Open mesh material

I need to produce panels of open mesh like this:

http://www.secureyourfertiliser.gov.uk/images/weldmesh_fence.jpg [dead link]

...within frames. Its used in the lower half of tubular hand railing as a safety feature. At the moment I draw the rectangular frame and then the grid using a vertical and horizontal starter bar, and then copying both throughout the frame using the 'x' command. It's tedious to say the least. What I would like to do is to draw the frame (say out of 25mm flat steel, and then use a predefined material to infill the panel. Here's one I did earlier:

https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?id=c13f17c7664b00ec2d10117a2f43f649

The panels vary in length (rarely in height) so I can't use any pre-defined components. The square aperture between the mesh bars needs to be transparent, and not translucent.

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated.

Mark

Mark,

Here is a jpg that I've used a lot for things like screened porch. I don't remember if the graphic came with SU or I downloaded it from INet. It is inside the Metal folder of Materials. The image scales nicely and may work for your application. Play with transparency. At the distance you show your model, you just want to hint that there is mesh but not to show every little strand. Speckled textures also sometimes give the illusion of mesh.

http://sketchup.googlegroups.com/web/metal_grill.jpg?gsc=RbVFKiEAAABH5M0ULtPqhNj5OUNTV4lBr2sviCIj6yZ48rgZIYHFB0zfKN-m9S9niuHrq-IEXAE [dead link]

DT

Hi Mark,

how would you like this?

http://groups.google.com/group/SketchUp/web/weldmesh_fence.skp?hl=en [dead link]

Wolfgang

OMG,,,,WOW !!! That's great! Now generally, as a rule, I don't get very excited over something like weldmesh, but that is exceptional !! Thank you. How did yoiu generate or where did you source it?

Mark

How would I save that weldmesh that features in the skb file so that it will appear in my materials pallette every time I wanted to use it? I've completely re-done my trash screen model with what you have supplied, and it looks soooo much better. Thank you again. Can I upload it to the 3D warehouse? (don't tell me it's already

there...please?)

Hi Mark,

it is simply one stitch out of the mesh-jpg you supplied above, converted into png with alpha-channel, erased whatever you want to have transparent and uploaded as texture to the materials browser again. In the browser's edit-register you can resize the stitch to whichever you want. In return you can export the texture from my skp

and import to every other of your models again.

For the future I recommend to shoot pictures for use as materials perpendicular to the object. That avoids pulling horizontals and verticals into rectangularity.

Have fun

Wolfgang

BTW: I wouldn't reject a few stars.

Mark,

I never tried before but it should be possible to export the material (it is called Material1, but you could rename it to weldmesh) as weldmesh.skm to BOOT/C:Google/Google SketchUp 6 (or whatever)/materials/metals.

Feel free to do with it what you want. We both have equal rights on it! ;-)

Wolfgang

Ahh....sim-pliss-imus maximus. I used this 'square on' gif:

http://www.mcnichols.com/spanish/products/wiremesh/images/weldmesh_big.gif

and then this tutorial:

http://www.axialis.com/tutorials/tutorial-misc001.html

to achieve what you did, yours still looks better though :(

Looks like you have to save the png as a skm file. Assuming you have first done 'create material' -

In SU go to Window>materials. On the Select tab, select 'in model' from the drop down list. Right click the weldmesh stitch and select 'Save As'. Navigate to the Materials folder et voila! The png is saved as a skm file for future use in any model.

Hi Mark,

firstly, skm is nothing else but a zipped jpg or png.

I cannot create skm. Instead as you said I selected ,,create

material''. Then I went to ,,edit'' and hit the icon ,,search for

texture'' (I have German commands, this is just an approximation).

That allows you to load the png into the materials browser. At the

lower part of this register you see two value-boxes to size the cutout

of your material. You can big loops or small loops. Whatever suits

best to your model.

