Gents:
I’ve started trying to use Sketchup as a design aid for woodturning, starting with a bowl.
Creating the bowl is easy enough, but I am stuck trying to modify it. I’d like to be able to use Sketchup to help visualise the finished job (perhaps with several types of wood laminated together) and to modify the shape to find the most pleasing proportions/profile. Can this be done in Sketchup when working with 3D curved surfaces?
Regards
JSh
Replies
John, there are several plugins such as Artisan and Vertex Tools (both commercially available) that would allow you to edit a 3D mesh however I don't think they'd really do what you want because they only work in localized areas. They'd probably give you bumps and lumps and drepressions but not so much turned sorts of shapes.
You could use the scale tool and limited selections with hidden geometry turned on. You could then scale about the center on just rings of edges to modify the shape.
Perhaps the best thing would be to edit the profile before running Follow Me. If you don't like the shape you can undo and edit the curves again. Use the Bezier.rb or BZ spling tools to make curves with editable shapes. I've written several blog posts on the Bezier.rb plugin as well as a few on turning in SketchUp.
It seems to me that although SketchUp is a great tool for woodworking there's like a better tool out there for what you want to do. Maybe Blender or some other NURBS modeller would be better a better tool for the job.
-Dave
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