Sketchup newbie - approaching complex angles

[poundy]

I'm a total newb on Sketchup, been playing for a few weeks but not doing anything interesting until now.

I can totally do simple designs that are all lovely 90* joinery, have seen many tutorials on YT that show this kind of thing, but I want to model a stool - with angled legs.

I thought about how to approach it and think the best approach was draw legs (longer than needed) and then angle them in. I'm using a 5* inward angle front and back, and I've done that so I have 4 components, all angled in the correct way. I have even trimmed the base of them to be flat.

Now I am having trouble getting my mind around the rails and apron (is it called apron on such a small item?) - basically how the hell do I model that! I've struggled to get guidelines onto faces so I can measure from there; when I do, I seem to get "not quite on the face" or something so I get little artifacts if I create a rectangle and extrude that. Plus, I want the measurements of those components to be accurate measured in the square sense, not the angled sense if I draw onto the angled face (even though the dimensions may not be much different there over the few hundred mm and small angle... but it is different!).

So really I'm interested in anyone's thoughts on how they would approach this... including rewind and start at the beginning :) One option in that vein I was thinking is to draw in 90*, including all the rough layout, in particular heights of rails/aprons, so that then when I angle the legs in I can go back to drawing intersection of those components to the legs and get into modelling the joinery from that. That might be how I take a stab tonight, but in the meantime I thought I'd throw it to the brainstrust here and see what I got back !

(YT link for Sketchup Essentials channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJafTeHBrRBL9tS-S-kRbpw) that I quite like the approach of. I play everything back at 1.25* speed as I tend to absorb things better [strange, I know] and this guy is always at the best pace. Many others I've watched are still too slow!)

[poundy]

So a few iterations later, I have a decent result. Well I would have had I saved my working files and not had an unexpected restart of my PC overnight :) Oh well, this just gives me more practice :)

One thing I'd like thoughts about is how to easily get a guide line or height from an angled component to the "ground" plane. Imagine this scenario, I have a leg leaning in 8* in two directions, and want to get a guide line at an accurate height above the floor on the inside point, so I can then draw a line around the faces and trim. What I ended doing wasn't too bad, but I'd have preferred to only use guidelines, but I just drew a rectangle on the ground, then raised it to the desired height, edited the leg component and drew around the intersections. But I can think of other scenarios that may not be that easy....
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[Kuffy]

I often draw a rectangle to use as a water level in sketchup as you have done. I do the same thing in real life because math is hard but water levels are easy.

[Bernmc]

I’d stop learning sketchup now and learn Fusion360. I spent a couple of months doing sketchup because that’s what woodworkers seem to use, but became increasingly frustrated with its limitations. Final straw was a cabinet designed in 19mm ply which I decided to build out of 16mm MDF instead - just to make sure I had it right before wasting $200 worth of ply.

Should be a simple change, right? After all that’s what computers are for. Turns out it’s not in sketchup. You essentially have to manually resize everything. Hours of work. With Fusion360, you change one parameter, and everything else just happens. Boom. Move on - nothing to see here.

360 is frustrating as hell to start with, but with perseverance it’ll pay you back. And it’s free!

[poundy]

thanks Kuffy, seems like I'll stick with that plan then :)

Thanks Bernmc, I guess that may be my next step :) (it's downloading ;) ) EDIT: I'd tried it a while ago, and my free period has expired. Hobbyist use is for first year, and "renewal conditions apply". Guess we won't know until later whether that's a simple ask and ye shall receive, or thousand hurdles later maybe we'll let you kind of thing.....


So just going back to my model above, and visually the length of the legs seems too long without additional rails, so I think I will add another set 2/3 or 3/4 between the higher/shorter ones and the top skirt. OMG that has my mind in a spin, trying to get appropriate rectangles in space that I can then extrude! Bernmc, can you give that a quick play on F360 and see how quick that can happen?

[poundy]

OK, confirmed, Fusion360 will NOT be FREE for your second year. Does that change your opinion of what longer term choice you'll make? Just asking this now because I know the pain you will go thru re-learning a different product, for a home/hobby use it's pretty much you learn one and only one, otherwise you have too much time invested in the education part not the productive use - I had a similar problem with PCB design software, I learnt Eagle as it was free, but limited, but I ended up spending more time in KiCAD and for any additional work I'd probably use that as I am now a little more proficient...

[Bernmc]

I signed up as a 'student', so it's currently free for 3 years. The qualifications for 'student' were pretty broad, so it wasn't a problem even though I wasn't doing anything uni-like at the time. You could probably just use a different email addy and re-register even as an enthusiast to get additional years - they (currently) don't seem particularly interested in making money out of small fry. Of course that could change...

The changes to your model you mention above would be pretty quick and easy if your design is set up correctly.

Even at free for a year, I'd still learn it over sketchup. It's just so much more versatile, and I suspect the basics of parametric modelling will be applicable to other modern cad systems if 360 becomes too-many-money.

I did a Sketchup vs fusion 360 learning thread a while back, and got some good advice on learning resources. Most useful was Lars Christensen (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo29kn3d9ziFUZGZ50VKvWA) - he's prolific and handles a lot of user questions.

[dmorse]

OK, confirmed, Fusion360 will NOT be FREE for your second year.

Odd. I'm in my second year using it. I only had to re-certify my hobbyist status, just clicked a box in a popup.

[Bernmc]

I had a quick play this morning to see how quick/easy it would be. Bear in mind I'm a 360 novice. Took me an hour of fiddling.

The design is parameter driven, so, for example, you can change the height of the stool by changing one number (Height = 1000 to Height = 500 in the pics below). Note also that when changing the height, the braces change and re-dimension automatically too. I made one quick mortice, again just to show it moves along with everything else when you re-dimension.

