How do I make plexiglass?

[mikedd]

I have a display cabinet to make, the front and shelves are plexiglass, how do I go about making plexiglass?

[TIG]

Make a rectangular face - that is remote from other geometry so it doesn't 'stick'.
Select it and make it into a component, called say 'plexi'.
Edit the new group [double-click].
PushPull the face into a 3b extrusion a few 'mm' thick as desired.
Exit the edit.

Make sure your Style allows transparency etc...

Now make a new material using the Material Browser.
Name it say 'plexi'.
Use Edit to change it's RGB to a mid-gray.
Make its Transparency so it is as see-through as you want.
Apply tha material to your recently made component-instance.

Now you have a 'slab' that is transparent.
You can Scale that to any size in XYZ by pulling in one axial direction and typing in a dimension with a units suffix - e.g. 1000mm to make it 1000mm long [note that typing in 1000 will make it x1000 longer than it was - NOT what you want ]

You can place additional instances of the component in the model [using the Component Browser] or by doing a copy [Move+Ctrl] with the first one - then just Scale each one in XYZ as desired.

If the outline isn't a rectangle then draw the face outline and use that - it will be fixed and non-scalable...

You can't make shiny/reflective materials in SketchUp.
Transparency is the limit.
However, there are many free or inexpensive rendering applications that connect with SketchUp that let you make images of your models using reflections, shininess etc in their own 'linked' materials...

[Dave R]

Here's an example of what TIG was referring to.

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[mikedd]

Thank you very much I did it.