Sketup Question

I have been reading the Sketchup posts with interest. I got a question for you Sketchup enthusiasts.

How appropriate would Sketchup be for metal projects to be fabricated by a welding shop? Specificaly projects made mostly with square tubing.

Their would need to be detailed information. This would include some odd angles, very specific lengths and positions of both holes and attachments welded to the subassemblies.

The 3 D perspective would be nice but not neccessary.

Comments? Suggestions?

Reply to
Lee Michaels
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I see no problems in that application.

As far as accuracy, in inches you can go to .0001" or in 1/64" in fractions of an inch. In mm, .0001mm

3D perspective would be automatic.

Just remember to draw objects/components, not line drawings.

Reply to
Leon

How about dimensioning? I would need the lengths to be very clear.

Reply to
Lee Michaels

Not a problem, Sketchup has semi-automatic dimensioning. You point out the constraints Sketchup fills in the measurements. Pick a line and Sketchup will dimension that line. Pick two points and Sketchup will determine the distance between those points.

As mentioned in my other thread you can modify dimension results to outside the extension lines if the results will not fit between them. You can also modify the size of the font used.

Reply to
Leon

Ask question at rec.crafts.metalworking.

Reply to
scritch

It's not a drafting tool. You'll bend over backwards to make it produce working drawings. Sketchup is more a modeling and visualization tool that happens to place a few dimensions and notes, sometimes usefully, sometimes not. It doesn't do angular dimensions, for example.

Reply to
MikeWhy

Egggggzactly. NOT a drafting tool.

Reply to
Robatoy

Ummm My Sketchup does angular dimensions.

Reply to
Leon

Egggggzactly. NOT a drafting tool.

What is it you can do on a CAD program that you cannot on Sketchup?

Reply to
Leon

"Lee Michaels" wrote

Just give it a try and see how it works for you ... occasionally use SU to send drawings to machine shops for beam/truss hangers that we need to have fabricated for embedding into foundations.

Admittedly very simple fabrications, the one below was drawn on my laptop, real time on site, while the Engineer watched, and the pdf export was sent using my cell phone as a tethered modem ... a couple of years back what took

30 minutes would have taken a week, and cost a helluva lot more.

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for 2D shop drawings like this I haven't found anything that I can't do quicker with SU than with my CAD programs, and, as you say, the added and easy 3D ability is just a mouse move away and an added plus.

BTW, the machine shop didn't blink an eye ... then again, I'm always amazed to find a machine shop that actually does business via e-mail and even knows what a pdf file is. :)

YMMV ...

Reply to
Swingman

Where to start? Working drawing sets. Bills of Material. Parametric configurations. Multiple parts configurations. Editable feature history. Weldments. Sheet metal. Mate constraints. ... SU is a minimal set for defining and manipulating simple, static surface models. It is what it is, and it's good for what it is, but it helps sometimes to keep in perspective what it is not. What you sketch is what you get, sometimes less. Circles are pie wedges; curves are straightline segments. When you change a dimension, the dimension text changes, not the underlying object. You glue things together, or set them next to each other, they don't move to maintain the relationship. You sweep a shape, and that's the shape it will ever and always be; editing the shape that defined the sweep doesn't change anything. Is any of that a condemnation? I don't think so. "Minimum" usable subset is still a pretty high bar for getting useful things done.

So, about those angle dimensions. How?

Reply to
MikeWhy

Well this being a ww group I was thinking more in lines with wood working projects. So yes I agree a CAD program absolutely does more outside this area.

As for as abilities, I have not checked all the plugins and scripst that are available however there is a dimension plug-in called Driving Dimensions that let you edit the dimension and that also changes the length of object that it deminsions.

I am not sure what you are talking about concerning glueing things or setting them next to each other and not maintaining the relationship. If you make them into components and make the components into a group they stay together until you edit or explode them. I may be way off base here.

Search for the script/plugin " dim_angle.rb ". Copy it into the Plug-in's folder and the next time you reload Sketchup 7 ;ppl imder "Tools" and you will find a new command called Angular Dimension. Choose that command, pick

3 points, and you will get a angular dimension typical of what you might expect. Keep in mind however that on this particular dimention that if you chang eht angle of the object you will also have todo the angular dimension command.

