It seems unlikely that I'll ever finish this, so I have decided to share the models with you. It was modelled from images so sizes are approximate (note i have modelled the whole thing 10 times actual size). I think most things are reasonably well split into groups/components.

Separate files for convenience:
frame.skp - 13.40MB
disc_brake.skp - 0.06MB
chain.skp - 0.41MB
pedal.skp - 0.80MB
gear.skp - 2.24MB
saddle.skp - 0.55MB
wheel.skp - 1.18MB

Thought it may be useful for someone

Enjoy!!

@slimdog said:

Hi Richard. I just came across this thread. Its a shame that I can only see the last couple of pix that you have posted. I have been wanting to model my mountain bike as well. It will be a long time before I can come any where near your quality of work. VERY impressive detail. I am also a welder by trade and was hoping to see what your welds turned out like. My first attempt is ok but I am not sure how I would wrap them around the miters in the tube. I have also tried to model some chain and cogs. The chain isnt to bad but I see where you came across the problem of making the teeth the same distance apart on different size cogs.

If you are ever up in the Vancouver area PM me and we can go for a ride.

S

Slimdog,
I changed servers on my website a while ago, and didn't transfer all the images over - I've uploaded most of them back to their original locations, so you (or anyone else who is interested) should be able to see these now.

The spacing of the gears was quite difficult hence why I ended up using autocad. I seem to remember finding the chain quite difficult aswell - taking the non-uniform shape that the chain followed and making sure it was made up of an equal number of uniform sized segments was quite awkward.

Unfortunately I haven't had time to work on this since my last post. I haven't really had time to work on any other sketchup models either (apart from work related ones). One day I'll get more time and start doing stuff like this again and visit these forums more often.

I also posted the 'welding' tutorial here aswell.

I doubt i'll ever be in the vancouver area (i'm in the uk), but thanks for the offer!

Richard

I hadn't even realised that the site had any ads.

I wonder how many other people have the same setup? and does it bother you that we don't see or click on the ads?

I assume that the refreshing of the main forum page every 60 seconds has something to do with the ads?

Website is looking good so far.

The different levels of tutorials are good, and they seem to be clearly set out, which makes them easy to follow.

The extensions list will be handy, and works well.

Not sure if this will change, but the forum at the bottom of the front page looks out of place at the moment. Instead of the forum being part of the front page, could you have a short list of the latest posts/topics from the forum?

I have to agree with others about the two accounts needed for the site, in my opinion one website should only need one user account per user. However I understand that there are technical problems with getting it to work properly.

All in all though its a thumbs up from me

Just messing, not sure what it is, but thought i'd share it here.

Not sure about exporting direct to a pdf, but I've always found printing to a pdf via cutePDF writer works well for any size sheet.

@schreiberbike said:

Very good stuff. This thread has been fun to watch. Aren't modern rear cogs now on a spider rather than put on individually?

I'm modelling what was on the standard spec bike (which is no longer listed on the marin website and shows how long I've been doing this thing!!), which according to the details I have was an SRAM pg970 cassette

Maybe I'll upgrade the SRAM 970 for a SRAM pg990 - (if I ever finish this)

As these images are intended to show the impact (or not as it seems) of the proposed structure, it would be interesting to see before images/photos as well - I am particularly interested in how well the trees match what is actually there.

Very nice images and interesting project.

I think drop.rb will do what you want...

OK, this has taken a few attempts to get right - the first time went completely wrong, the second time I modelled the whole thing at the wrong size. The difficult bit was making sure the distance between each tooth was the same for each gear, and in the end I resorted to using autocad to set the basic shapes up.

I still need to model the final two gears and connecting parts but here are the first 7 gears.