The best way to make roads that bend and go up or down?

Hi everybody!

I want to make a highway interchanges like this one:

And I am wondering what the best way is to make a road that bends and goes up or down at the same time. This is the best technique that I came up with so far:

(delete the unnessecary lines)

(I mean, make the line in the previous image much smaller, so it looks like this)

(Lift only one side of the little line and do it strictly vertically)

I don't think that this is the best technique tho. It is rather time consuming and not too accurate. I would really like to know if any of you know how to do this in a more effecient/ faster way. All tips are welcome!

Thanks,

Pieter

@Gaieus:

I have tried the follow me and keep tool and it is indeed more intuitive and faster to use. Thanks for the advice!

@Charly2008

I have had a look at the Curviloft and Perpendicular Face plugins and they look very interesting. However, and correct me if I am wrong, I think that even though these are interesting plugins, the real difficulty lies in making the "initial path" or curve the road should follow. These tools are just another way, like Shape Bender and Follow me and keep, to make a road out of the initial path.

I have encountered a few problems making this path. If you don't do it very carefully you get things like this:

I think a part of the problem are the limitations of the curve tool in sketchup.

Does anyone know a solution to this?

Thanks in advance!

Hey Rclub24,

I have had a look at the 1001bits userguide and I think "Extrude along sloping curved path" is pretty similar to Shape Bender and Follow me and keep. Thanks for the advice anyway!

Hey Box,

I am trying the Bezierspline tool and it looks very promising. I will try to post some examples when I'm a bit more advanced.

Thanks a lot!!

Hey Jim,

Just to be clear, by NURBS you mean tools like bezierspline?

Hi everyone again!

After some testing I have figured out what the best way is for me to make roads that bend an go up or down at the same time.

I mainly use two plugins:

Fredo's BezierSpline plugin: (Of which I only use the Uniform B-Spline tool because of the smooth results for this purpose.)

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=13563

and Wikii's Follow Me and Keep plugin: (to make a road out of the curve)

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=16465

This way I was able to make the following interchange:

I think the main drawback for the moment is that you have to devide the curves you make with BezierSpline into really a lot of sides until they get smooth. I can be wrong, but it also appears to me that the sides are not equal destributed along the curve.

@Dabbig:

Thanks, that might be usefull too one day!

That's hard to say in fact, because I didn't work continiously at it. Let's say I worked a couple of hours every day on it for about four or five days. I find it hard to make an estimation though.