resize a door in sketchup

[Master Carpenter]

Is there a way to resize a door without the width of the rails & styles changing?

 

[Eric The Viking]

There is an excellent blog about SU over at Fine Woodworking (.com).

It's pretty easy to do what you need (or what I think you need), but you have to have built your model in the right way. SU lends itself to quickly making pretty models, BUT in order to use them, i.e. for example, break out components, it's very important to make groups of SU objects, which roughly correspond to components in real life, as you go along. And to make groups of groups ("Russian dolls" one or more groups inside others). Then you can drill down to the element or group you actually need to change.

One of the really useful features of SU is that, when you clone an object or group, any changes you make are applied to all the clones. You can choose to just change the one you're working on, but that will break the 'clone' relationship.

So if you draw a style or a rail, you can stretch it in one axis, leaving the other two unaffected. So if you need to widen a door, and the top and bottom rails are identical (just as an example), if you've cloned them ("make a copy"), stretching one will stretch the other, too.

I heartily recommend Dave Richards's blog pieces over at Fine Woodworking, as he explains both the simple and complex very well. Steve Maskery (of this parish) will hate me for interrupting his pre-Christmas painting and decorating, but he's rather good with SU too. Many of his DVDs have Sketchup plans for his jigs included on them.

Someone who can explain better will be along in a minute, but honestly, SU is jsut the job for that sort of thing, but frustrating unless you go at it systematically. It take me about 5 mins to draw up a nice-looking raised panel door, but even if I get it to the right overall dimensions, I can't do anything useful with it, because it'll be all one lumpen object. It takes probably about 1/2 hour to get components (rails, stiles, panel) done separately, depending on how complex the joints and decorations are.

Run through a few of the basic tutorials (aimed at woodworkers - there's loads of largely irrelevant stuff in SU for arcitectural and geo-modelling), and try some experiments.

I find it amazingly useful for sorting out rough ideas in my mind, to get to knowing how I want to make something.

In the case of rail and stile doors, it's only one dimension changing - if the joints are worked out, the rest is easy, surely?

E.

 

[HOJ]

I am a prolific user of Sketchup, as Eric outlined, make each & every single entity you draw a 'group' in the first instance, using groups retains the entity in its own right and stops it blending into the rest of the model, this will allow easier individual entity editing.

if you need multiples of the same entity make it a 'component' if you then need to change its parameters all the same entities will be changed together.

A door may need to be made from 6 different entities: Stiles, top rail, mid rail, bottom rail, top panel & bottom panel, for example, in this case I would only make the stiles a component, which I would mirror to give me a matching pair, the other entities would just be separate groups, which would need to be edited seperatley.

A trick I use in woodworking, is to model one half of an entity, say the tenoned end of a rail, then make it a component, copy it, flip it round and join it to the other end, make it a group & hide the join, I only then need to edit one end, if the length needs changing I split the difference.

I also use Scenes & Layers extensively to control my models, you could put each entity in a separate layer, but on a door alone I wouldn't worry.

There is also an option in Sketchup pro to create Dynamic components, which allows you to change the entities but I find that too complicated to manage.

 

[Brentingby]

I would second EtV's recommendations for the DVD's.

As for resizing the door in SketchUp, it sounds as if you are trying to use the Scale tool which isn't the right tool for the job. The exact steps depend upon how you've drawn the door. If you drawn it as a single object instead of the five separate parts, you can drag a left-to-right selection box around half the door and use the Move tool to move it. So if you want to make the door taller, drag the selection box around the top half. That will select only the top rail and the top part of the raising if the door has a raised panel. Then use the Move tool to move that selection straight up.

If you drew the separate parts of the door and made them groups, select the top rail and move it upward. Then open each of the stile groups in turn, select the top half or so and use the Move tool to move the selected bits up. Repeat for the panel.

I learned from Dave Richards to use components instead of groups when modeling. Components have many advantages over groups. One of them would be seen in resizing the door. If the stiles are instances of the same component, you only need resize one of them. The other stile will come along with the first.

You can use the trick outlined by HOJ of making parts in halves however that will result in a useless cut list (if you want one from the model) and it can create other issues you'd need to manage.

Edit: I found an old blog by Dave Richards that shows resizing a small table. It has a video that shows the process. He notes in the text that he resized off the centre line of the table because he already had a number of scenes in the model and he didn't want to update them. Most likely you would only need to work from one side.

 

[Shultzy]

"I learned from Dave Richards to use components instead of groups when modelling." This is a fundamental principal of working with Sketchup, use components instead of groups.

 

[Eric The Viking]

Yes. I must apologise for typing in a rush (over breakfast) yesterday.

Both Brentingby and Schultzy have gently pointed out my mistake: Use COMPONENTS not groups!

You can put a component inside another one (so they act like groups in, say, desktop publishing), but you get many advantages, as described above.

It's even worthwhile making simple rectangular boxes into components before you start to use them...

... I forget my own name some days!

E.

 

[Bob Lang]

If all five parts of the door are components the task can be accomplished in a few steps. When a component is open, a rail with a coped end for example, you can select just the geometry on the end with a left to right selection box and move that geometry. That stretches the connected lines, preserves the details on the end and doesn't effect the width. A more detailed explanation can be found here in my book "Woodworker's Guide to SketchUp" and on my website.


Bob Lang