From the course: SketchUp Tips

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,600 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Use math to model precise forms

Use math to model precise forms - SketchUp Tutorial

From the course: SketchUp Tips

Start my 1-month free trial

Use math to model precise forms

- [Scott] Hi, Scott Onstott, here. I've always been kind of a math geek myself, but whether or not you like math or not, I think we can probably all agree that there are certain forms that are very beautiful, and wouldn't it be great if we could get those into SketchUp? And it turns out, there's a very easy way to do that. Here I am using wolfram alpha, which is a search engine that scientists and mathematicians often use, and I'm just typing in different forms that I'm aware of that are beautiful. Here's a logarithmic spiral. I think you'll agree it has a pleasing form. We can get that into SketchUp using a plugin that I found. Before I show you the plugin, though, let's take a look at some other forms. The catenary is also another interesting form. The reason for this is, this is the way that things hang under the influence of gravity, so for example, this curve here would be a good cable on a suspension bridge, or it would represent the cross section of a piece of fabric hanging…

Contents