# Another SU Challenge



## SketchUp Guru

So, for those who drew the handplanes in Steve's first SU Challenge, this next one should be a breeze.

Choose a workbench plan from your favorite (or second favorite) wooddorking magazine or from a book. Draw the bench to the dimensions in the plan. 

Rules:
°Do not modify it. Draw it per the plans.
°Draw every part so the bench model could be disassembled into its individual pieces.
°Do not dimension it.
°Do not include hardware such as screws or bolts. You may include vises if you wish.

Post images of the bench in this thread. You can do WIP pics if desired.

The idea is to learn how to construct a 3D model that can be turned into shop drawings that could be givien to another woodworker and from which they could build the bench.

With the final images, please include SKP file size and The number of faces and lines from the Statistics info under Model Info. Part of the grade will have to do with efficiency. 

Any takers?


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## Shady

I'm in - how's this? :wink: 







Seriously, I'll give it a try...


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## SketchUp Guru

You owe me a keyboard. I blew coffee on mine.  :lol:

I can't wait to see what you draw.


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## gidon

Nice idea Dave. I'll give it a go - but not promising anything very quickly! Do you want the joints modeled?
Cheers
Gidon


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## SketchUp Guru

Gidon, yes. Draw the joiinery. If it requires bolts or screws, draw the holes including counterbores and countersinks. The idea is to be able to turn this drawing into a working drawing that could be used in the shop.

By the way, I'd like it if, when you post your drawings you include a bit of text talking about what new techniques you might have learned. Anything that might help the rest to learn. Feel free to post anything you think would be a tip for someone else.


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## gidon

Well as promised - I found this straightforward bench in FWW's archives.
Designed by Richard Starr it uses simple knockdown joinery. I've yet to model all the fixings but here's the bench sketched to the actual dimesions of the original. I wouldn't say I've learnt much new so far but what's impressed me is just how quickly you can do something like this in SU with very little experience - this took me - a relative newbie - less than 20 mins.




Cheers
Gidon


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## SketchUp Guru

Very good. Now, out of curiosity, how many components do you have? How many groups? Do you plan to add the joinery?

Here's a bench I started last week. I haven't had time to get back to it to finish it but there's not much left to do. This is from a FWW article by Jon Leppo. I discovered while drawing it that some of the dimensions shown in the drawings included with the article don't work. I think working through a plan and redrawing it is a good way to find these problems before you've committed your precious lumber.

Actually, redrawing the plan is a process that is highly recommended for boat builders. Frequently errors are found in the table of offsets the designer has developed for the boat. The builder will typically loft the boat full size onto the shop floor or panels made up for the purpose. There are enough cross checks that if one of the offsets is wrong, it can generally be caught at the lofting stage.

I think it would be a good idea to work through that sort of thing whenever working from plans drawn by someone else.


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## gidon

Dave 
7 components - no groups. Yep plan to add joinery (KD fittings) - will take a lot longer to do those details ...
Nice effort on yours ...
Cheers
Gidon


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## SketchUp Guru

Good. what's the 7th component? I only see six.


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## gidon

Bottom batten's adding more support for the slats ... difficult to see in the pic.
Cheers
Gidon


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## SketchUp Guru

I see now. I had missed those in my count. 

Good work. Now, after drilling some holes for the KD hardware, how about making a construction drawing from that model? With seven components you only need to show seven parts for your cutting plan. All the dimensions of the parts can be shown there with overall dimensions shown in a 3D drawing. Spacing between the slats for the bottom shelf only needs to be indicated with a note.

Try using multiple pages and consider making a 3 view page something like this.


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## Steve Maskery

Hi Dave,
OK, I'll bite 

How do you do the first angle orthographic view? (or is it 3rd - I never could remember which was which). Is it the same model copied into 3 different positions, or is it a true FAO (or TAO) view? This is one of the few things I'm still using AutoCad for.

Cheers
Steve


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## gidon

Dave 
Was just going to ask the exact same question as Steve .
Cheers
Gidon


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## gidon

Steve
http://www.ider.herts.ac.uk/school/cour ... ction.html
I'd forgotten all this stuff from school.
Cheers
Gidon


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## SketchUp Guru

It's easy as pie. Here's a 3D view of the stuff in the previous view. I made 3 copies of the bench away from the original version. I rotated and positioned them and then with perspective turned off (Camera menu) I set the orthognal view as you saw it. If I hadn't made all the parts of the original bench components, this would have really loaded up the file. Since they are all components it doesn't.


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## SketchUp Guru

Gidon, thanks for that link. I need to take a look at that.


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## Nick W

Steve Maskery":3pvjbdrm said:


> ... or is it a true FAO (or TAO) view?



Neither and/or Both! Dave has used TA for the plan and FA for the side elevation.


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## SketchUp Guru

I just make it up as I go along.  I probably should relearn all that stuff so I can make a proper display of the three views. For myself it never really matters because I can usually remember what I did to get to that point.

Should I correct it and repost it?


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## Nick W

Dave,

As you say if it's for your own use then who cares.

The way I remember the difference between the two is that with 1st Angle you draw what you would see if you rolled the object to that position, with 3rd Angle you draw what you would see if you stood in that position. Not stunningly easy to remember, I know, but somehow it stuck in my mind.


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## SketchUp Guru

Thanks Nick. How's this?





Out of curiosity, what would be the proper way to display the three views if the top front and right end are of interest?

Oh, and I think my display method comes from being left handed.


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## Steve Maskery

Gidon - Ah, yes, it's all coming back to me in all Mr Aspey's terrifying clarity. 
Thanks.

