Trying to use "follow Me" for oblong path. help?

So basically for a project I'm making a electronic device, and I'm trying google sketchup because it's easier than trying to photoshop the lines.

the problem is, I have to make a chrome rim that follows the main line around the housing (front-sides, top/bottom-back), and i can get the straight edges to work, but I cannot get the F******g curve done.

Help?

Attached is the wireframe that has to be done, with the circle at one end.

Wire.zip

Hey Graham. I have your solution my friend.

Two things:

First off you had some hidden geometry that could seriously mess with your ability to do a follow me properly. See first attached image.

Second, if you do the follow me at the scale you have you will get a broken path like the second attached image. The reason for this is that SketchUp cannot calculate very small areas so it leaves them out. The thing to do is to scale your path and profile up by 10, do your follow me and then scale it back down by .10 Sounds odd but it works.

See third attached image for the steps I followed:

1. Opened file

2. Copied the path and profile, removed hidden lines and scaled up by 10.

3. Exploded the path (as it was a group). Selected all the lines then clicked the circle with the "follow me" tool. By doing it this way you don't have to manually follow the path.

Again, select path, click the follow me tool, click the profile.

4. Selected everything and used the "soften edges" slider (Window/Soften Edges). Then I reversed the faces so that the front face was on the outside. This is very important if you are going to use a render engine at any time.

5. Scaled everything by .10

Hope this helps. Oh, and I attached the skp file at the bottom as well.

Wire3.zip

that worked!!!

thank you!

Well, it worked perfectly, but the problem is I realized that for the project i have to BEVEL the edges (with a silver colour)

so how would I do that? none of the steps seem to translate will to this.

thanks.

www 2shared com/file/IorXmQpJ/Storm3 html

Without knowing the rest of the shape it is hard to help.

You got pictures?

All I have at the moment is on flickr (i'm not at a computer with GS)

there's more and a video on flickr

www flickr com/photos/48985350@N06/sets/72157624053199270/detail/

does the compressed (zip) document on 2shared work (over 250kb so I couldn't upload it to this site)