I need a little sketchup help

Waid,
Have you checked out the Sketchup For Woodworkers Podcast? I was totally frustrated with Sketchup until I watched the first few episodes. I’ve watched plenty of videos on SketchUp, but this guy nailed it!

Rick

-- Splintered Board Podcast - Woodworker Un-extraordinaire

Thanks Rick. unfortunately I have watched all of his videos and I haven’t seen my issue covered. If I missed it please let me know what show. I think there is only about 7 of them. Now on a slightly humorous note.. I think I might have heard mention of Sketchup For Woodworkers on your show a few months ago.

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

Well I guess the tool actually does work as I need it to I just have to make sure that all groups are exploded before I try to do this procedure. There is probably a better way.

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

You need to send a message to DaveR. He’s the MAN when it comes to Sketchup

some pictures of what you have so far might be helpful so we can get an idea of what planes/objects you work with. mind you – intersect only works when you have 2 perpendicular (or angular) planes to one another. any shared lines between them will not intersect.

you seem to have the correct method. where does it fail for you? what happens? and what DOESNT happen?

-- When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.

Yeah, actually, I think I know it because you mentioned it… Wow, how embarrassing!

-- Splintered Board Podcast - Woodworker Un-extraordinaire

I have watched some videos on how to use sketchup snd I still cant figure it out

-- kosta brownsville brooklyn my home

Well I wasn’t going to mention which episode it was Rick. ;) So Sorry for the unclear question in the post guys. I think all I’m trying to discover is how the big boys do this. I can use intersection planes but all parts have to be exploded first. Exploded parts don’t play nice with the cutlist plug in. It would be cool to find another way.

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

you can always create components within components and work in “edit-component” mode ;) this way your “boards” stay as boards for arrays, and cutlist.

-- When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.

If you want me to help, you gotta send me a note. I don’t always see these posts. (Thanks Lew.)

I’m happy to give you a hand. I’ll contact you with a PM and we’ll set up a “live” demo this evening if you want. I think this is easier to show that way. Otherwise, I’ll work out something so you can see it.

Dave

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

Wow thanks Dave. I will gladly take your help but I was intentionally not asking you because I kinda feel like you carry ALL the sketchup weight by yourself. But I’m not gonna turn down good advice. I am going to be at my church group tonight so I will be out but maybe we can set something up later this week?

Thanks again.

Here is a pic.

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

in this case – I wouldn’t even bother with intersecting anything spaids…. just set a guide line at the 45 line, and push your individual ‘boards’ to that line – done deal. 2 seconds and you’re done.

-- When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.

We can do it another night this week then. I certainly don’t mind helping.

FWIW, I don’t see what you need to trim in the image you posted. The planking looks fine to me. In any case, if I were drawing this deck, I would make an initial plank component as you did and then copy them in the array, again as you already did. Then, to correct the length-trim them or add length as needed-I would first make the copies unique. (Look for any that would be the same length and keep them related) and then I would edit the components. Push/Pull would work if the end is perpendicular to the length of the board. If not, you can use a guideline to identify where the boards need to be trimmed (ala PurpLev’s suggestion), draw a line with the Line tool and use Push/Pull to push down to remove the end. If you’ve already drawn the miter, I would use the Move tool to adjust the length. Either way would work.

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

Thanks for the advice guys. You can see in the pic that I already trimmed the boards in this sketch. My issue is in order to do that I had to explode all the boards so the intersect would work. I started by making a board and placed it on the one corner where the boards are parallel to the corner. Then I made the board a component. Once it was a component I made the board a 1/16 too wide. I then did an array to fill the space. I go back and shrink the width of a board back down a 1/16 and since they are components I now have a 1/16” gap between them all. Then comes my trouble. I want them trimmed. Every board is mitered on at least one end. I was faced with trimming each board by hand. My first thought was to intersect a plane. Doing that made me lose my cool components because I had to explode them all. Again please excuse the difficulty I seem to be having with communication in this thread. I realize that I have not been making my request very clear. I’m gonna go back now try to put your (Dave, PurpLev) tips to work and see how that goes.