Dave - Ah, yes, you mean you cheated  Good idea though.
I think that if you need a view of the right hand end, you would draw what you see and place it on the right of the front elevation. As far as I can remember, there is no reason why you cannot have two end elevations, left and right. And top and bottom for that matter, though how you do front and back I don't know. Presumably by drawing the bottom elevation below the front, and the back elevation below that.

Or am I talking bovine colonic waste again?

Cheers
Steve


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## Nick W

No bcw from Steve this time. :lol:


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## gidon

Some helpful tips there Dave - thanks. This lesson mainly taught me to be a little more organised - never really used pages much before. And creating a page for the 3rd(?) orthographic projection is very nifty!













I've uploaded the model to 3DW in case anyone wants some plans for a simple bench.
A suggestion for the next challenge is that it focuses on something small but challenging. Ie some aspect of designing in SU rather than building something complete. More people may have a go then perhaps?
Cheers
Gidon


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## SketchUp Guru

Steve, if I cheated it was all in the name of being lazy. 

I suppose it would make sense to make a second page with the back, bottom and right ends displayed so that none of the views are too small.

BCW, a good one. I'll have to remember that one. 

Gidon, that looks great. The view of the joint is an excellent one and you have completed the assignment with the highest of marks.

I think you are ready for the next one. You want to do something smaller so how about a door knocker in the form of a lion's head? :lol: 

Or what sort of small thing do you have in mind?

BTW, I'm off to a sailing thing for the next few days. Sorry for missing last week's FSUT and unfortunately because I've been trying to get my boat ready, I've not thought up any tips for this week either. Next week I'll try to do better.


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## gidon

bcw? 

Thanks Dave! I'm still waiting for all those late entries ... 

I meant smaller in time really than dimensions . Still lion door knocker - now that would be a challenge! How about trying to do some (tricky) part of a piece of well known style of furniture or even specific piece of furniture? 

Have fun sailing - we'll miss FSUT - maybe I need a rest from 3d modelling anyway



.

Cheers

Gidon


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## Neil

Late to the party as usual... :roll: For some reason I decided to model the Frank Klausz bench from FWW/The Workbench book - I guess I have aspirations to make something very like it one day. Anyway, it hasn't turned out to be a very suitable choice for Dave's challenge because virtually every component is different. I'm not finished by a long way as I'm doing it in 'tea-break time', but here it is so far:




I still have to do most of the tail vice and some joinery details.
Its been quite a useful exercise so far - it just shows that even with the detailed plan in the back of The Workbench book, there are still a few things which are unclear and making a Sketchup model has been a really good way to sort these out.

Cheers,
Neil


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## gidon

Nice one Neil - good idea to do something you may actually one day make!
I find the joinery tricky to do in SU, but to be honest I don't really find it necessary for myself. Nice for completeness though - and mandatory for this task .
Cheers
Gidon


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## Nick W

Neil,

I built that one - 'tis a good bench. The main thing I changed was the well which I made as a 'Charlesworth' with sliding removable bottom in sections, very useful for clamping.


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## Neil

Cor, I'm impressed, Nick! I was thinking as I was modelling it that there would be a LOT of work involved in making one. How long did it take you? Good idea to make the tray removable. My plan with it is to finish the Sketchup model keeping strictly to the plans, then use the model to decide what changes I would like to make over Klausz's design and put these into a Mk. 2 Sketchup plan.

Cheers,
Neil


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## Nick W

It took a couple of weeks IIRC. 

Some other changes: 
Round dog holes for round dogs (sausage dogs?). Makes clamping non-rectangular pieces (which I seem to be doing more and more of) a lot easier.

This enabled me to use fewer, wider planks for the main sections, as the dog holes can be bored/drilled rather than having to be cut into the join between two boards (though that operation did burn out my cheapy drill (Ferm  ) - but I got to buy me a better one in its place, so overall a win there). This was a Bad Idea.  The top went cup shaped on me over the next few months. I have now planed it flat again on top, BUT it is convex underneath, so needs wedges to keep it from rocking on the base. Suppose I could plane the underside too, but at the moment I can't be ars.. er .. bothered.

I made the base with barrel nuts and bolts so that it can be taken apart - not quite sure why though. 8-[ 

Scariest bit: Boring holes for the end vice screw. Plenty of scope for misalignment as I was strying to keep the clearances small. Got it right though O

Second scariest bit: Cutting the various dovetails. This was my first go at hand made ones, and though they're not perfect, nobody else has cast aspersions in their direction.

Give it a shot, it's not as hard as it seems. Just do one bit at a time. And do make the bench slave too - it's very useful.


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## Steve Maskery

I couldn't face another mammoth model after the plane, but I've just done the Nelson tail vice that I have on my bench (out of the Landis book). The model is in 3DW if anyone want's it, too. Search for "vice". BTW, I used to be able to get the URL of the model, but I seem to have forgotten how! Can anyone remind me how I did it???


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## SketchUp Guru

Very nice Steve. Very nice. 

You must have adapted it to metric dimensions. It won't fit on my bench.


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## Neil

Nick W":rwd0e1qe said:


> Give it a shot, it's not as hard as it seems. Just do one bit at a time. And do make the bench slave too - it's very useful.



Thanks, Nick  I'll be using round dog holes as well, so I can incorporate a few of Mr. Lee's goodies :wink: 

<edit> Thats a nice model of the Nelson vice, Steve =D> 

Cheers,
Neil


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## gidon

Nice one Steve.
Cheers
Gidon


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## Newbie_Neil

Hi Steve

I am very, very impressed.

Cheers
Neil


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