Newbie: Furniture project SU best practices?

MartinRinehart

@dadoing said:

I've been struggling up the initial learning curve with Sketchup.

I struggled up it and then wrote a tutorial so the next person wouldn't have a struggle.

http://www.MartinRinehart.com/models/tutorial/index.html

In the future I'll be adding a "send-me-money" feature, but that's not happened yet.

mics_54

Which reminds me...anyone have an I.O.U..rb

fossa

Dave R, would you mind posting one of your skp files as an example? That would probably be the quickest way of actually seeing how you set your files up. Maybe post some pics of your projects, that would be cool too.

Jim

I'm not sure why Dave didn't mention it, but he and Tim Killen have written some excellent articles and videos about SketchUp work-flow and furniture.

In particular, these 2 videos I thought were pretty good:

http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/22911/a-fern-stand-demonstrating-my-drawing-process

http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/24328/jeffersons-bookstand-another-workflow-example

fossa

I had no idea that Dave R was the Dave R of finewoodworking. Boy do I feel like a fool.

Jim

Yeah, his picture makes him look young.

fossa

My pic makes my ears and nose look big. I reality they are much smaller.

Dadoing

@martinrinehart said:

I struggled up it and then wrote a tutorial so the next person wouldn't have a struggle.
http://www.MartinRinehart.com/models/tutorial/index.html
In the future I'll be adding a "send-me-money" feature, but that's not happened yet.

Awewsome - thank you. I bookmarked it and plan to work through it carefully.

Dave R

Jim, thanks for the nice words and the links.

Fossa, nearly all of my models these days are done for others so I can't post them. You can see the results of some of the drawings I've done by downloading the plans I've done on Fine Woodworking's site. Here are a few I've done:

[]Arts and Crafts Display Case](http://store.taunton.com/onlinestore/item/arts-and-crafts-display-case-065120.html), Two Shaker Tables, Garrett Hack's Workbench, John White's New-Fangled Bench. there are others as well. You can also take a look at the cover articles for Issues #209 (Tools and Shops), 210 and 211.

I suppose I should update my avatar picture, huh? By the way, I like your ears, there, Fossa.

fossa

@dadoing said:

I've been struggling up the initial learning curve with Sketchup. I've decided to bear down and learn SU properly by drawing an endtable plan.

What is the best way to organize the Sketchup file for the main components of the endtable? Scenes? Layers? That's the part I can't seem to grasp. It makes sense to me to draw the six faces of the endtable in six different sub-places of the SU file, rather than all in one 3D image space. Would that be six scenes? Each face of course has different cabinet sub-components, too. Any pointers to get me learning in the right direction?

Sorry for hijacking the thread, back to your problem.

Some really great learning resources for the basics of sketchup are:

the guys over at Go-2-School have tons of beginning sketchup vids and
Googles youtube channel devoted to sketchup

Those 2 sources are where I got my sketchup start (and of course the SCF community)

for furniture related Sketchup there are:

Finewoodworkings blog Design Click Build and
Popular woodworking has a new cd out all about skektchup (its not free and I have not seen it so I can't comment on it)

I'm sure there are dozens of others in both categories but those are what I have used in the past

Dadoing

@jim said:

I'm not sure why Dave didn't mention it, but he and Tim Killen have written some excellent articles and videos about SketchUp work-flow and furniture.
In particular, these 2 videos I thought were pretty good:
http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/22911/a-fern-stand-demonstrating-my-drawing-process
http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/24328/jeffersons-bookstand-another-workflow-example

Awesome, thanks. I really like Dave's workflow for furniture. Makes a lot of good sense. Now, I mustget on to doing the family bookkeeping this morning! This Sketchup is a wonderful hobby in its own right, to expand my woodworking hobby. You folks are great help.

Dadoing

The helpful replies got me started. Now I'm blogging my crawl up the Sketchup Woodworking curve in http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=183&t=27728 for those who might be interested.