Parametric modelling in sketchup
-
Hi all,
I'm new to sketchup. I have one question.Is parametric modeling possible using sketchup like in Autodesk Inventor.
Thanks in advance
-
Negative. You can use references to other parts in construction, but they have no history.
I'm a long term SolidWorks user and honestly, I don't miss it. Flip flopping between applications can be problematic because of different hotkeys and such.
-
Dear Chris,
I am curious to know how you use Sketchup. I use AutoCAD's Inventor as it has all the bells and whistles, but I also use Sketchup for quick modelling and for sorting through ideas. I find that designing first in Sketchup makes using Inventor easier and my final models are better structured and have fewer steps in the modelling browser.
Regards,
Bob -
@watkins said:
Dear Chris,
I am curious to know how you use Sketchup. I use AutoCAD's Inventor as it has all the bells and whistles, but I also use Sketchup for quick modelling and for sorting through ideas. I find that designing first in Sketchup makes using Inventor easier and my final models are better structured and have fewer steps in the modelling browser.
Regards,
BobHi Bob,
Well, I'm an old school kind of guy and I normally use pencil and paper to get a feel for a design before I jump into a modeller.
At this stage, I generally use SolidWorks for professional design of mechanical equipment as it has all the tools to deal with the myriad of issues present in any complicated design. My SketchUp usage is generally for personal projects such as the layout for my recent kitchen remodel, my woodworking projects, etc. I'm in the process of migrating my SolidWorks woodworking projects into SketchUp. SketchUp is just a much more comfortable tool for woodworking than SolidWorks.
Saying that, I've been using the xref ruby to maintain a bit of associativity between parts and assemblies in SketchUp. The downside is the xref utility doesn't differentiate between top level parts and those deeper down the assembly tree. Any xref'd item shows up in the top assembly. As you might imagine this becomes quite cumbersome. Once I get a little free time, I'm going to rewrite the xref ruby to allow a more logical part/assembly handling mechanism, not unlike those in SolidWorks, Inventor, etc, etc....
good luck
chris
-
Dear Chris,
Thanks for the explanation. I too came from the drawing board world, and then AutoCAD, but for some reason it took me ages to get used to 3D modelling (something about how my brain works). Even now I only use a fraction of Inventor's capabilities. For me Sketchup has replaced both the drawing board and 2D layouts in AutoCAD. I now go straight to Sketchup. I have been pleased to find that I can export from Inventor (as a .sat file) and then import into Sketchup via AutoCAD (after scaling up by x 100 inside AutoCAD). As yet I have not found a way to import Sketchup files into Inventor.
Did you see my thread textures post? You might find the textures useful (they are in the Materials and Styles section). I have attached part of an assembly I'm working on as an example of how I use Sketchup.
-
Nice work, Watkins.
Parametric modellers are really designed for the people who have experience in detail design. It is dimension driven. In your mind, one needs to have object to be made and how you are going to dimension it before you start to model it out. And yes, “all” the dimensions! It is nice to see the drawings made from 3D model at a touch of a button as Parametric modellers do. But you spend lot more time in building the 3D model. In essence you are drafting as you create 3D model. And that part is not a fast process.
-
@watkins said:
Dear Chris,
Thanks for the explanation. I too came from the drawing board world, and then AutoCAD, but for some reason it took me ages to get used to 3D modelling (something about how my brain works). Even now I only use a fraction of Inventor's capabilities. For me Sketchup has replaced both the drawing board and 2D layouts in AutoCAD. I now go straight to Sketchup. I have been pleased to find that I can export from Inventor (as a .sat file) and then import into Sketchup via AutoCAD (after scaling up by x 100 inside AutoCAD). As yet I have not found a way to import Sketchup files into Inventor.
Did you see my thread textures post? You might find the textures useful (they are in the Materials and Styles section). I have attached part of an assembly I'm working on as an example of how I use Sketchup.
I've been doing solid modeling since the mid 90's and my experience is generally the more capable a designer is with AutoCAD the longer it takes to really embrace the power of designing in 3D. In the past it was always the 'young bucks' who came quickly up to speed while the grizzled veterans often times really struggled to get their heads around it.
That's a very impressive model. The discipline you learned in Inventor shows in the model. I'm amazed at how haphazardly some models are assembled. Have you created a fastener library? What I see as a major drawback of SketchUp is the lack of technical quality hardware models. Saying that though, we certainly created a lot of our own in the early days of Pro-E and SolidWorks.
Have a look at the stl exporter from Didier Bur in the Ruby section. I use it to export models into SolidWorks, but I don't know if Inventor supports stl file import or not. SolidWorks certainly doesn't do it very elegantly.
chris
Advertisement