Having this ridiculous issue with SU, which has always been having me pulling at my hair. Those who are familiar with SU will know that it can be completely useless with curved surfaces. Now I can see that it's being equally useless with flat surfaces as well. Maybe it's just me missing something out, but when I make a flat 2D shape, cut out the bits I don't need and then pull it into a 3D shape, SU doesn't actually close the other side of the shape off. When I try to manually close off the shape, the holes can't be selected, but the whole face instead. Anyone else getting this? It took me a little while to get the grille that way I wanted it, and now it looks like I have to start again....
i usually just close the face, draw a line on each hole (completes the face on the hole) and then delete the faces covering the holes..
I see what you did there and know the reason for this behaviour. You initially had a flat plane divided into two by a line and with the holes cut out. Then when you pull out the section with the holes it doesn't recognize it as a box and hence why you get the result you're looking at. The line dividing the initial plane results in your extruded part being only planes aswell. It doesn't turn the extruded part into a box. SketchUp is based on box-modelling, and hence this issue arises, when you don't follow the logic of boxes. So if you want to extrude a plane with holes cut out, then you need to extrude the hole plane, i.e. it shouldn't be divided by any other lines elsewhere. Hope that helps. EDIT: Nevertheless SketchUp is still the easiest and fastest tool to make easy shaped objects imho. With 3ds Max or Blender etc you can do more complex stuff, but it's not as intuitive and fastpaced due to the vertextes and polygons etc...
Second this. I've come across this issue a lot and so far this is the only method I've found to sort it. Its a pain but it works. Still no where near as much of a pain as curved surfaces, the amount of remodeling I've had to do because of glitchy curves... egh.
If you press "ctrl" whilst extruding the profile with the holes then you avoid having to bridge it and having to deal with un-intersected vertices in the first place... If you had to edit to do it manually would it not make more sense to just select the profile with holes then copy it to cap the extrusion?
Sorry I haven't replied, broadband's down and I have to use mobile internet. To be honest I haven't tried closing off the holes because I rage quit. I'm probably going to give it a go tonight and let you know how it goes. Thanks for the replies guys, really good advice!
+1 On the draw a new face thing. Often times they still get uppity on you. at that point you can smack it with an 'intersect with model' command.
I've managed to get it behaving how I want it to... for now. Here's what I have so far. mITX based gaming rig, watercooled. Just throwing some ideas into something, it's going ok so far.
In your scene style manager you should turn off endpoints, profiles and extensions, will give you much more fluid performance and editing. Nice work btw.