Conical Table Base - Measurements & Angles?

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Hi all, first post here, just getting started with Shapr3D after using Sketchup for a few years.

I’ve done several of the tutorials on the Shapr3D website (which are great by the way), but admittedly I haven’t had a chance to sit down and do all of them (yet). But I’m wondering if someone can help me out.

I’m trying to draw a table base idea for a potential client. The shape is simply conical but I’m having a frustrating time trying to change some dimensions and measuring and finding angles of things. Again, I’m more familiar with Sketchup’s tools so please bear with me.

Here’s the shape I’ve drawn:

ConicalBase
ConicalBase2410×1050 259 KB

To get this shape I started with a 36 inch circle, then extruded it upward 26 inches, creating a cylinder. Then I selected the top surface of the cylinder and selected “scale - uniform” and dragged the little pin as it “pinched” the top circle smaller until it looked good to my eye.
Now that I have that shape, I cannot figure out how to change the top surface diameter. I feel like I can picture this procedure in my head but I’m just not finding it.

Additionally, I’d also like to know the angles of the points (in yellow) in my attached screenshot but the conical surface is smooth all the way around and I can’t seem to select points. I’m going to draw support arms as well, and knowing the angle of the cone is important so I can match that angle on the support arm.

Ultimately, if I end up making this piece in real life, it will be made of several pieces of wood, so I’d also like to segment this shape so I can determine the angles of all the individual pieces I’ll need to cut in order to build it (if that makes sense to anybody familiar with segmented wood projects).

My apologies if this is a basic operation or if I’m asking for something too complex for my first post, haha! Thanks for any help and guidance!

-Seth

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If I were doing this, I would use the Revolve tool to create the desired shape per my dimensions. Here the base is 36" dia, the top is 24" dia and the height is 12". The final measured angle of the cone comes to 16.7°.

If you want to alter the dims of the body as in your initial request, I can show you how. Let me know.

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Exactly what I would do also.

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Mike’s way of doing it is best as you will be able to determine all angles and dimensions before you make the actual object.

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Hi StuffSethMakes

@TigerMike solution is the best one.

To answer some of your questions, if you need to modify the conical body:

  • you can use the scale tool to re-scale the top surface as you did it to scale it the first time
  • you can project the conical body to a plane and get the angles between the lines as in the video (video not to scale, angle value not the one for your project, just to show the process)

Hope it helps.
PEC

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Ahh, okay I see what you did and I understand that. Of course, I do that somewhat successfully and then it immediately brings up other questions and frustrations. Ugh. I guess the program isn’t necessarily as intuitive as so many people claim (maybe i’m just retarded, haha) but I guess I’ll start the basic tutorials from the beginning again. :man_facepalming:

thanks for the help, i’ll keep plugging away

-seth

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thanks for the info. When I use the scale tool and rescale the top surface, I’m not seeing an option to scale it to a specific size, just something like “-.75x” or something like that. Am I able to type in the specific dimension? Or do I have to guess and go back and forth until I get it where I want it? Thanks again.

-seth

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Probably easiest would be to rescale the sketch and revolve anew.