Sketchup panel door tutorial

[AdrianM]

This is a small tutorial I put together for the Sketchup user group last year (before Google destroyed it with their new forum).

http://www.designsbysam.co.uk/ukworkshop/doors-tutorial.skp

It's a quick and easy technique for drawing panelled doors. If you like to draw your designs in the same way as they're built then it's not for you.

But, if like me, you use Sketchup to get dimensions and the "feel" of the piece and leave the joint layout to the real stage then it should be fine.

I've been using Sketchup for a few years now and everything I do is drawn in it first.

I have all sorts of scripts that I've written or downloaded that make things easier. I use some of these to export Cut List Gold to get the cutting layouts and I've started experimenting with running my CNC machine from Sketchup/Cut List output.

 

[SketchUp Guru]

Very good Adrian. I've shown that method here before. This is a good way to show the design idea for the doors in a project without investing a lot of time. If the door design isn't finalized, it's a good idea not to over model them.

In the interest of keeping the entity count of the door component low, you can reduce the segment counts in the arcs of the profile from the default 12 to 3 without any real noticeable change in the appearance. That reduces the entity count from 395 to 161--almost a 60% reduction.