Drawing Curb Ramps In 3D

Drawing curb ramps was something that took a little bit of playing around with to figure out.  One way to look at it is to compare it to a surface tin in Autocad or Microstation.  Each triangle you draw will be a surface.  When you move up or down a particular line segment, if you don't already have the "tin" drawn, it will assume one for you.  By drawing in the curb ramp, and then pulling down the line segments at the curb, you can draw a 3d curb ramp very easily.  It is much easier to see what I am saying by watching the video below.

If you look at this image and as you watch the video you will see that as I pull the curb, sketchup automatically adds a line to segment the rectangular section into two triangles.  I figured out later that the reason for this is that all the lines of a rectangle need to be parallel to each other in order to have a square or rectangular surface.  After I figured this out I drew this ramp and you can see the difference.  This also enables me to draw a rectangle on the ramp and fill it in yellow or red or whatever color you choose for your ADA truncated domes.

This same method can be used to draw driveways or any other ramp.

A tip for when you are moving an entire line segment is to hold down one of the arrow keys to lock a particular axis.  In this video I hold down the down arrow to lock the blue (vertical) axis.  It makes it much easier to move lines and objects in the direction you desire.