A small celebration at least

Since I've had a lot of setbacks lately, I have to celebrate one nice milestone. I created my first component offset in Sketchup. What does that mean?

 

First it means that my offset selection tool works well enough that I can select two arbitrary points on the streets and form a path between them. The tool allows me to select what side of the street I want, or I can select the center. Then I can decide where I want to lay my tracks:

When I'm satisfied I click to finalize the path

 Whether tracks, bike lanes, road markings, or a dinosaur trail, I can now enable users to put anything down along the path they desire. Tracks are super easy because all you have to do is define the cross section of the rail and then have it follow a line to create the 3D rail. But more complicated types of paths aren't that much harder. I could make railroad ties that follow the line as well, as long I defined how I wanted them spaced.

Some future steps will be to curve the line so there are no awkward angles for the rail as seen in the intersection above. But first I'll probably define a few more components, like a bike lane (and dinosaur trail) to test out the new technology.

Personally, my biggest waste of time when doing site designs was trying to draw offsets well, whether I was making sidewalks, tracks, or lane markings. Making this tool work well will be the biggest benefit to me in my future use of Sketchup for site design.