Hello all, I’m very new here and use SketchUp now for all building projects in my shop and have done so for years. I’ve recently come into a situation that I’m wondering if any of you out there have had to deal with. Normally when I build things in my shop, I draw them out piece by piece in SketchUp in order to get a proper cut list. I have been asked by a client to put together kitchen cabinets for their new house. Originally the cabinets were to be made from Maple plywood. In checking with the vendor for the actual size of the plywood I was assured that it was 3/4 of an inch thick as opposed to other plywood’s that were 23/32. So, at the time I set to drawing all of the carcasses for this kitchen keeping in mind that the actual thickness of the plywood was 3/4 of an inch. Then the client changed their mind and decided that they wanted them to be done in cherry. After contacting several vendors, I was able to find cherry, however when I received the delivery the thickness was 23/32. 1/32nd of an inch doesn’t seem like much however once it is multiplied four times in one cabnet we are at an eighth of an inch. So, my question here is does anybody know an expedient way that I can change the thickness in my drawings, or will I have to redraw everything to get accurate measurements in cut list? It took me a weeks’ worth of time to draw up the build plans for all these cabinets and I’m not looking forward to having to go back and change each individual piece to accommodate the new thickness of the material. Unfortunately, I am not an advanced woodworker where I can always keep track of my cuts and compensate for the 32nd of an inch on everything. The last project that I had done (a king size bed with 12 drawers was all drawn up using 23/32, & 15/32 plywood and it came out perfectly from cut list to assembly. Any suggestions would be greatly welcomed!
You should be able to use the tape measure tool to adjust the scale of the geometry you’ve made thus far.
If it isn’t already cued up, go to the 4:20 mark.
You’ll click two points with the tape measure, and then set the measurement to whatever you want. You’ll be notified about scaling the drawing, and you should only have to confirm it’s what you want.
That won’t work because if you change the thickness of the plywood this way, everything else will change too.
I expect that the overall dimensions of the cabinets have to stay the same…
I hope you get payed for changes like this that your client finds necessary to make.
Also hoping you are working with components and mirrored instances of them, instead of groups.
Another thing that might help is to have a bonding box around each cabinet as a locked group. Just to quickly see if your cabinet “breaks out” of these boundaries.
That’s what I mean with a protected (locked) bounding box of edges.
Scaling can help if you apply the operation on the center grip of the side of boards, to correct thickness. But!.. keep in mind that scaled objects are scaled and you may want to tick ‘Scale Definition’ in the component’s ‘right click’ context menu. So the scaled component becomes a 1:1 object.
My mistake. I misunderstood.
That’s definitely a predicament.
However, if you only have to change the thickness (the z axis so to speak) then it shouldn’t it simply be a matter of using the push/pull tool on all the different planks? I don’t know how all of your lumber is laid out, but once you use the push pull tool to adjust one plank, all you’d have to do is double click the tool on the other planks, and they’ll push down to the same extent. It’s still tedious, mind, but I don’t think you’ll have to start over.
If you work with components it would be very easy to do it, just get into any instance and modify the thickness, otherwise I recommend you to use the plugin S4U components, it can make instances out of groups even if they’re not 100% similar, but if all have the same thickness it will work perfectly.
If you change the thickness of a board and keep overall dimensions you automatically have to change other boards widths and heights…
So every board has to be made the right thickness and a lot of the boards also have to be adjusted for that new thickness. All in all a lot of work but doable I would say.
It would be interesting to see how you have your model built. Changing dimensions doesn’t need to be a huge or troublesome task if the model is created properly.
Thank you all for the information and unfortunately part of the cost of the job was the planning so some of the office time will be compensated for. Out of the 13 units that I have drawn I have gone through two of them and have decided that as I do each unit or set of cabinets I will redraw them as necessary in order to get accurate cut list. There is some joinery involved so therefore I don’t believe scaling will work. Again thank you all for your input!
If you want a clear answer on how to achieve your goal as easily as possible: upload your SketchUp file so we can see what you are working with.