Hey All, I'm practicing my sketchup and was working out the design of something I need to make anyway in Plexi. See here? That's the PSU input circuitry that I hacked around with for my Amp mod. I need to make a more permanent and safe mounting method to both provide electrical insulation, as well as manage the cables for it and others taht will be going along. I made the following basic design. I've got some problems, that I'm sure there's an easy solution for, but wanted to run it by the experts. As you can see the holes I want aren't being made. I can make a circle/shape on one side, but it doesn't go through. If I push/pull it goes, but then I end up deleting faces I want to keep. also, I know someone had some tips on making wires/tubes. but can't find it anymore, mind sending me a link or description?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jDMyotyBE0 there's my tube-video (punpun) I have no clue how you delete faces by accident? Just first erase the line going across the circle, then push/pull? I also have absolutely no clue how that part should fit in the existing design...
Try using the push pull command via typing the units. So if the part that you need the hole in is 20mm thick then you would do this. - select the face that needs to become the hole - push/pull in the general direction (doesnt matter how far as long as a indent is appearing) - type 20mm and then hit enter If that doesnt work then try push pulling untill it snaps into place with a little blue square and says "on face" Like Jipa said "erase the line going across the circle" If all else fails then try making it as a flat plane before push/pulling it into shape (check my sig for help on flat plane work) Good luck
Thanks guys. Great video Jipa, I understand now to create a guide line and the followme command. I'll try the erase line and select and delete. If I recall correctly, when I do that, I get something like the oval on the inside. (where it was deleted on one side only, not the whole thickness. I think it's something wrong with my fundamental technique: I used a rectangle, pulled it up to the desired thickness, drew middle lines (instead of guide lines) and lined my circles up there. EDIT Actually I may not have made my rectangles, or else screwed it up with mistakes made drawing faces with lines between points. I just watched some of your other utube vids... I like the sketchuppin one, but didn't get any audio. the explanation of tools and shortcut keys would be helpful. Jipa, the way this piece fits into the overall design can be referenced from the "circuit board thingie" (in the first sketchup pic, on the right.) It that has all the holes and the rectangular block sticking up (that's part of the circuit board.) It is mounted to a long thin strip of plexi with a layer of doublesided tape. The other end is the wire mgmt aspect: There are 3 power wires going from the circuit board to the plug on the other side (the sleeved cables in the pic). A grounding wire comes out and gets screwed to the metal panel this is all on via that cutout half circle in the bottom layer (remind me to make mounting holes in the long strip of plexi.) Two more wires come off the back of the circuit board to the toggle switch. (black wires in pic. On the left: The top lego looking things are going to be wire guidance and coverage. A plate will cover the 3 wires and circuit board and usb and FP wires that will be going through the oval. I also want a nice airflow path, hence the top layer plate, and the holes for wires. I'll most likely keep the wire thickness to 1 or 2 wires, so might just make a long oval cutout rather than circles and half circles. A couple sata wires will pass that way as well. the top layers will be screwed down into the base to aid in rearranging wires later or troubleshooting.
If you have faces disappearing when you are trying to push/pull the circles, it means that for some reason to Sketchup the circles are not intersected with the face. Sometimes all you have to do is to zoom in and redraw a single line segment (with the line tool) of the circle itself to get it to snap to the face. Remember that Sketchup doesn't actually draw true curved circles. They are multi-sided polygons that look like circles. This is a quirk of Sketchup that can drive you nuts at first until you figure it out.
Thanks voigts, Yeah, I blame it on my poor technique. I made way too many line segments that are not all right on the orientation. These got integrated into a few different faces, so deleting one deleted the corresponding face. I'm going back to the basics and will try again, now that I've had a little more practice.
Ok back for more hey guys, been studying my sketchup a bit but I'm still failing. check out these 2 pics of the same thing from different orientations... Its the same piece, started from scratch. I created the long rectangle first, then rectangles for the corner pieces, then rectangle for the circuitboard part. Pulled them each up. One piece I was able to correctly use ctrl to start a new face/layer. Fitted them to size, created a rectangle on one side of each corner piece, use the arc tool to make a half circle, deleted the lines to get my curved shape. Now, I'm still having that problem. I can delete the face, but that just leaves a window. On the other shape, I'm showing the fail with push/pull to delete it. As you can from the view underneath, the bottom is not one layer, but rather shows the results of the pulling up to form the rectangles. I'm thinking this is the problem. also, you can see I'm having some wiring trouble. I don't get why it doesn't stay on the line? Is the angle too rough? I've been having a hard time lining up the arc when I try to curve the line, any tips on that? I'm trying shift plus on edge to see if I can lock in.
