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SketchUp, Compound Angles and 3D Printing — 1 Comment

  1. I don’t use sketchup instead I use 3ds max and am currently learning inventor. I import all my drawings from autocad into max and work from there. Essentially all these 3d applications work on the same principles so we can communicate here.

    To create a compound angle either by creating a box and rotating 11.5 deg to get your 88.5 or by creating a plane and then rotating it and then extruding it and have the feet stay horizontally flat on the floor isn’t possible. Think of it like taking a block of timber and rotating it to 88.5 without crosscutting cutting an angle on the bottom and just lay it on the floor upright the bottom will angle and remain square with the rest of the block. So that’s the same with 3d geometry, modeling in 3ds max, inventor, sketchup and all sophisticated 3d applications is a manual process. There are two ways you can approach this one is to draw lines if this option is available in sketchup but like you would in a 2d program like autocad at 11.5 which will give you 88.5 and make a box from there. The other way is to make a box and then rotate it 11.5 either to the left or right again giving you the same angle of 88.5 and then manually move the bottom vertices so the face/polygon lies flat on the floor. You cannot extrude at a compound angle, if you look at the branches of a tree the base of that branch is square to the connecting branch or trunk that it extrudes from. 3d modeling is based on real world physics so therefore you cannot change the laws of mathematics.

    That video demonstration on the cabinet have several different approaches to it in my view there was no need to recreate it but definitely is one approach you can do. The original those students made were planes and not solid geometry, you could simply of added a shell modifier to give it some depth and work from there or you could have painstakingly extruded each face or polygon and then welded the vertices to create a solid geometry or use the bridge command which I’m not sure if you have that in sketchup. The bottom line is there is no real right or wrong way of modeling as long as they do not conflict with each other it all works but there is more efficient ways of modeling which ultimately saves you time.

    When you created a face in xray mode you did so because you deleted the poly which is made up of line segments which are connected to vertices. Sometimes this action can lead to undesirable effects and you may need to create new line segments before you can delete a face/polygon. The idea in 3d is to always have a four sided polygon and this isn’t always possible so a three sided must be made but be made with care so that it doesn’t conflict with the surrounding geometry. Creating box things that are square is easy in 3d but when you move into organic modeling things can get quite difficult which really pays off to understand how these line segments work and how to manipulate them to work for you.