Does anyone know programs which can turn wire frame drawings into tube or box section etc in just a quick click or two please? Especially for sketchup but other programs too if not. Thank you.
In solidworks, you could extrude a shape through a path. Would be rather fiddly for your example there. Would probably be easier in the case pictured to make a solid box and cut through in the required directions.
I can draw these kind of things (as in the picture) very easily. My idea is really referring to more complicated shapes. Thank you though.
mathgrrl's "thickening models with blender" tutorial is at least related - https://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/34286-tutorial-tuesday-34-thickening-3d-models-blender.html , also it seems Sketchup has a "follow me" tool that lets one extrude a shape (small circle in your case) along a given path. Third option could be remeshing in meshlab, but I am not sure how (if) that behaves when the initial geometry is actually just a thin iine.
Great idea, I want to learn how to do this too. Did some looking, may be those links will give you some ideas. edge to spine https://forums.cgsociety.org/t/edge-to-spline-3dsmax/1033493/4 spline to poly
Shapeways has something called ShapeJS that you can use to do things like this. There's a ShapeJS group in the forum down at the bottom in the developer section. OpenSCAD is another package that probably works.