If you go back to the ,,select'' register and right-click on the

material you will have the choice to eather ,,save as'' or to ,,export

texture''. Save as will save the material as skm, export will deliver

the png I created with the help of your mesh-jpg.

Creating materials with this technic needs some experimenting to get

an eye for ,,where to place the cutout''. Else you will get seems

which will distort the overall impression. Your jpg was a very

advantageous source. I did not have to overwork it in my graphic-

editor. Only get it rectangular.

Working with alpha-channel also needs some testing. You have to

experiment with different compression methodes. It does not like -

that is my guess - anti-aliasing. Sharp borders between opacity and

transparency are helpfull.

It is past midnight where I live. I will send you my intermediate

steps some other time.

Good night

Wolfgang

Here’s an image with 16 of Wolfgang’s weldmesh images to make a nice point about minimizing tiling images. Pixels, everything else the same. If this larger version is used to paint a 7’x7’ face instead of the single repeat unit posted above, the file was about 4 times larger than it should be.

Hi to everybody,

firstly I have to agree with r (Mr. T). Digital Thumb did not deserve

to get 2 stars. Everything below 3 stars is rude. If we start

downrating good will help nowbody will risk to post a ,,guess''. And

most what we do here is guessing. 90% of my work is guessing at first.

And this weldmesh-tile was a lucky strike. But I strongly belief it

was an unintentional mistake by somebody.

Now to catamountain. I do not understand your two posts due to my

personal linguistic deficits. My weldmesh-tile png contains exactly

one stitch or loop and acounts for 98 kb. It does not matter wether my

face - on which I apply the material - shows 16 or 144 tiles. It

always accounts for 98 kb. When I created this material out of Mark's

source file I did not know whether it will help him or not. That is,

why I didn't waste time on minimizing the png-size, and because I

wanted to keep a certain brilliance. I guess - I havn't tried yet -

you can downsize my weldmesh.png to about 40 kb with still having a

nice impression. But you should keep in mind that png (especially with

alpha-channel) will always account a little bit higher than the

analogous jpg.

If I still misunderstood you, please let me know.

Wolfgang

Thanks VAM, Nice to see some of us still care around here(although i know others do but keep quiet?) This is a community for sharing ideas, not saying this answer is better, or that answer is garbage. The last thing we

want is for people to be afraid to make posts. Everyone that offers help here does so with good intentions, if you think the answer was not up to your scale of enlightenment, just read down to the next one, thats the beauty of Usenet. <\2pesos>

It look like the actual number of users ranking posts has some sort of bug. After 11 people rated DTs post, the number dropped to a single digit. I think the 5 users I see is actually 15. The silent majority also approve of people willing to publicly brainstorm.

________

Wolfgang, your weldmesh is not only attractive, but helps to

demonstrate why people should use the smallest repeating unit for an

SU material. Often enough people wonder why SU is working slow, or

their model is too large for the 3D Warehouse or GE. One of the

reasons could be the material they are using has an unnecessarily

large file size.

From your SKP, the weldmesh image opened in Photoshop as a 38.4 kb

PNG. I made a larger version because people beginning to use SU may

use such an unnecessarily large image as a material. That larger

version happened to grow to 409 kb. (I don't know why it grew larger

through the posting process).

Posting a small, well detailed image AND a larger, well detailed image

will let people import the two images to use as textures. They can

see for themselves how dramatically image material size affects the

SKP size.

Then they can store the more effective, smaller image material in a

favorite material library by dragging and dropping the thumbnail image

in the Material browser https://sites.google.com/site/sketchupsage/start#TOC-How-do-I-make-Material-and-Component-Collections-

Catamountain,

as I mentioned before: my linguistic deficits, the fault was with me.

Now I understand what you were explaining.

Yes, I fully agree. Choosing the smallest possible tile(cutout,

repeating unit) is advantageous and helps preventing seems coming from

daylight.

Unfortunatly I havn't found a methode yet to tile a cobblestone-wall

which you will find overhere quite a lot in picturesque medieval

localities.

Wolfgang