How to draw (and render) Power Lines (circuits)

[reffo]

HI; I big problem.

I have to draw in a houe the electic circuits
(you know..the electric wire from the bulb to the switch)

but not using a small extruded circle along a line, (to difficult in a render)


Like in the exemple.. making simple line not a pipe

thanks a lot

[Kram1032]

You want to make a line as thick as an edge?
sorry, the only way is to make a very thing pipe. Indigo doesn't support Edge rendering

[reffo]

Thick as an edge,,
that's because, making circuits, and drawing 90 degreee angle it's wary difficult.. expetially with the extrude.

thanks anyway

[Kram1032]

you can use the spin functions to rotate around edges

Well... as thin as an edge... - there's one problem:
Indigo actually renders edges... But edges are infinitely thin. So there's no chance that they'd ever get hit by a light ray
No way, you'd ever see them.
There's one last way: you could extrude the edges *after* shaping them correctly
This way, you could get both flat planes or cables with extremely thin volume.

The best way still is to directly use tubes and go around edges with the spin function in my opinion

Edit: Oh wait, nonsense, sorry: You're using SketchUp... I dunno, how to do it, there, if at all...

[crojack]

Draw the line (wire), than create a very small circle at one end of the line, than select all of the line and use the Follow Me tool. It will make all the corners and everything, super easy, one of my favorite tools in skp!

[Kram1032]

Now, that sounds nice

Oh, lol, yeah... Same in Blender more or less... I just never think about that feature ^^ (It's a bit more fiddling to get there, though...)