Scroll down the page a bit until you see the file I mentione above. Click the file name and it will open a page of script. Right click that page and "Save page As", and save it in the plug ins folder. Besure to add the .rb extension to the name if it does not do so automatically.

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are literally hundreds of scripts and plug ins that make Sketchup act more like a CAD program.

Reply to
Leon

Here's a partial look of the tool kit. Those modules live on another monitor, but I have dragged them over here to give you some indication. The pull-down in the centre are all tools/commands missing in SU...

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in mind, that most single tool icons can/will launch a dialog box, something like this base cabinet parametric. Those exist for just about any kind of cabinets and commercial/office furniture.
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example of a parametric. One of several dozen different stair designs.
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then there is the rendering aka pretty picturesit will create if called upon. (By a customer who can't decide what wood grain to go with in her kitchen.)

I could be more specific, but I don't have that kind of time.

r
Reply to
Robatoy

"Leon" wrote

Careful now ... the bait is top water at six o'clock and getting close.

Reply to
Swingman

Here's a partial look of the tool kit. Those modules live on another monitor, but I have dragged them over here to give you some indication. The pull-down in the centre are all tools/commands missing in SU...

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but I am talking from a ww project point of view. I do realize that CAD programs have lots more tools, I'v been using a bunch since 1997 myself. ;~)

Keep in mind, that most single tool icons can/will launch a dialog box, something like this base cabinet parametric. Those exist for just about any kind of cabinets and commercial/office furniture.

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example of a parametric. One of several dozen different stair designs.
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a poke here,
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ther are a bunch of plug ins that make Sketch up more fashonable. ;~) there are several "stair" plug ins.

..and then there is the rendering aka pretty picturesit will create if called upon. (By a customer who can't decide what wood grain to go with in her kitchen.)

Sketch can do that with the correct chosen material.

I could be more specific, but I don't have that kind of time.

Understood

r
Reply to
Leon

Oh.. then there is the interface to this program for my router:

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Reply to
Robatoy

Oh.. then there is the interface to this program for my router:

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Shmouter! Sketchup interfaces my PRINTER!!! ;~)

Reply to
Leon

...will it scale a drawing from one reference? Like, say, I draw a cabinet and then set the dimension of one of the rails? I fiddled with the tutorial the other nite and was surprised at the accessability...if can set the deminsion of my first piece and the program will scale the remainder, well, I'm in!

cg

Reply to
Charlie Groh

If I am not mistaken there are scripts that will do that.. Swingman?

Otherwise, if you draw your rail first and make it into a component and then copy that component over to another component to eventually form a cabinet, you can change all of the rail at the same time later on. If you want to make several different sized rails for other cabinets you make the already copied and completed rails "unique" so that they will no longer change when you modify the other component rails.

Over and over I mention components, they are a very useful way to put your cabinets together. One rail can be the basis for all rails in the drawings regardless of size or number of sizes. Until you make a component "unique" it will change with every modification to "like/same rail edits. Editing one component will modify all "same copiy" components.

Reply to
Leon

First, understand that I'm not interested in selling you a bigger CAD system. I'm doing the opposite, in fact. I'm working toward weaning myself onto SU alone. Just answering your question directly about what's in the other systems.

I'll believe it when I see it. It has less to do with cleverness than having the information on hand, after the fact in SU, to parameterize the part. I'm speaking of SolidWorks and Inventor. They maintain the history of how the features were made. If you extruded a profile 100", you can change that later to something else, or edit the sketch that defines the profile.

How to answer that? Just yesterday I tried explaining why components in SU are useful abstractions. There are different levels of understanding and need.

It comes up all the time. All the time. The bottom of this drawer sits on the top face of that cleat, and this face of its side is parallel to that face on that side panel. The back rail of the Morris chair rests on its tangent point with that peg; the peg's axis is concentric with this bored hole. The drawer face has a 1/16" gap from the face frame. When I resize or move things about, the objects size and relocate themselves to maintain those constraints.

Do you need it? SU isn't SW or Inventor. I'm still just trying to answer your question.

Thanks. And just how hard is that to do natively? There are big things missing, the stuff I mentioned above. That's cool; implementing them is magnitudes more complex than what SU is meant to be. But there are niggling little things, like the angle dimensions, that can be but aren't. Still, you have to understand that I'm not criticizing SU, and not asking you to be its apologist. It is what it is.

Reply to
MikeWhy

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