![]() To be more useful, the index should contain not only the tutorial's key words, but also lots of synonyms, so the user can find what he needs, no matter how he's thinking about it. He can't find the function in the keyward list, and is frustrated. He thinks of it in his words, which may not be the same words the tutorial's author used. Two things need to be upgraded.įirst, a manual has an index which is more than a listing of key words in the tutorial. However, it isn't as useful as it could be for somebody who already knows a lot about the program. SU ships with a tutorial, which is a great narrative for somebody who is learning the program. At the very least, SU needs a mirror-and-copy, using flip planes which can be established relative to the rest of the drawing. I'd like to be able to do things like drawing a slanted table leg and mirroring it around to make the other three legs. * I'd like a stronger Mirror function - or maybe one that is documented better. I could see that being done for arcs for say, curved shelf or table top fronts, Arched door rails, etc. You could take that list to your plywood and plot points to get the curves needed. When you save the Nesting file, you get a list of coordinates for each part. Hulls generates flat panels from the parts as well as creating other files as requested.Īfter saving the file, you can go to a page called Nesting which allows you to lay the parts out on plywood for cutting. After you have the shape you like, you save the project. This program allows you to draw a boat hull or other stuff by dragging points on the screen or entering a table off offsets. Would it be possible to create a list of X-Y coordinates for cutting shhet goods? Maybe it would work for solid wood too.Īs a bit of background, there is a freeware program called Hulls by a guy named Gregg Carlson (a search on his name will dredge it up). (gotta find some money to sign up for FF first) A cutlist would be handy. You can find it in a search of the Ruby forum at SketchUp ![]() Of course a Bezier isn't a slpine but it's something anyway. You can right click on the Bezier curve and edit it by pushing the points around. There is a Ruby script you can get free that will let you draw Bezier curves. Again, SU can't see that the line intersects the circle. For another example, draw a circle on a plane, and draw a straight line across it. It can't recognize that the arcs intersect. The arcs form a football-shaped area, but SU can't see it. Make the arcs so that they cross in two places, but not at the end points. For example, use the Arc tool to draw two arcs on a plane. That way, I could make curved lines and objects which are really shaped the way I want.Īnd I'd like it to be able to recognize that two curved lines cross each other. Or if that's impossible, let me edit that "pencil line" by pushing waypoints around - like any standard drawing program does. It'd be nice if SU could draw with splines. But it'd be nice if I didn't have to homebrew my own. I've collected a bunch of my own, and then built versions of them rotated in three axes. I'd like a better library of wood-grain textures. I have to draw criss-crossing lines all over the surface until the program recognizes the surface, and then erase those lines to get back to what I want. ![]() And sometimes it refuses to recognize that a surface is truly a 2D surface which it should be able to color in. Sometimes it just drops colors when I manipulate shapes. Particularly, I'd like it to be able to keep track of surfaces and surface textures better. Well, I'd like it to be a little less buggy. Let me open up the field a little bit then, and ask a second question.Īs woodworkers who use SketchUp, what else could it do for you that it doesn't do today?Todd. But all that info is right on the drawing, so it doesn't seem like a feature I'd pay much money for. I guess a simple cutlist would be sufficient for this use. After I get the lumber in the shop, then I optimize the cutting, thinking about grain, color, and waste. Doing any tighter layout at this point is futile because I don't know what the real boards will look like. That's what I really need.įor lumber parts, I stack up all the pieces (still on the computer) to get an estimate of how much lumber I should buy. The result has everything a cutlist would have, plus the cutting diagram. With a CAD program, it is real easy to do the sheet optimization I just slide pieces around, trying stuff until there's not much waste. I pick up pieces off the furniture drawing and place them on drawings of the plywood. Then for plywood parts I make real cutting diagrams. After I settle the design concept in Sketchup, I draw up the project using a CAD program (DeltaCad in my case). Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm not sure what good a simple cutlist is.
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