SU Project for Beginners

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Hi Mr R.

I would most definitely like for you to carry on with said project. My brain (as small as it may be) has exploded, and imploded several times now, but I am busy picking up the pieces ready for the next installment. If you are willing.

I do have just one question.

What do you mean when you say,
I started by drawing a vertical rectangle

How is this done?

The only rectangles I can draw are flat on the floor.

Keep up the good work, please, and, thank you.
 
I will keep it up. thanks for the encouragement. I was mostly just trying to figure out if I should really abbreviate the door tutorial or not.

Gary, referesh my memory about which vertical rectangle I drew. In general, drawing it with the rectangle tool just requires that you orbit your view down low enough so SU will draw the rectangle vertically. The other thing you can do is make sure you've got construction lines that intersect at the opposite corners of the desired rectangle.
 
Oh, I see. I guess I wasn't real clear with that and could have used another illustration. I used horizontal and vertical construction lines to establish the edges of the rectangle. I erased them to reduce clutter before going on to the part about drawing the arc.

Orbiting to a lower veiw point would also let you draw the vertical rectangle but without some point of reference it would be difficult to know where to put it. The construction lines solve that problem.

The front rail could have been drawn anywhere and moved into place but I find it easier to use the construction lines to locate the geometry in its final place when I can.

Hope that helps.
 
No by all means keep it going Dave. I have been using SU for some time now and have still learned new things from this. Just because there is no feedback straight away doesn't mean we are not taking an interest. I suppose like me they can't always take it straight in but browse back through the postings trying them as we go. Keep up the good work it is great. I think I speak for everyone on here when I say a very big thank you for giving up your time to do this for us all. :D
 
Dave, I'm stuck on the cornice. I have trouble on the tricky bit. How do you select the cutting plane. I select the 4 lines that make up the cutting plane (as if you took a saw and cut the mitre) context click and selected intersect with model bit I just get a message saying "no intersections found between selection set and rest of model" It's probably obvious but I can't see it.
Thanks
John McM
 
John, here's a quickie of essentially the same thing. I drew the cutting plane longer than I did before to make it a little more obvious. After drawing the cutting plane I double clicked on the face which selects the face and the bounding edges. After that I would right click and choose Intersect with model. you need to have the face selected as well as its edges.

cut1.jpg


Here's a close up of just that little triangle as I did it in the original. I did the same thing by double clicking on the little face extending out of the moulding.

cut2.jpg


If you find it easier to make the cutting plane larger, that's fine. all the excess gets deleted anyway. I hope that makes sense.
 
Hi Dave
I am stuck at the start :roll:
I am trying to do the first curve but when I try to get the top of the curve ( pull up the middle ), I get it on the line and push the button but the line jumps above the line :? .

What am I doing wrong :roll:
 
Colin, does it end up looking something like this?
beziercurve.jpg


In this example SketchUp's inferencing engine is trying to be smart but isn't quite smart enough. It is aligning the point with the center of the edge of the rectangle. If that is a problem there are two solutions I can think of. First, zoom in tight on the central part of the rectangle which will give you finer control over the placement of that point.

The other option would be to make the rectangle taller to start so you don't get close to the center when trying to place that point.

One other thing comes to mind to ask. do you have Enable Length Snapping checked? If so uncheck it and try again. It won't change the inferencing thing (and there's no over riding that) but it will reduce some problems you might run into.

Hope this helps.
 
Finally, we're ready to start the doors. The first step is to locate the centerline of the opening with a construction line. I'll also set construction lines at the top and bottom as well as a long the left side of the opening.
crown_and_doors16.jpg


Next I hide the carcase and start drawing the door parts. I drew more construction lines but they aren't necessary. I drew the stile and gave it thickness with Push/Pull. It's hard to see but I moved the stile to the right 1/16” to allow a gap between door and carcase. I also shortened the stile by 1/16” on each end using P/P.

crown_and_doors17.jpg


This first stile was made into a component and a copy made. The copy was mirrored and its outside edge aligned with the construction line that indicates up the centerline. Then I moved the new stile to the left 1/16”. The rails were drawn in using the stiles as guides for length and placement.

I used construction lines to layout the groove for the door panel. Since the stiles are components as are the rails, only one stile and one rail need editing.

crown_and_doors19.jpg


P/P makes lightning work the grooves.

crown_and_doors20.jpg


crown_and_doors21.jpg


Note: shadows are shown but only to add a bit of contrast. Leave the shadows turned off when working.

