First SU design

[Aaron Beaver]

Since everyone helped me so much understanding what SU could do and how to do things, I wanted to show you my first thing I made in it. Its not much just a pretty simple bookcase but I had to start somewhere.

If you open it and look at it, let me know if you see anything I could of done differently or better. Thanks

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...103fbca33a0df4

[Dave Richards]

Aaron, that looks good to me. To make your working drawing you might consider rotating the parts of the exploded view around so they all lie on the same plane. Then for Page 2 select an orthogonal view that lets you seeall the parts straight on. Under Camera uncheck Perspective to get a 2D view and under View>Rendering, uncheck Profile Edges. Finally, select Hidden Line and under Window>Model Info>Color, uncheck the sky and set the background color to white.

When you print that page you should then have just black lines on a white background. Easier to read in the shop and uses a lot less ink from your printer.

By the way, I noticed you mirrored the side component. Good work. And you also made components of all the parts. Again, good work. It helps to keep file size down and if you modify the shelf on the first page, the corrections are done automatically on the second.

[Aaron Beaver]

Aaron, that looks good to me. To make your working drawing you might consider rotating the parts of the exploded view around so they all lie on the same plane. Then for Page 2 select an orthogonal view that lets you seeall the parts straight on. Under Camera uncheck Perspective to get a 2D view and under View>Rendering, uncheck Profile Edges. Finally, select Hidden Line and under Window>Model Info>Color, uncheck the sky and set the background color to white.

When you print that page you should then have just black lines on a white background. Easier to read in the shop and uses a lot less ink from your printer.

By the way, I noticed you mirrored the side component. Good work. And you also made components of all the parts. Again, good work. It helps to keep file size down and if you modify the shelf on the first page, the corrections are done automatically on the second.

Dave, when you say rotating the exploded parts on the same plane, do you mean make them all vertical or all horizontal?

Then for page 2 do I do those steps after doing the rotating? Should all the pieces fit on "page 2" for printing after all dimensions are added, or I guess I might just add another page with what ever doesn't fit. Guess I might find out more when I actually try rotating and such.

The component tips you gave really helped, i even put each on its own layer so I could turn them on and off which helped in several places. Speaking of layers why is there a color box? Everything showed up white.

Thanks for the tips.

[Dave Richards]

You can rotate the components however you like. Think of it as laying all the boards out on the floor if you like. Organize them so that you can add the dimensions. You probably don't need a copy of each shelf if they are all alike. A simple note that says, "Make 3" should be enough. Since the sides are mirror images, I'd have copies of both of them and probably put them next to each other. As far as fitting to a single page, that's purely your call. In the case of these shelves, there is little detail to worry about so you might fit all the pieces into a single view. If the parts were more complex you might limit the parts on the page to just a few and make several pages.

As far as the changes and the page views, make the changes while looking at Page 2. Right click on the page tab and select Update Page (or whatever it is called.)

Finally, the layer colors are used if you change the display option to Color by layer (I assume that is available in GSU--it is in SU5) in the menu associated with the Layers dialog box.

It can be handy when trying to discover what layer you put the frammus on and which one got the widget.

[Aaron Beaver]

Dave I think I got what you meant, wanted to see if you would take a look. Is there way to control dimensions? I guess I need to move the pieces farther apart because there is a lot of overlapping.

Any tips on dimensioning I could try?

[Dave Richards]

Aaron, you can set the font and size under Window>Model Info>Dimensions. Use a san serif font such as Arial or Verdana. 10 pt should be large enough. If you can read it when printed, use a smaller font so you can keep the dimensions closer to the part you are dimensioning. Play with the Leader Lines settings as well.

If you lay all the parts of the exploded view on the same plane, you should be able to eliminate overlapping. Organize the parts by assemblies if you can.

Use the minimum number of dimensions so as to reduce clutter. You only need to show the height of one cabinet side even if both are shown on the same page. Position parts so one dimension can be used for all that have that same dimension. Also use text for notes such as, "All parts 3/4" thick" or "All dados 3/4" wide and 3/8" deep." These notes can be put off to the side so as not to add clutter around the parts.

Does that give you some ideas?

[Aaron Beaver]

Yep Dave, that will work I will mess around with it more and see what it looks like when I print it and all. I think I am getting the hang of it, attached is a shelf that I did real quick this morning just to mess around.

[Dave Richards]

Aaron, that looks fine. One hint, though. Just as a matter of housekeeping and good practice, try to keep your model above the red and green axes. Those axes lie on the ground plane. It doesn't matter so much for something like your shelf but if you draw something and want to turn on shadows, you'll find they don't look so good. If you just get used to working up from the ground, you'll never have any issues.

Keep up the good work.