It's a pretty quick and basic design - I've only done one side of braces (it's very easy to mirror this to add the rest of the braces), and have only given a couple of dimensions parameters. If I was designing to build, I'd have included some calculated dimensions too, for example to make the mortice and tenon joints dynamic. Along the lines of tenon width = ½ the thickness of the brace, tenon length = 4 x tenon width. That way, the tenon will automatically resize if I change the braces. Note also that the mortice is 'cut' by the tenon in the design, so any change to the tenon is automatically mirrored in the mortice.

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[poundy]

Odd. I'm in my second year using it. I only had to re-certify my hobbyist status, just clicked a box in a popup.
hmm, i wonder if the problem I had was that I'd actually had it lapse prior to trying to renew.... the real person I spoke to said nope, no 2nd year... I'll push a bit further

[poundy]

hmm, i wonder if the problem I had was that I'd actually had it lapse prior to trying to renew.... the real person I spoke to said nope, no 2nd year... I'll push a bit further
looks like my account has renewed the license. Lets sit back and see....
And yes I totally understand the benefits of parametric CAD. Such a more intelligent wat to work in most cases, so you can scale things as you iterate.... so I guess I'll start looking at a different set of YT vids now and reset my expectations for a few weeks until I get to speed:)

[poundy]

This one on YT (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJLVbv0uuOQ) is a good (but 48 mins) view of the power of parametric design, for anyone else interested...

[RossM]

OK, confirmed, Fusion360 will NOT be FREE for your second year.

This is NOT true. What is required (and was previously) is that you will need to reconfirm/requalify your status for hobby use after each year.

See:
New Free Fusion 360 Subscription Types - Fusion 360 Blog (https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/subscription-types/)
To subscribe:
Fusion 360 for Free Personal Use | Fusion 360 | Autodesk (https://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/fusion-360-for-hobbyists)
To renew from older hobby licence :
How to switch from a hobbyist/start-up license to personal use license in Fusion 360 | Fusion 360 | Autodesk Knowledge Network (https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-switch-from-a-hobbyist-start-up-license-to-personal-use-license-in-Fusion-360.html)

To round this out, note that SketchUp desktop version is no longer free, and the emasculated online version is a poor substitute. While you can still find downloads for the older free desktop version, this will become problematic to run over time, as your computer gets operating system updates.

[poundy]

Yeah thanks Ross, as I noted above it seemed like there was a glitch with the licensing on my account, and my earlier comments were based on what directly came from a reseller who explicitly said that there was no free option for me now, F360 is a paid product and there's nothing they could do to assist...

[RossM]

... my earlier comments were based on what directly came from a reseller who explicitly said that there was no free option for me now, F360 is a paid product and there's nothing they could do to assist...

Hahaha - reseller!! NO incentive to help you with your free subscription (but very short sighted of them - you MAY have chosen to buy a paid product down the track, and I'll bet this is one reseller you won't be recommending to any one else!) Having spent over 4 decades in the IT industry, I can confidently state that IT reseller sales people are only a small step up the credibility ladder from real estate & automotive sales people. (Talk to the poor engineers who have to go in & implement the promises made by many of these turkeys).

[poundy]

You top my longevity, but I'm also in IT for a looong time.

The guy was probably a bit peeved that Autodaesk even forwarded him the "lead" when I said (on my initial request to them) I was only a hobbyist and needed help renewing for subsequent years as a hobbyist... So really I don't blame him, he was pretty quick to hurry me along when I told him that if it came to dollars, I wouldn't be renewing so quoting was probably unnecessary. Again, the filter at AD should have stopped this getting to him. If only it was a chat not a freeform text on the website!

Oh and I knew the Sketchup Free move to web (like all products basically are) was potentially a challenge, and I have Sketchup2017 installed locally and expect that I can keep it alive for a little while yet, but given the current F360 focus that may be just to open other people's models in :)

[AlexS]

I gave up on free software long ago - I reckon you get what you pay for. I had DesignCad for a long while but it only runs on Windows. Now I have ViaCad. Forget what I paid for it but it wouldn't have been too expensive, and it's a one-off payment. The manual is good, and it's easy to learn. It's been able to do everything I want, including compound angles - often several ways.

[Dusty Dave]

I use Sketchup a bit, not much more than a beginner myself but I've picked up a couple of tricks that may help the OP.

One is that 'guides' often won't connect to the place you want them to (like on other guide lines). Actual lines tend to behave a bit better and can easily be deleted later.

Another is to make use of components and groups. I often find it easier to make a part in free space, select it all (either by clicking and dragging the arrow cursor to form a box around it, or by right-clicking it and selecting 'all connected'), then right-click it and make it into a group or a component. Then I can make copies etc, and it won't try to distort the rest of my model when I move them around later.

The best thing about components is that editing any one of them will make the same change to all its copies (although you can make a component 'unique' if you don't want that to happen). That makes it pretty easy to change dimensions, especially if your model uses lots of identical components.

Try to think of your model as an assembly of components and groups rather than a single complex creation.

[mic-d]

Does this Fusion360 sorcery run on a Mac?

[poundy]

Does this Fusion360 sorcery run on a Mac?
Fusion 360 launches on Mac App Store - Fusion 360 Blog (https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/fusion-360-launches-on-mac-app-store/) looks like (no experience)

[mic-d]

Fusion 360 launches on Mac App Store - Fusion 360 Blog (https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/fusion-360-launches-on-mac-app-store/) looks like (no experience)
Thanks, I might have to check it out. I'm happy with SU Make 2017 but I take on board future computer OS may not support