Creating Hexagonal Lattice Shapes in SketchUp with Shape Bender

what's up guys Justin here with the Sketchup essentials comm back of another Sketchup plug-in tutorial so yesterday I went through how to use shape bender to create some kind of fun shapes today we're going to go in and we're going to use that to just kind of mess around it's like a honeycomb pattern and see what we can make so let's go ahead and just jump into it alright so we're going to come in here real quick and we're going to create a canvas first of all so we're going to start off we're going to draw five foot by five foot rectangular using the rectangle tool so just tap that our key and then draw a face just like this then we're going to come in here with the circle tool and we're going to create a series of hexagonal shapes to create our honeycomb pattern and so the way that you're going to do that is you're going to activate the circle tool then come in here and type six and you can see that when you activate the circle tool it ask you how many sides you want so if you type six you can see how your cursor comes in here and it turns into a up into a hexagon so you're going to go ahead you're going to come in here and you're going to draw a circle on this face and it's probably going to have a radius of about three inches and then you can come in here and you're going to offset this using the offset tool and probably offset it about a half inch so that will give you kind of your hexagonal shape right here so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to come in here we're going to select this shape we're going to right click on it we're going to click make component but we're just going to come in here and we'll just call this hexagon and we'll go ahead and create that so what that's going to do is that's going to come in here and it's going to create the shape as a component so now we're going to do is we're going to move it over here and then we're just kind of aligning it with our face for right now and then we're just going to make a copy using the move tool and to do that just tap the M key with your object selected and click on a point you can see how when I move it it just kind of moves it around but if I tap the ctrl key on my keyboard that activates copy mode and you can go ahead and make a copy just like that then you're going to come in here and you're going to select these two objects you're going to use the move tool again in copy mode and you're going to move this right here and when you do that you're just going to type in something like time can and what that'll do is that'll create ten copies in here so with the move tool active or with these two objects selected use the move tool tap the control key to activate copy mode then click on this point and then type in x10 and hit the enter key and that'll create ten copies moving up and down just like this then the next thing you're going to want to do is you're going to want to come in here and you're going to do the same thing just with these objects right here so come in here and select these objects then move them across and then click on this point and then just type in times five that didn't work I'm going to type in x6 and hit the enter key and so what that does is that comes in here and that creates six copies of what you had selected across your face right here so now I'm going to come in here I'm going to erase out my rectangle I mostly just use that as kind of a size I use that mostly as kind of a size inference type thing so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to come in here and you can see if I double click in one of these and I select a face it selects the face in all of these because these are all copies of the same component so now I'm going to come in here I'm going to delete out this center face and then next thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to select so so right now if I was to come in here and I was to push-pull these objects you can see what it does is it push pulls all of them to the same depth and that's fine you can definitely do that what I want to do is I want to come in here and I'm going to select some of these and I'm going to right click on them and I'm going to say make unique and all I'm doing is I'm selecting a series of these shapes that I can come in here and make a little bit different kind of give some interest to this piece so that it doesn't just look really uniform then what we're going to do is we're going to use the outliner so the outliner in here is basically this is where you can manage all your groups and components so this keeps all of your groups and components in here so you can see how when I click on these different shapes are getting selected just like this so and if you don't see the outliner just go up the window default tray make sure that box for outliner is checked but now we're going to do is we're going to come in here and we're going to give these some depth so I'm just going to click on one of these hexagon I'm going to double click on that in the outliner or you could double click on it in your model as well and then I'm going to push pull those to a depth of probably 4 inches and then I'm going to scroll down and I'm going to find one of my hexagon 2 objects and I'm going to push Paul those two three inches then I'm going to come down here and I'm going to find my hexagon three objects I'm going to first pull those two two inches and then for the rest of my hexagon just my general hexagon ones I'm going to give them a depth of one inch and all I'm doing is I'm making this so some of these are a little deeper than others just to make this a little bit more interesting so now what we're going to do is we're going to put those in a group so just drag your mouse across them right click and click make group and then we're going to draw a line along the red axis that we're going to use as our baseline for when we bend this shape using shape bender so just start over here draw a line kind of from your origin and just draw a line across and you can use inferencing to do this so just move your mouse until this point is kind of on the red axis and then hold the shift key not a la key to the red axis and then just move your mouse over one of these pieces so you basically got a line that's the length of this honeycomb pattern so the next thing we're going to do is I'm going to make a copy of that line over here using copy mode so just kind of the same way that we did that before and then I'm going to draw an arc across that face and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to start off and I'm going to draw a single arc just like this and it doesn't really matter how deep it is and I drew that to the midpoint and then I'm going to make a copy of that I'm going to flip it using the scale tool so select it tap the S key and then move this until it says negative one and then I'm going to move this back in place basically what I'm doing is I'm creating the path that I want shape bender to bend this along so now I'm going to come in here I'm going to select this object and I'm going to use an extension called weld to make that a single line because you need this to be a single line to tell shape them or what to bend this along so now what you've got is you've got the three and you can find weld either in the sketchy Gatien extension store or it may be in the Sketchup extension warehouse I don't really remember but in any case now we're going to come in here and we're going to bend this with shape bender and so if you remember the three things you need to bend something of shape vendor is you need a group or a component you need a base path and you need a path to bend it along so we have those three objects in here so now I'm going to come in here I'm going to select this space and actually I'm going to go ahead and save this first so just make sure you save a copy of this model because you start creating a whole bunch of geometry in here and Sketchup doesn't always like that so make sure you save a