how to draw 3d wooden structures

To create a 3D model in SketchUp, you're constantly switching among the drawing tools, views, components, and organizational tools. In this article, you discover several examples that illustrate ways you tin use these tools together to model a specific shape or object.

The examples illustrate a few of the dissimilar applications for creating 3D models in SketchUp: woodworking, modeling parts or abstract objects, and creating buildings. The examples are loosely ordered from the uncomplicated to the circuitous.

Table of Contents

1. Drawing a chair
2. Drawing a bowl, dome, or sphere
3. Creating a cone
4. Creating a pyramidal hipped roof
5. Modeling a edifice from a footprint
6. Creating a polyhedron

Drawing a chair

In the post-obit video, you see three means to describe a 3D model of a chair. In the first two examples, you see two methods for creating the same chair:

• Subtractive: Extrude a rectangle to the summit of the chair. And so utilise the Push/Pull tool () to cut abroad the chair shape.
• Additive: Start by modeling the chair seat. And so extrude the back and the legs with the Push/Pull tool.

In the third case, you lot come across how to create a more detailed and complex model, using components to simplify modeling the chair legs and rungs on the back of the chair.

Tip: You can use the tips and techniques demonstrated in these chair examples to create all sorts of other complex 3D models.

Drawing a bowl, dome, or sphere

In this example, you look at one way to depict a basin and how to utilise the technique for creating a bowl to a dome or sphere.

In a nutshell, to create bowl, you depict a circle on the footing plane and a profile of the bowl's shape directly above the circle. Then you apply the Follow Me tool to turn the outline into a basin by having it follow the original circumvolve on the ground plane.

Hither's how the procedure works, step-by-step:

1. With the Circle tool (), draw a circle on the ground plane. These steps are easier if you start from the drawing axes origin indicate. The size of this circle doesn't matter.
2. Hover the mouse cursor over the origin and so that the cursor snaps to the origin then move the cursor up the blue axis.
3. Starting from the blue axis, describe a circle perpendicular to the circumvolve on the ground plane (that is, locked to the crimson or green axis). To encourage the inference, orbit so that the green or red centrality runs approximately left to right along the screen. If the Circle tool doesn't stay in the green or red inference direction, press and hold the Shift fundamental to lock the inference. The radius of this second circle represents the exterior radius of your bowl.
4. With the Outset tool (), create an outset of this second circle. The offset distance represents the bowl thickness. Check out the post-obit figure to see how your model looks at this point.
   
5. With the Line tool (), describe two lines: one that divides the outer circumvolve in half and one that divides the inner circumvolve that you created with the Offset tool.
6. With the Eraser tool (), erase the top half of the 2d circle and the face that represents the within of the bowl. When y'all're done, you have a profile of the basin.
7. With the Select tool (), select the edge of the circle on the ground plane. This is the path the Follow Me tool will utilize to complete the bowl.
8. With the Follow Me tool (), click the contour of the basin. Your basin is consummate and y'all can delete the circle on the footing airplane. The following figure shows the basin profile on the left and the bowl on the right.

Annotation: Why do you have to describe ii lines to separate the beginning circles? When you draw a circle using the Circle tool (or a curve using the Arc tool, or a curved line using the Freehand tool), you are actually drawing a circle (or arc or curve) entity, which is made of multiple-segments that act like a single whole. To delete a portion of a circle, arc, or bend entity segment, you demand to break the continuity. The get-go line you lot draw creates endpoints that break the segments in the outer circumvolve, but not the inner circle. Drawing the 2nd line beyond the inner circle breaks the inner circle into ii continuous lines.

Yous can utilise these same steps to create a dome by simply drawing your profile upside downward. To create a sphere, you don't need to modify the second circumvolve to create a profile at all. Check out the following video see how to create a sphere.

Creating a cone

In SketchUp, you can create a cone by resizing a cylinder face or past extruding a triangle forth a round path with the Follow Me tool.

To create a cone from a cylinder, follow these steps:

1. With the Circle tool, depict a circle.
2. Use the Push/Pull tool to extrude the circumvolve into a cylinder.
3. Select the Move tool ().
4. Click a cardinal point on the top edge of the cylinder, as shown on the left in the figure. A key indicate is aligned with the red or dark-green centrality and acts equally a resize handle. To find a primal point, hover the Motility tool cursor effectually the border of the top cylinder; when the circumvolve edge highlighting disappears, this indicates a cardinal signal.
5. Move the edge to its center until it shrinks into the point of a cone.
6. Click at the middle to complete the cone, as shown on the left in the effigy.

Here are the steps to model a cone by extruding a triangle along a circular path:

1. Draw a circle on the ground plane. Y'all'll notice it'south easier to marshal your triangle with the circle's center if you offset drawing the circumvolve from the axes origin.
2. With the Line tool (), draw a triangle that'south perpendicular to the circumvolve. (Come across the left image in the following figure.
3. With the Select tool (), select the face of the circle.
4. Select the Follow Me tool () and click the triangle face, which creates a cone almost instantaneously (as long equally your reckoner has the sufficient memory). You can run into the cone on the right in the following figure.

Creating a pyramidal hipped roof

In SketchUp, you tin easily draw a hipped roof, which is just a unproblematic pyramid. For this instance, you come across how to add together the roof to a simple i-room house, too.

To draw a pyramid (pull up a pyramidal hipped roof):

1. With the Rectangle tool (), draw a rectangle big enough to cover your edifice. To create a true pyramid, create a square instead of a rectangle. The SketchUp inference engine tells y'all when yous're rectangle is a foursquare or a aureate section.
2. With the Line tool (), depict a diagonal line from one corner to its contrary corner.
3. Depict another diagonal line from ane corner to some other. In the figure, y'all come across how the lines create an X. The example shows the faces in X-Ray view so you tin can see how the rectangle covers the floor plan.
   
