My first attempt at SU

[wizer]

To be honest I'm still not clear on the difference between the two options. If I was to create a table, I would draw one leg, copy it out to the next corner, then scale it to make sure it's in the right orientation, then I'd select the two legs and copy them to make four legs, using scale again to get the right orientation. To get the rails, I would draw a rectangle between the two legs and, make it a component, pull it out to the right depth, then repeat the same copy/scale/orientation process for the rest of the rails.

I do like to draw in the joinery, as I said above, it helps me build it within the software to identify problems, not induce them. When building the actual furniture piece (not that that happens often), I would then build taking measurements from the work itself, rather than rigidly working from the sketchup drawing.
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[Dave R]

Tom, it sounds to me as if you're using the Xmas tree method Chris described. The Lego method is more like make the blocks and then put them all in place.

Drawing the joinery is a good idea for a number of reasons. It helps you make sure that your cutlist is telling you the real size of the parts, you can see if there are going to be conflicts that need to be dealt with (colliding tenons, for example) and it gives you an opportunity to think through the processes in the shop so you can be more efficient in your work when you get there. Drawing your model also helps you thinking about things like which order to do things in. Do you cut the tapers on the legs before or after you cut the mortises? And that sort of stuff.

[RobertMP]

Can't say I'd heard these terms before but I'm a tree builder

I like to use what I've drawn for one component as a 'former' for some of the detail on the mating part. If you don't open a component for editing you can draw over some of it with new lines and they stay on the outside ready to become a new mating component.

Using the table leg example if I drew a tenon on the end of a rail I'd use it to easily draw the mortice on the leg. To do that they need to be in the right relationship to each other not drawn separately off in space somewhere on the drawing.
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[Dave R]

I hadn't heard those terms before either, Robert.

The other day I helped a very nice fellow with a model he was struggling with. He had two components, one of which had a tenon on it. He was trying to cut the mating through mortice on the other piece. You could see the end of the tenon on bottom of the component receiving the mortice.

The easy way to cut the mortice would be to open the component for editing, trace the end of the tenon with the Rectangle tool and use Push/Pull to push the rectangle's face through the component. In this case though, the rectangle did not divide the bottom face into two regions so the mortice could not be made.

Close examination of the model revealed that the bottom face of the component getting the mortice was 0.004138mm away from the end of the tenon. It wasn't easily seen but it made all the difference in the world as to whether or not the rectangle was getting drawn on the face or not. It turned out the component getting the mortice was drawn separately and then moved into place and it wasn't moved correctly. In working through the drawing process, I showed how drawing the component in place on the other component eliminated that problem.

[adzeman]

Thanks Chris you hit the nail on the head and described what I meant better than I did. The 1st method was a model on to which I hung components, the 2nd I grouped components together in blocks which made editing easier. I found on the first method when editing I would change somthing and then find it had altered somthing else as well.

I think you have reverted to the first method due to you becoming more skilled with Sketch Up and therefore not requiring to do much if any editing.

What I have found which is fantastic! is I have imported CAD drawings and built off them.







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Mike B