Upload your sketchup file somewhere so that people here can take a look at the file itself. One other thing I will tell you that is a quirk about sketchup that is a pain. Depending on the angle that you are drawing at, lines and rectangles do not always draw out to exact dimensions when using the rectangle tool. Other shapes will do the same thing too. You often have to manually type in the exact dimensions that you want. Otherwise it is easy to draw two shapes that you think are lined up on the corners but actually are slightly off. So you will end up with two different faces when you actually think you have one. Sketchup is a fantastic program once you get over a few of its quirks.
First off to make things easyer try using a plug in for your tubing like this one (right click the link and select "save as" then move the file into the plugin folder in your sketch up directory) http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDepot/Ruby/TubeAlongPath.rb fire up sketch up and then once you have made your line for the cable just select it all and go to plugins in the SU menu and hit "tube along path" viola no more follow me tool as for the model your designing... is the intention to make it hollow or is that one of the problems your having? Like voigts said... uploading your SU file would be a massive help for anyone looking to offer advice
Thanks for the tips voigts. I have no place to upload files, only photobucket... will that work for skp files? sweet, thanks for the link! You're right the intention is NOT to make it hollow. I think it's a symptom of the problem. I'll look into some online file hosting. I hate having to sign up for something new. Does yahoo or google offer that service? I closed off the faces with a couple lines, but I'm still not sure what to do about the oval through hole. It works fine when I start from a flat face, and delete the oval and pull the rest. But when its onto a pulled face after it's been pulled, I can only get one face, and not the through hole. I gotta stop thinking in solids, man!
Hey try out mediafire im pretty sure you dont need to create an account been good to me for a few years now
sketchup file uploaded OK, tried out mediafire: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=cd626a87cc157051931c7453395df025e04e75f6e8ebb871 How's that work for you? This is the last version made.
Hmm had a look and I think I can see your main problem but its really hard to explain so hopefully youll understand or someone else will be able to convay it better Basicly your using the push pull command in a way that sketchup doesnt like.. mainly by taking faces past there 0 point and back out the other side giving you negative faces with then causes problems when it comes the moddeling on these faces. Also your base doesnt have a thickness... everything needs to have a thickness even if its only 0.2mm "unless you start mesh moddeling but thats a whole other story" If i was doing the model id start of by creating the bottom box to scale and then selecting it all (triple click) and grouping it, after that you can start to model the other components on top from boxes and the push pull command. The biggest most important bit of advice is check out the sketch up forums and some of the begginer videos on you tube and do a few of the practical walkthroughs as they will REALLY help you out in understanding how SU works and thinks
Thanks for following along, and helping out! +rep! Thanks, I've been doing some studying up (Got sketchup for dummies!) Yeah the bottom base never was made a box (thickness), and I haven't been using grouping which sounds key. the push pull thing is partly due to my misunderstanding as well. What I've read now is that I should be able to push just to the far wall and then delete that oval face. I'll try it later.
yeah when you push it through you should get a snap happening with a little blue icon saying "on face" thats where you want to snap it to to create the hole. Alternatly you can also type the thickness in manualy so say you want a hole in a 2mm peice then you would:- select the face that needs the hole draw the hole shape select the hole start to push into the right direction (through the solid to the far wall) type in distance (2mm) press enter Thats a nice way to work if your putting holes in things and having trouble getting a snap on the back face
yeah I love the ability to start a movement/shape and enter in the VCB number to get accurate points/guides/shapes, etc. I'll do some more work on it tomorrow and let you see. I think the grouping and the understanding of how holes can be made were the main stumbling blocks at this point! Had to check out your onelife log... what's happening with that, no posts since april?
check my sig. i have a link to a tutorial for making watercooling tubing. can use same technique for any round tube thingy.
Using the "on face" when pushing the oval in would solve your problem. However, since the oval is intersecting the side piece, after pushing the oval through onto the face, I had to select the oval shape and delete it to finish the hole. Redrawing the line segments in your circles seems to have done the trick as now you can select them individually. As editor 22 mentioned, often typing in the sizes of something can be a big help to make sure your dimensions are right. I also would mention the base thickness problem. Grouping in Sketchup is very important to drawing things in sketchup. It doesn't take long working to figure this out.
Hmmm well where to start... After getting it together apart from the side panels my wife said she really wanted a PC to browse the web and with the lack of a spare PC case to hand... you can guess where all my old parts ended up lol.. but it was a nice test run and after alot of hard sketch uping I decieded it just wasnt BIG enough So have designed a new case to house a nice dual loop WC setup and some other niftey bits but ive only just ordered the aluminium so will be a while before the logs up then once thats done I'll go back to one life which will most likley be a silent air cooled server type system for my wife to dwindle away on the web and to hold the mountian of music we own.
