This is from the model of a desk designed by Timothy Rousseau. The model was done for plans to go along with a Video Workshop produced by Fine Woodworking. Here is a photo of one of these desks that he built. You can watch the intro to the video workshop here.
I visited with Mr. Rousseau when I was at The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Maine last month. There was an example of this desk in birdseye maple there. If it hadn’t already been purchased by a certain well-known toolmaker from the area, I might have inquired about having it shipped to my house.
Nice model of a very elegant desk. I love the design simplicity — though building it is another matter Did you use BezierSpline to match the subtle curves?
Thank you. I used several tools from the Bezier Spline extension. I had a copy of Mr. Rousseau’s full sized drawings to work from and was able to create a sort of table of points to work from. For that, Catmull splines are easier than Bezier curves.
Thanks for the info. I’ve mostly just used the Bezier tool by default, and haven’t really delved much into the other available options in the BezierSpline extension. I’ll try Catmull splines the next time I have need for such a curve. Good to know!
I’m wondering if you had to do any smoothing after the curved solids were created. I have made several curved surfaces the hard (no extensions) way. I almost always have to smooth them to get rid of lines here and there. Folding Stools properly sized.skp (685.0 KB)
Not quite sure what you mean. The edges of the pieces are radiused in the same way as the real piece is. And of course every component is a solid by SketchUp’s standards.
Yes, I see the table it is an elegant structure. The file I uploaded shows some folding stools that I had to smooth with the “soften’smooth edges” tool to make them look presentable.
Softening and smoothing edges is commonly needed. Not terribly difficult to do. Easy way is to select all of the geometry and adjust the Soften Edges slider in the tray. The seat in your model has some stray geometry and extra faces. These faces would make it difficult to soften some edges. I used Thom Thom’s Solid Inspector 3 to check it and clean it up.
If I was modeling that stool, I would have made the seat a component and used the Dave Method to do the fine work Box did a tutorial on that which you can find with a quick search.
The file I uploaded shows some folding stools that I had to smooth with the “soften’smooth edges” tool to make them look presentable.
Thank you for the pointers. I will take your advice henceforth.