The rail gets the same sort of treatment.
crown_and_doors22.jpg


Tenons are down with P/P the same way. No dozing off please.

crown_and_doors25.jpg


The door panel comes next. Rectangle tool to the rescue.

crown_and_doors28.jpg


crown_and_doors29.jpg


crown_and_doors30.jpg


And the panel also gets made into a component.

crown_and_doors31.jpg


Copy all five door parts and move them toward the right.

crown_and_doors33.jpg


With all the right side door parts selected mirror the door with the Scale tool.

crown_and_doors34.jpg


Move the door over until its left stile touches the right stile of the other door. Then move it to the right 1/8” which gives the proper spacing all around.

crown_and_doors36.jpg


The doors are finished except for a bit of hardware.

crown_and_doors37.jpg


The drawers are next and there's a neat trick we haven't used yet. It will make it possible to get away with drawing only one drawer.
 
Dave,

Great series which I've been following with interest. Just one point on this latest lesson, which may come down to a point of style, but hey here goes anyway. At the point where you have drawn the five sub-components of the door, I would have selected them all and made a door component of them. You can then just copy this and mirror it for the other door.

Keep up the excellent work.
 
Nick, you're right. I could have done that. Another thing I could do if I wanted to use the same style of door in the future is to save that door component by itself. (Right click on the component and choose Save component.) Then I could pull that door out again, resize as needed and move on.
 
And now the drawers. Although the plans I've been working from don't show them, I've decided to use dovetails for the joints and to make allowance for side-mounted drawer glides. The front dovetails will be half blind and the back ones will be through DTs.

It doesn't matter which drawer we start with but I'm starting at the bottom. I laid out some construction lines indicating the corners of the space for the drawer. I also added a construction lines at the bottom of the drawer a known distance from the front of the cabinet. In this case I put it 24” out in front because the drawer wouldn't be that deep and I wouldn't have to work inside the cabinet to complete the drawer.

armoire_drawer1.jpg


Using the construction lines as a guide I drew a vertical rectangle and used P/P to give it some thickness. This is the drawer front. I added some dimensions temporarily to help illustrate the tiny change about to be made.

armoire_drawer2.jpg


As drawn the drawer front is exactly the same size as the opening. Clearly that's not a good idea. We'll use P/P to move each edge face in by 1/16” inch. I could have resized the drawer front in two steps—1/8” at a time but then I'd have to move the drawer to center it in the opening. It's really six of one and a half dozen of the other.

armoire_drawer4.jpg


armoire_drawer5.jpg


After pushing all four surfaces we make the drawer front into a component. The lay out some construction lines as guides for the drawer side. I put a guide line at the mid line of the end of the drawer face (This is more for illustration than anything. You could manage fine without this one.) and another 7/16” in from the end on the back face. The 7/16” plus the 1/16” gap from the Push/Pull, above, create a 1/2” gap for the drawer slide.

armoire_drawer8.jpg


I start a rectangle for the side as shown. Notice the inference lines showing referencing to the construction lines.

armoire_drawer9.jpg


I put a construction line in as an illustration for the back of the drawer but I could have simply typed the distance in to get the line.

armoire_drawer10.jpg


Push/Pull makes the drawer side. I make it a component, copy it mirror the copy and move that copy into place for the opposite side. A construction line at the other end makes it easy to locate the second side.

After that I draw the back. I draw it to the full height of the sides and front. I make it a component as well. Note that I start drawing it on the outside face of the drawer side. The opposite end will also be on the outside face of the corresponding side. Of course the real board would need to be made to this length to make allowance for the joinery.

armoire_drawer13.jpg


Now we'll start the joinery on the front. First I add a rebate to the exterior face of the drawer side at each end.

armoire_drawer14.jpg


armoire_drawer15.jpg


Now we start laying out for the dovetails. I'm only doing a single pin and two half pins. You could do as many as you want. The procedure is the same for all of them. First a centerline for the middle pin and one for the top and bottom half pins. Those last two are set at 1/4” from the edge which is half of the 1/2” wide pin.

armoire_drawer17.jpg


I added lines 1/4” off either side of the centerline, too. Then I start with the Protractor tool to set angled lines. I used 8° for the angle. The biggest trick is to make sure you get the angled lines running the right way but isn't that the biggest trick when laying out dovetails on the wood, too?

armoire_drawer18.jpg


At this point it wouldn't make any difference if we cut sockets or pins first. I'm cutting sockets first. Edit the side component, trace the layout lines...

armoire_drawer22.jpg


armoire_drawer23.jpg


...and then Push/Pull the waste. Remember to waste the sockets in this case. Since the sides are related components, the sockets are done on the other side at this point, too.

armoire_drawer24.jpg


Edit the Drawer front and trace the sockets. Waste the spaces between the pins with Push/Pull.

armoire_drawer26.jpg


Here's the completed joint after repeating the last steps on the opposite end, too.

armoire_drawer27.jpg


Plow the groove for the bottom panel in the side panels. I hid the front and back for the moment to make it easier to see.

armoire_drawer29.jpg


Edit the front and plow the groove there as well.