Thanks again

Spaids

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

yep that is the one thing i really dont like about sketchup is that you cant cut components…they have to be exploded. I havent found a way around that, but maybe dave has.

-- If you can't build it, code it. If you can't code it, build it. But always ALWAYS take a picture.

You wouldn’t need to explode the components. If you wanted to use a cutting plane to trim them, you could do the following.

First make the plank component array. Make components unique as needed. Planks that would be indentical in size should be selected together before using the Make Unique command. This will keep them related to each other while breaking their relationship to the others.

Draw the cutting plane in place. This is just a rectangular face placed where you want to cut the planks. think of it as if you’re drawing the space a saw blade would pass through as you trimmed them in real life. This cutting plane is drawn outside the components. Do not make it a component or group of the cutting plane.

With the Select tool, double click on the cutting plane to select it.

Go to Edit>Cut or hit Ctrl+X or click on the Cut tool (scissors).

Open one plank component for editing. (Double click on it with the Select tool or right click and choose Edit Component.)

Go to the Edit menu and click on Paste in Place. ( I have a keyboard shortcut set up for this.)

With the cutting plane pasted into the component, select all of the geometry, right click and choose Intersect>Intersect Selected.

Delete the waste and the unneeded part of the cutting plane. Correct the face orientation on the end if needed.

Go to the next component and repeat. You only need to do this for each unique component. Look at your components and see how you can streamline this procedure. You might be able to cut all of one end of the planks in one fell swoop and then go through and run the Make Unique thing again on those that need to be separated.

If you are drawing the plank in at an angle and then making the component, be sure to adjust the component axes when you are done trimming them so they report correctly if you use the Cutlist plugin or Generate Report function to find out how many you need.

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

“yep that is the one thing i really dont like about sketchup is that you cant cut components…they have to be exploded. I havent found a way around that, but maybe dave has.”

You should never have to explode a component once you made it. I did describe a way to do the cutting above but this idea that components have to be exploded seems to be common. And it’s not just related to cutting. Anything you need to do to modify a component can be done by opening the component for editing.

By the way, my description in my previous post was written assuming a number of compoents needed to be trimmed along the same line. If it was only a single component getting cut (no matter how many instances of it) I would open it for editing before drawing the cutting plane. I’d then draw the cutting plane inside.

I do think that it would be less work to edit the plank components with the Move tool instead of going through the steps to cut them. On the other hand, using the cutting plane is so much like cutting boards with a saw that it makes it easy to think through what needs to get done.

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

right dave…i forgot about opening the component to do it….though it would still be nicer if we could just draw the plane across all the components and cut it…but your way makes it a bit easier…ill have to remember that for miter corners and such…thanks for all your help and resources!

-- If you can't build it, code it. If you can't code it, build it. But always ALWAYS take a picture.

I second that – see my 2nd post above – you can always work in component-edit mode, which is mostly where I work unless I’m moving components around

-- When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.

You could actually open the component for editing and run Intersect with model. An intersection between the component and the cutting plane outside the component will be created. The problem with that is you will have to trace an edge in the component to “heal” the face because there won’t be one after you delete the waste. This isn’t so bad if the cut is flat as in the case of these miters but if the cut is curved, it would be a real PIA to fix.

As I said before, I think for what you’re doing here, the Move tool would be easier and would require fewer steps.

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

DaveR,

THANK YOU….THANK YOU….THANK YOU….!!!!

I have been trying to cut a 45 degree angle on a molding shape for a week now. I couldn’t get it done and keep all of the faces intact. Your instructions for spaids was the answer I was looking for. After I read your instruction, I proceeded to cut my molding and everything stayed intact that I needed to.

Did I say THANK YOU yet?

You’re very welcome, sir. By the way, I showed this method of mitering a molding in my table tutorial blog here on LJ.

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