Google Sketchup - Come Along for the Ride

Betsy said:

Putting in the legs and zooming and panning

Second try on this one. Had it almost done and it went into oblivion somewhere. Oh well - here we start again.

This is where we ended the last time.



So now it's time to place the legs. This will be another exercise in redundancy. No copying and pasting - practice practice practice. :+)

We are going to work with the bottom left leg. You need to select your rectangle tool and move it to the corner of the two guide lines. When your tool hits the corner exactly a black inference dot will show up showing that you are at the intersection of the guides. Left click the mouse once and let go. push the mouse up about an inch or so and click again. Then type in 3,3 and Enter. This gives you the dimension of your leg.

Next select your push/pull tool, which is the same tool we used to give depth/thickness to the top.

One thing you have to remember about the push/pull tool is this-whatever it is hovering over will turn to a bunch of dots--that means the tool is ready to do something to that particular part of your project. Because of that you need to be sure that the tool is on top of the new rectangle/leg. Once you have it over the leg = left click and bring the leg up. Then type 29.25 in the VCB box and hit enter.

You should now have this.



Now we want to work on the top left leg. You can see that when you place your rectangle tool there that it is not as easy to get the intersection to come into view. This is like standing at your workbench and not being able to correctly see the part you are trying to work on. So you either walk around the bench or you move the project. In this case if you physically walk around the project all you'll see is the back of your computer-- that won't help-believe me. What you want to do is to pan and zoom.

I like to pan (use that ghostly hand) and move the project to the center of the screen and then I zoom in (using the scroll wheel on the mouse) until I get a good view.

This is what my screen looks like.



Now try getting your intersection inference to show up. Place your second leg just like the first. Then zoom an d pan some more until you get all four legs in place.



Now is a good time to learn the eraser function. You cannot use the Edit drop down menu for this part - you can only use the eraser. The eraser is the flat pink tool (7th from the left).

Before you go any further have you been saving your table progress? I'm assuming you are building with me and not just reading. Maybe, please.

So anyway - now is a good time to get rid of those guide lines. You do this two ways one simple one not so hard way. The simply way if you want all of your guides to go away is to go to the Edit menu on the tool bar and drop down and select delete guides and just like that they are gone.

However,what if you need to keep one or two guides and only need to erase one or two. Hummm you do that with the eraser tool and this is how that's done.

Select the eraser tool bring it to the guide you want erased and left click near the guide - it should turn blue the click again - and it's gone

So now we have an upside down table. That's not much use to us. Use your pan and orbit tools to flip this table upright.



This is what we want to end up with.



Hope you all are getting a little something out of this. I know I am. All questions and comments welcomed.

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Betsy said:

Hall table progress with questions at end

Today, I'm going to put in the aprons and hopefully with the help of my LJ friends the openings for the drawers.

First the aprons. This is what I what I'm going to end up with at the end of this blog session.



Use your zoom tool and pan tool to move the table around so that one of the "short end" legs are showing. (Since I've already managed to get the aprons on, I'm simply going to erase one short apron to demonstrate what I did.)

Select your rectangle tool and move it so that you get the black intersection inference dot to show (in the lower left corner at the "top" of the leg). Move the cursor up to the guide mark and over to the right slightly. Type in 5.5, .75 in the VCB box. This should give you a tall rectangle - not one on it's side.

Use the push/pull tool and pull the rectangle out 9.5". This will give you your short apron. Do the same procedure on the other end. On the front and back do the same procedure but pull out the rectangle to 36".



Now my problem - how to do the front.





What technique should I use to make the front? The front as made in the real world is 5 pieces. Top and bottom rails are 1" x 36". There are three stiles. Two stiles on the ends are 2.25×3.5 and the center stile is 3.5×3.5.

I've put in the guide lines.



Now the question should I use the line tool to outline the drawer openings or should I use the rectangle to do so?

I've drawn a separate front and did the lines and did both the line tool and the rectangle tool. I came up with the same result.





Now I've gone back to my model and drawn the lines and then used the rectangle tool. Doing this brings up the blue "face" of the drawer openings.



I've tried to use the push pull tool to push the openings and it does not go all the way out. From under the table you can see what I'm talking about.



I can get one drawer opening to push all the way to be an actual opening but the other I can't get to do the same.

So how would you do the front of this table?

Thanks in advance.

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