4. Select the Motion tool () and hover over the middle betoken until a greenish inference point is displayed.
5. Click the center point.
6. Motion the cursor in the blue management (up) to pull up the roof or pyramid, as shown in the figure. If you need to lock the motility in the blue management, printing the Up Arrow key equally yous move the cursor.
7. When your roof or pyramid is at the desired meridian, click to finish the move.

Tip: When you're creating a model of house or multistory edifice, organize the walls and roof or each floor of your edifice into separate groups. That way, you can edit them separately, or hide your roof in order to peer into the interior floor plan. Run across Organizing a Model for details nearly groups.

In SketchUp, the easiest way to get-go a 3D edifice model is with its footprint. Later on you have a footprint, you tin can subdivide the footprint and extrude each department to the correct meridian.

Here are a few tips for finding a edifice'southward footprint:

• If you lot're modeling an existing building, trace the outline of the building with the cartoon tools. Unless the building is obscured by trees, you tin find an aeriform photo on Google Maps and trace a snapshot. From within SketchUp, you can capture images from Google and load them straight into a model, every bit shown in the following figure.
• If y'all don't have an aerial photograph of the existing building you want to model, y'all may need to try the one-time fashioned route: measuring the exterior to create the footprint and drawing the footprint from scratch. If literally taking measurements of an entire building is impractical, you can apply tricks such every bit using the measurement of a single brick to judge overall dimensions or taking a photo with an object or person whose length you do know. Come across Measuring Angles and Distances to Model Precisely for more than details.

If you're able to start with a snapshot of your footprint, the following steps guide you through the process of tracing that footprint. Starting time, set up your view of the snapshot:

1. Select Photographic camera > Standard Views > Elevation from the carte du jour bar.
2. Select Photographic camera > Zoom Extents to make sure you can see everything in your file.
3. Use the Pan and Zoom tools to frame a good view of top of the building that yous want to model. You need to be able to see the edifice clearly in order to trace its footprint. See Viewing a Model for details about using these tools.
4. Choose View > Face Mode > X-Ray from the menu bar. In X-Ray view, you can see the meridian view of the edifice through the faces that you describe to create the footprint.

Subsequently you prepare up your snapshot, try the techniques in the following steps to trace the building footprint:

1. Fix the drawing axes to a corner of your edifice. See Adjusting the Drawing Axes for details.
2. With the Rectangle tool (), draw a rectangle that defines part of your building. Click a corner and and then click an contrary corner to draw the rectangle. If your building outline includes non–90-degree corners, curves or other shapes that y'all can't trace with the Rectangle tool, use whichever other drawing tools you need to trace your edifice's footprint.
3. Continue drawing rectangles (or lines and arcs) until the entire edifice footprint is divers by overlapping or side by side rectangles, as shown on the left in the following figure. Brand sure in that location aren't whatsoever gaps or holes; if there are, fill them in with more rectangles.
4. With the Eraser tool (), delete all the edges in the interior of the building footprint. When yous're done, you should take a single confront divers by a perimeter of directly edges. You may want to turn off X-Ray view, as shown on the right in the following figure, in lodge to see your faces and terminal footprint conspicuously.
   
5. Some unproblematic buildings have a single outside wall height, but about accept more than one. After y'all complete the footprint, use the Line tool to subdivide your building footprint into multiple faces, each corresponding to a different exterior wall height, as shown in the post-obit figure. Then, y'all tin use the Push/Pull tool () to extrude each area to the right building height.

Creating a polyhedron

In this example, you encounter how to create a polyhedron, which repeats faces aligned around an axis.

To illustrate how y'all tin create a complex shape with basic repeating elements, this example shows you how to create a polyhedron chosen a rhombicosidodecahedron, which is made from pentagons, squares, and triangles, as shown in the figure.

The post-obit steps explicate how to create this shape by repeating faces around an axis:

1. Establish the correct angle between the first foursquare and the pentagon, and betwixt the first triangle and the square. See Measuring Angles and Distances to Model Precisely for details most measuring angles with the Protractor tool.
2. Marker the exact center point of the pentagon, which is shown hither on a dark-green surface that has been temporarily added to the pentagon component. This is the axis effectually which the copies will be aligned.
   
3. Make the square and triangle components, and then group the two components. For details about components, see Developing Components and Dynamic Components. To learn about groups, see Organizing a Model.
4. Preselect the objects that yous want to re-create and rotate (in this case, the group you just created).
5. Select the Rotate tool ().
6. Align the Rotate cursor with the pentagon face and click the center indicate of the pentagon, as shown in the following effigy.
   
7. Click the Rotate cursor at the betoken where the tips of the square, triangle, and pentagon come together.
8. Press the Ctrl primal to toggle on the Rotate tool'due south copy role. The Rotate cursor changes to include a plus sign (+).
9. Motility the cursor to rotate the choice around the axis. If you lot originally clicked the point where the tips of the square, triangle, and pentagon came together, the new grouping snaps into its new position, as shown in the following figure.
   
10. Click to finish the rotate operation.
11. Keep rotating copies effectually the centrality until the shape is complete. Every bit you build the rhombicosidodecahedron, yous need to group different components together, and rotate copies of those groups around various component faces.

Tip: If the component you are rotating effectually is not on the red, dark-green, or bluish airplane, make sure the Rotate tool'southward cursor is aligned with the face of the component earlier you lot click the center betoken. When the cursor is aligned, printing and concur the Shift key to lock that alignment every bit you move the cursor to the center indicate.

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Source: https://help.sketchup.com/en/sketchup/modeling-specific-shapes-objects-and-building-features-3d