That is how the orientation of the model matters.

Most problems with Shape Bender seem to come from people assuming how an object 'ought' to bend that unconsciously includes internal stretching/shrinking that is does not match how Shape Bender slices up the Source Object. The orientation of the model is critically important because that determines how the Source Object gets sliced up so that it can be bent. It does seem curious, to me, that if the shape bender can follow arbitrary lines in 3D, why the orientation of the model matters. Though teh problem seems easy enough to duplicate, the web page includes a link to a SketchUp file, under the image. I have uploaded picture and the test case on my website: IT's the third picture: Bent Text Two. I can still get it to fail by hitting the up or down arrows once or twice, after the first bent shape appears, and before return. I'm checking out several CAD programs to see which best meets my needs. I've only used ShetchUp for a few hours and I'm not very familiar with many of it's conventions. Thanks, Chris! Rotating everything so that the blue axis is up solved the problem. If you attach the model to this forum I'll take a look at it and see if I can get it to work. The other thing it could be is possibly the start and end edges do not line up correctly.

Unless you modified that purposely, it looks you are working sideways, and that will mess up shapebender for sure. In SU, the red and gree axis form the ground.

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