armoire_drawer46.jpg


Edit the bottom of the back. Push/Pull the bottom up so the bottom panel can slide in after the drawer box is assembled.

armoire_drawer31.jpg


I repeat the layout steps for the dovetails then edit the sides and the back.

armoire_drawer43.jpg


A rectangle starts the bottom panel.

armoire_drawer48.jpg


armoire_drawer49.jpg


Push/Pull completes it. I used x-ray view to allow me to push the panel into the groove on the drawer front.

armoire_drawer51.jpg


We make the bottom panel into a component and we have a drawer. We could select all five components and make them into a component but we'd have to break up copies of the drawers later anyway so we'll skip it.

armoire_drawer55.jpg


The next drawer is the same height as the first. I copy the components up by 7/8”(3/4” for the divider plus 1/16” for the gap at the top of the bottom drawer and another 1/16” for the gap at the bottom of the next drawer. I set construction lines just to show where we're going.

armoire_drawer20A.jpg


I copy the drawer up again to make the third one. Notice the top horizontal construction line. It is set to the height of the drawer opening minus 1/16” for the gap. This drawer is too tall for the opening. Hold on to your hats because we're going to fix that in a moment.

armoire_drawer22A.jpg


armoire_drawer23A.jpg
 
Before we move on to resizing the drawer we need to make the components for this drawer unique. If we don't, resizing the parts for this drawer will resize the others and we don't need that. Select the front, right click and choose Make unique. Repeat that for the back and for one of the sides. We're going to take care of the other side using a Ruby script.

armoire_drawer26A.jpg


In case you don't already have it, you should get a Ruby script called Apply To. This script allows you to get a component definition from one component and apply it to another one. This is extremely handy when you forget to make components or when you need to change definitions as we'll do next. To use it you select the component whose definition you want to apply, right click and mouse over Component definitions. You'll get a fly out menu. Click on Get definition. Then select the component or components that you want to apply the definition to. Right click and choose Component definitions and click on Apply definition.

Alright. Back to the drawer.

Select the drawer side you made unique and get its definition. Then select the other one and apply the definition.

armoire_drawer27A.jpg


armoire_drawer28A.jpg


Now we'll start resizing the drawer to fit the opening. In the last image we can see there's a 1-1/2” difference between the desired height of the drawer and the current height. We could try scaling the drawer however that would change the scale of all the details too. In scaling the front for example, the dovetail pins and the groove would get narrower. We don't want that so we'll attack this differently.

We'll start with the drawer front. I hid the sides to get them out of the way. I also set the view to x-ray so we can see both ends of the drawer front. Edit the drawer front and use a left to right selection box around the top part of the drawer front. Include the middle pins in the selection box. A left to right selection only selects those line segments that fall entirely within the box. A right to left selection box selects all line segments the even partially fall in the box.

So a left to right selection and then the Move tool. Move the selected geometry down 3/4” (half the total required height change.)

armoire_drawer24A.jpg


Make a new left to right selection around only the top geometry this time. Move that selection down 3/4”. Presto! The drawer front is the right height and the the center pin is still in the center.

armoire_drawer25A.jpg


We repeat that for the back and then do the sides.

armoire_drawer29AA.jpg


The drawer is now the correct height for the opening. It also fits the top opening so we copy it up 7/8”. We're finished with the drawers short of installing them. If we wanted to we could draw the hardware but I'll pass on that for this model.

armoire_drawer211A.jpg


armoire_drawer214A.jpg


Just a final note for this section of the tutorial. This resizing technique works well for these drawers and it is useful for things like cabinet doors and other similar things. One thing you need to consider in the case of dovetailed drawers is that the more pins you have, the more steps you'll need to use to keep the pins the proper size. The easy way to figure it is to count the tails. That'll give you the required number of steps. You need to figure out the distance to make each move step. Depending upon your point of view, at some point it might be just as easy to draw the new drawer from scratch.

Now that we have these drawer components and door components from the previous chapter, we might want to save these components for future use. If you use the same type of drawer or door construction frequently you might find it handy to have a “standard” drawer or door. You can import that component into other drawings and resize as needed to suit.

Next time we'll add a few details and then see how we can make working drawings from the cabinet model.
 
Dave, I'm a bit stunned. I shan't even pretend to have grasped all that just yet. You must have a brain the size of a planet. I am constantly amazed at how good SU is in the right hands. If I can achieve even a tiny amount of what you do I shall be a very happy man. Until then I'll continue to deprive some village of it's idiot. How lucky are we in this forum to have found you!!!
Again, thankyou.
John McM
 
John, thanks for that. It's not that I have a brain the size of a planet. It's just there's nothing much in there so SU fills the void. ;) Actually, once you figure out the tricks it goes very quickly.

Here's a quick little video clip showing that select and move trick from the drawer resizing part of the last chapter. Thank you to WiZeR for the web space.

Resizing
 
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