copy before you do this but you're going to select your group just like this you're going to activate shape bender and then you're going to come in here and you're going to click once on your base point and then once on your curve over here to tell it that this is what you want what you want it to bend your shape along and it may take a second to do this it is going to go in there and should create some geometry and stuff like that for your preview so it's going to take a second to process that but what it should do is it should come in here and it should give you a preview just like this and so you can see how you've got kind of a preview of the way that's going to look so make sure that kind of looks the way you want it to look and then go ahead and hit the enter key when you hit the enter key what it's going to do is it's going to come in here and it says finalizing all bending so all it's doing in here is it's coming in here and it's actually creating the geometry that you are previewing so give that a minute because that does have to go in there and create a whole bunch of stuff and remember the more geometry you have in here the longer it's going to take so always make sure to save a copy of your model before you do this perfect so now we've got is we've got our kind of bent lattice shape along here you can see how it took these thicker pieces and it bent them as well so you've kind of bent this along a curve right here and so we could stop right here if we really wanted to what I want to do though is I want to come in here and I actually want to bend this again along another axis and so we're going to do is we're going to select this object and I'm going to activate the move tool and when you activate the move tool on this geometry you should get these little crosses on here you can click on those to rotate your object just like this so you can see how I went ahead and I rotated this object in place I'm gonna go ahead and erase this curved line right here but now this is along a different axis so it's turned so now we're going to do is we're going to do the same thing we're going to come in here and we're going to draw a line that's kind of the width of this object and again you can kind of use inferencing to make sure you draw that line straight across the red axis remember shape bender does require that base point to be along the red axis but once you do that and you've drawn kind of your baseline you can make a copy of that again move that over here and then I'm going to draw an arc across this space that's probably a half circle so you can kind of move your mouse and it'll lock to the half circle so you can come in here you can draw that line and so we're going to do is we're going to bend this again and see what we come up with so select this object remember to save and select this object activate shape bender select your baseline and then select your curve and this may take even longer than the first time because there's even more hidden geometry and stuff like that that's being created so you may have to wait for just a second in order for it to come in here and give you kind of the preview that's perfect so you can see what that did is that came in here and that curve this along this line right here so it gives you kind of a preview of this and one thing you can do is you can come in here and you can tap the up key on your keyboard and basically when you tap the up key on your keyboard what you're doing is you're telling it to flip the start and finish of that line so if you want it to you come in here and flip this so that it starts to bend this way instead or it bends it along the outside of the faces to the inside of the face in this case I did want it the way that this came out so I just tap the up key to put it back again so just make sure this looks the way you want it to look and then come in here and just hit the enter key and again this is going to take a while to generate all your geometry because it is generating a whole bunch of different stuff you can so give it a minute to finalize all your geometry perfect so you can see how now this kind of came in here and this bent everything along this axis the only thing I don't like about this is my little different shapes like this didn't actually get put on the outside they got put on the inside and so that's definitely something to consider when you're doing this is to make sure that you're putting those in here the right way and really to fix that probably what I would do and let's go ahead and do that all right so what that did wrong and why that came on the inside of this is because this is on the wrong side of that line and so what you're going to want to do is if you think about it if if you have your if you have your kind of lattice on this side of the line and then you tell this to bend this along the inside of this space what it's doing is it's just bending this so that this stuff faces the wrong way so all we're going to do to fix that is you're just going to come in here you're going to move this so that it's on the other side of the line just like this so now when that bends that along the inside of this face this will be on the outside so once you've done that you're going to do the same thing you're going to come in here you're going to activate shape bender you're going to click on this line then you click on this face and now that this is on the other side of the line that should work properly so it's going to come in here and it's going to generate your it's going to generate your preview but now that stuff's going to be on the outside of our object is like this and you can see how that came in here kind of upside down from what we wanted so what we're going to do is we're going to tap the up key on our keyboard and so that'll tell it to bend this on the inside of the line instead of the outside of the line and that may take a second to generate there we go so once we flip that using the up key you can see him now these are on the correct side so all you have to do is you just have to come in here and hit the inner key in order for it to generate generate your geometry and that'll take a little while for it to come in here and do that perfect you can see how now your thicker objects are on the outside of this shape so now your objects kind of completed and there you go so you can definitely come in here and you can like make a copy and you can flip that with the scale tool if you want to do whatever you want with it it's not going to line up exactly I've never really been able to get these to line up exactly so like if I bring these across and match the bottom here you get some overlap it on the top but it definitely gives you some cool ideas for what you can do with shape vendor anyway that's where I'm going to wrap up this video I'll leave a comment below let me know what you thought have you been using shape bender for stuff like this I just love having that Sketch up conversation with you guys if you like this video please remember to click that like button down below if you're new around here remember to click that subscribe button for new sketchup content every week if you like what I'm doing in this channel please consider supporting me on patreon every little bit helps even if it's only a dollar a month that just helps me keep bringing you great Sketchup content but in any case thank you so much for taking the time to watch this and I will catch you in the next video thanks guys

Channel: TheSketchUpEssentials

Views: 227,743

Rating: 4.9680238 out of 5

Keywords: thesketchupessentials, the sketchup essentials, thesketchupessentials.com, sketchup tutorials, sketchup lessons, sketchup modeling, sketchup 2016, architecture, sketchup 2017, sketchup lattice, sketchup shape bender, shape bender, sketchup extension, sketchup plugin, shape bender tutorial, shape bender sketchup tutorial, sketchup, shape bender sketchup, sketchup follow me, sketchup follow me tutorial

Id: gzQxcRH-V3Q

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Fri May 05 2017