voder

---

roof.skp

So you chaps haven't noticed that the images are much older in Virtual Earth?

~Voder

ahr8tch,

I suppose this may be different for PC and Mac. On a PC, there is a small crossbar or handle on the top of vertical bars or at the left of horizontal ones. Drag the toolbar by the handle to reposition it. When you release the mouse the toolbar becomes a small window, with a title bar (showing the name of the toolbar) and a close button. If you double-click the title bar, the window will return to its former docked position, or you can drag it back, whereupon it will reassume its barlike appearance.

-Voder

You'd be better off doing the fit text to curve operation in a 2D graphics program that has special features to do exactly that. CorelDraw, for instance, has a dandy text-on-a-curve function, with all kinds of controls.

After you've got the outlines, you can import them into SU via dxf or dwg and then Push/Pull etc. to suit.

~Voder

Update: Acknowleding that it's really the same kind of brute force approach as the 2000-segment circle (and with a nod and smile to Jeff), dividing the vertical edge containing point A into 1000 segments yields fairly accurate results with the Rotate tool (although you have to Zoom way in to see the best fit). Rotate doesn't seem to have any problem with inferencing an endpoint to another endpoint, only to On Edge.

~Voder

@wo3dan said:

Not everything is as regular as a tetrahedron.

True, including me, I'm afraid. But that's for a different forum.

@unknownuser said:

if you don't need super precision, you can use a heavily divided radius and it will get you pretty damn close if not right on the money.
2000 segments per circle here and the radii do in fact intersect.

Jeff, I have taken your previous admonition to heart and agree that the purpose of these construction exercises is not just to get the job done by whatever means, but to work within the constraints of SU's tools and, by applying them in an ingenious and elegant manner, solve the construction problem. The tetrahedron-in-the-cube is such a solution, although no one here can take credit for it beyond finding it in Wikipedia. On the other hand, using a 2000-segment circle is not particularly elegant; rather, it's more of a brute force approach, wouldn't you agree?

Wo3Dan's problem is indeed vexing.

~Voder

Wo3Dan, by what means did you place the guide point? What do you mean by "this could be endpoint A"?

~Voder

As long as we're looking things up on Wikipedia, we can see that it gives the dihedral (included angle between two adjacent faces) of a tetrahedron as 70.528779°. That gives us the following very simple construction:

~Voder

@unknownuser said:

I know Voder, but those Edges should be smoothed.

I'm not sure I follow your point, Coen. You have just restated your original premise but offered no rationale. As I said, they are smoothed when you check the soften coplanar check box. When I measure the included angle between the faces that share the edges in question, I get values in the range of ~179.974 to ~180.026. Clearly, within the tolerange range of the Soften dialog, those faces are coplanar, so the behavior of the Soften dialog is consistent, although the faces are not coplanar to the degree of precision that would allow the edges to be removed altogether. Notice, the decimal precision of the Soften dialog is only one place.

@unknownuser said:

I submitted this bug to Google when we were testing v5, but they haven't fixed it yet.

Well that doesn't prove anything other than you thought it was a bug then and you still do now. To me, it seems like reasonable program behavior within the limits of precision of the smooth/soften dialog. Did @Last ever acknowledge that it was a bug? Did they state that they planned to "fix" it?

Voder

@unknownuser said:

There is a bug in SketchUp where regular Edges - which it shows as stray Edges - are in fact Edges which should smooth with the Soften Edges panel, but do not.

Coen, I think you'll find that if you check "Soften coplanar" in the Soften Edges dialog SU will indeed smooth those edges, and with the slider set well below 180 degrees (like <20).

Voder

Solo,

Although I live in the USA, I'm having a hard time understanding the purpose of this group. Obviously, it's not so we can speak our own language. Would you mind explaining?

Thanks,

Voder

Okay, Simon, here's a poor flat ellipsoid Indian bowl for you.

http://www.datafilehost.com/download-927c03a7.html

(I think 30 days is plenty.)

~Voder

I must be missing something. This seems too easy.

http://www.datafilehost.com/download-4edcc32c.html

~Voder