Anyone For a SketchUp Challenge?

impressive, I need to get to work on that tutorial I was talking about earlier. I have the help site bookmarked and was going to get the videos downloaded. Again Any suggestions? Thanks, Jason

With all those curved lines, shading, etc., no thank you… That is well beyond my skill level!

I didn’t think you could even DO that!

... but, when you’re a true expert at something, I guess you can do ANYTHING!

Very nice Dave.

-- Have Fun! Joe Lyddon - Alta Loma, CA USA - Home: http://www.WoodworkStuff.net ... My Small Gallery: http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/showgallery.php?ppuser=1389&cat=500"

Oh, shoot! I’m useless and now everyone will know!

-- A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner

Does Sketch-up have an Array command similar to Autocad?

“Does Sketch-up have an Array command similar to Autocad?”

Yes.

Jason, let’s talk.

Joe, even if you just muddle through like I do, it can be done. Thank you for the compliment.

Bob#2, I didn’t think and still don’t think you’re useless.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

I’ve tried criss crossing curves…..filling in faces…..pushing and pulling curved shapes…..pulling buttons down….well let’s say I’ve tried a lot of wrong ways. I’m going to have to wait for the tutorial but am still trying things. :)

WELL….......still needs some work,

Not bad Bently. How did you do it?

I did it this way.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

I figured you would be using arcs someway… You attacjed it in a very logical manner, as usual.
Thank you for the description! COOL method… Is that Soap Bubble routine readily available? At what cost?

-- Have Fun! Joe Lyddon - Alta Loma, CA USA - Home: http://www.WoodworkStuff.net ... My Small Gallery: http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/showgallery.php?ppuser=1389&cat=500"

Joe, thank you. The Soap Skin Bubble plugin is free. I liked to it at the beginning of the blog entry.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Thanks Dave,
If I remember right, (I tried a lot of stuff first),
I drew the square, then I drew an arc on 2 sides, selected one of the arcs and used the follow me tool on the other. I then copied it for the rest of the squares. I couldn’t figure how to make the outside row flat around the edges. I drew the buttons and just placed them in the corners.

I guess I’m a little spaced out today.

I downloaded the bubblemaker, but I think I put it in the wrong folder.
The (rather confusing) directions on the website seemed to be saying the files go in the tools folder.
That’s where I put ‘em.
Then I extracted them.

But, whaere do I go from there?
It isn’t working at this point.

????????

-- If a man says something in the forest and there's no woman to hear it, is he still wrong?

Hi Don,

Sorry. I never looked at the instructions on the website. The files should be extracted into the Plugins folder. Then reopen SU and check that all of the boxes are checked under window>Preferences>Extensions. You may need to turn the toolbar on under View>Toolbars.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Bently, that’s not bad. Not bad at all.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Hi Dave, thanks,
I went back and tried again. This is how I made the one square that I duplicated for the rest.
I haven’t tried downloading the plug in yet. I looked at your tutorial with the plug in, now I can understand how you did the corners and ends. I’ll have to give it a shot when I get the chance.

Hope you can follow this OK.

Bently, that’s a neat method of creating a dome. You could skip the Push/Pull step though. Your second to the last step illustrates a thing to be aware of with Follow Me. The ends of the extruded shape end up perpendicular to the segments at the beginning and end of the path. If you don’t want them to be that way, you need to run the cutting plane through.

Good work.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Dave,

I’m exasperated.
I’ve deleted the ruby and downloaded it again, this time to the plugins folder.
Then I extracted the contents of the zip file to the plugins folder.
I made sure the extensions are enabled in preferences.

- – - – -

Nothing.
It just appear in SU.

Please set me straight.
I did something wrong, but I don’t know what!

d

-- If a man says something in the forest and there's no woman to hear it, is he still wrong?

Don, you should have a file called SoapSkinBubbleTools.rb and a folder with the contents shown here:

Do you have both of those?

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Ah!

I guess I wasn’t paying attention when extracting.

I have it now, and thanks very much.

d

-- If a man says something in the forest and there's no woman to hear it, is he still wrong?

You’re very welcome, my friend. Enjoy playing with the plugin.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Dave, your right,
you don’t need to do the push/pull step. I don’t know why but when I was trying it that way the first time it wasn’t working. Maybe I was doing something different. It was leaving the surface flat instead of domed.

I enjoy your challenges and learn things on every one, thanks for doing them.

Great idea about the challenges Dave and super for those who want to learn. I am probably just going to continue on the caveman level for now though because I’m using so much time on LJ that if I get more involved in Sketchup I’ll never read any books or ever get into the shop, even though I’m retired. I guess the world is just getting too fast for me. Keep up the good work, I’m sure a lot of people are benefiting from it and appreciate your efforts.

-- Mike, American in Norway

I did it the hard way first then I installed soap bubble. It seemed to work but then after playing with it a bit it crashed sketchup.

-- Wipe the blood stains from your blade before coming in.

Waid, do you have the current version of SketchUp? The new version was released yesterday.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Hi Dave,
When you download the new version will it go right over the old?

Hi Bently. Yes, you can just download over the old so you won’t lose any plugins or styles or components you might have installed.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Thank You Dave!!

’s alright. ;)

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Hey Dave, From what I could find it looks like the sketchup 7.1 is only a free upgrade for sketchup pro users.
Is it available for us freebie guys using the regular sketchup 7??

Bently, yes, free version also goes to 7.1. Go to this page and click on Download Google SketchUp 7

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Yea Dave I’m on 7.1. Maybe I was pushing this machine to hard. I was trying to do some soap bubbles on more complex shapes.

On a side note. When you soften the edges of the grid, is there a fast way to do that or do you just have to open the group and shift-erase all the lines?

-- Wipe the blood stains from your blade before coming in.

Waid, you can open the group and then select all of its geometry by triple clicking on it someplace. then right click and choose Soften/Smooth from the Context menu. Before copying the groups to make the rest of the padding, convert them to components. This will help control file size. To convert the groups, sright click on the closed group and choose Make Component. If you want to give the component a definition name, go to the Entity Info box and edit the Definition there.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.