"Leon" wrote in message
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"MikeWhy" wrote in message
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"Leon" wrote in message
What is it you can do on a CAD program that you cannot on Sketchup?
Where to start? Working drawing sets. Bills of Material. Parametric
configurations. Multiple parts configurations. Editable feature history.
Weldments. Sheet metal. Mate constraints. ... SU is a minimal set for
defining and manipulating simple, static surface models. It is what it
is, and it's good for what it is, but it helps sometimes to keep in
perspective what it is not. What you sketch is what you get, sometimes
less. Circles are pie wedges; curves are straightline segments. When you
change a dimension, the dimension text changes, not the underlying
object. You glue things together, or set them next to each other, they
don't move to maintain the relationship. You sweep a shape, and that's
the shape it will ever and always be; editing the shape that defined the
sweep doesn't change anything. Is any of that a condemnation? I don't
think so. "Minimum" usable subset is still a pretty high bar for getting
useful things done.
Well this being a ww group I was thinking more in lines with wood working
projects. So yes I agree a CAD program absolutely does more outside this
area.
First, understand that I'm not interested in selling you a bigger CAD
system. I'm doing the opposite, in fact. I'm working toward weaning myself
onto SU alone. Just answering your question directly about what's in the
other systems.
As for as abilities, I have not checked all the plugins and scripst that
are available however there is a dimension plug-in called Driving
Dimensions that let you edit the dimension and that also changes the
length of object that it deminsions.
I'll believe it when I see it. It has less to do with cleverness than having
the information on hand, after the fact in SU, to parameterize the part. I'm
speaking of SolidWorks and Inventor. They maintain the history of how the
features were made. If you extruded a profile 100", you can change that
later to something else, or edit the sketch that defines the profile.
How to answer that? Just yesterday I tried explaining why components in SU
are useful abstractions. There are different levels of understanding and
need.
I am not sure what you are talking about concerning glueing things or
setting them next to each other and not maintaining the relationship. If
you make them into components and make the components into a group they
stay together until you edit or explode them. I may be way off base here.
It comes up all the time. All the time. The bottom of this drawer sits on
the top face of that cleat, and this face of its side is parallel to that
face on that side panel. The back rail of the Morris chair rests on its
tangent point with that peg; the peg's axis is concentric with this bored
hole. The drawer face has a 1/16" gap from the face frame. When I resize or
move things about, the objects size and relocate themselves to maintain
those constraints.
Do you need it? SU isn't SW or Inventor. I'm still just trying to answer
your question.
So, about those angle dimensions. How?
Search for the script/plugin " dim_angle.rb ". Copy it into the Plug-in's
folder and the next time you reload Sketchup 7 ;ppl imder "Tools" and you
will find a new command called Angular Dimension. Choose that command,
pick 3 points, and you will get a angular dimension typical of what you
might expect.
Keep in mind however that on this particular dimention that if you chang
eht angle of the object you will also have todo the angular dimension
command.
Scroll down the page a bit until you see the file I mentione above. Click
the file name and it will open a page of script. Right click that page
and "Save page As", and save it in the plug ins folder. Besure to add the
.rb extension to the name if it does not do so automatically.
http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibrary...m_arc_page.htm
There are literally hundreds of scripts and plug ins that make Sketchup
act more like a CAD program.
Thanks. And just how hard is that to do natively? There are big things
missing, the stuff I mentioned above. That's cool; implementing them is
magnitudes more complex than what SU is meant to be. But there are niggling
little things, like the angle dimensions, that can be but aren't. Still, you
have to understand that I'm not criticizing SU, and not asking you to be its
apologist. It is what it is.