Organizing Sketchup Workspace; Aligning parts; mirroring parts

[Kevin Morton]

I'm new to Sketchup and new to the forum. I design and build outdoor furniture and recently discovered Sketchup and, like many others, am really excited by the possibilities. Preliminary questions: First, how to best organize the workspace. My adirondack chair has 14 unique parts. I understand that I can use components and groups to work on these parts. Is there a good approach to laying them out as you go along? Seems like the workspace could get awful cluttered.

Second, is there a snap-to or some other feature available to align parts? For example, the front legs of the chair have dadoes cut in them to receive the front rail. Is there a way to snap the rail to the dado so that the ends of the rail don't stick out or overlap the legs in different planes? I'm just finding it hard to align things and trust that they're in the correct plane.

Finally, when using the scale feature to mirror a component, which handle do you select and how do you move it to get the mirrored image? Thanks for any help!

[Dave Richards]

Kevin, welcome to the Creek. I haven't a lot of time at the moment so I'll keep this short.

I generally start drawing parts that have a known reference point, i.e the ground. The ground plane is the surface defined by the red and green axes. The Blue one is the vertical one with the solid blue pointing up.

After the legs, I would add parts that reference to the legs and on and on.

You can move geometry to other layers and turn the layers on and off as desired if some parts are getting in the way of drawing others. Always do your drawing on Layer 0 and move the geometry later.

Moving parts is simple. You select the component you wish to move, grab it by the corner you wish to align to some other point and drag it to that point. When you get close, the inferencing should take over and snap the part in place. If there isn't a point (intersection) on one of the parts that needs to be referenced to the other, you can create a temporary intersection with construction geometry. (read the Help file on construction Geometry)

The handle you grab for mirroring with the scale tool depends on the plane through which you want to mirror the object. For example the angled rail and front leg of your Adirondack chair: Select both components, copy with the move tool. Now, while the copies are highlighted select the Scale tool. You'll want to mirror about a vertical plane that runs front to back. there will be nine green handles in each bounding plane that are parallel to the mirror plane. Grab a handle in the center of the one of those two vertical planes. Hold the Ctrl key to mirror about the center, Push the handle into the components and through. Then let go of the mouse and type -1. Give that a try and let me knw if it makes sense.

good luck.

[Kevin Morton]

Thanks for the quick reply, Dave. I'll give it a try. (Hadn't thought about using layers.)