Hello, beginer here. All self taught. I have a sheet metal model that I drew, 1/8" material and drew with square corners. Each panel is drew to be a seperate panel with broke flanges. All corners are to be bolted, no welding. I still need to finish drawing bolt holes. How do I get the model to seperate and unfold. And how to create the radius corners.
5x5x4 Quad Bin.skp (735.0 KB)
I opened the file and looked at it. I noticed that it was all what is known as “loose geometry.” That means you didn’t make any groups or components. I would suggest you study all the free SketchUp courses and the Square One (You Tube) series before you try to model. The model has many reversed faces and stray lines. You could move it to the background and then start again building it, one side at a time. I would suggest saving a side as a component and then move/copy, flip/copy, or rotate/copy to quickly make solid parts. If you take the free instructions, you will learn what all of that means. You might also learn to set the model to meters and work at a larger scale to avoid a problem with tiny faces or look on the forum for using the “Dave Method.”
Thank you.
Royce is correct. Due to the sticky nature of geometry in SketchUp, your panels are not separate.
If I were modeling this sort of thing I would make a component for each panel so they can be separated. It looks like there’s really only a couple of different panel patterns required so copies of components will make the work easier.
How precise do your patterns need to be? What is the material you’d be making this from and what is the K-factor for that material? For flat patterns you’ll need to first create zero-thickness representations of the panels drawn at the neutral axis of the material. Then they can be unfolded with the native Rotate tool or you could use an extension like Unfold and Flatten to create the flat copies.
Radiusing the edges can be done a number of ways. If I were modeling it, I would draw the end section of the panel with radiused corners and then use Push/Pull to extrude them.
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Carbon Steel 11ga. K factor around a .42. This model has to be pretty exact. In total there will be 144 panels being bolted together to make a quad bin silo. Plus 4 hopper bottoms and a roof. All bolted modular setup. So if I understand correctly there is no way for me to draw a model and seperate. Each panel has to be drawn seperatly then put together. I am use to drawing small single parts. Way out of my comfort zone on this one. And yes there are only 3 different panels on the section.
Sorry not carbon steel, It will be 304 SS
Each discrete part of the bin needs to be created as a component or group if you want to be able to separate them. You’ve modeled it as if the thing is supposed to be carved out of a large block.
Once you’ve created the first panel and made it as a component, you can copy it as needed and model other parts as components to fit.
It may be that SketchUp isn’t the right tool for this job. Depends on how exact your “exact” has to be. Remember that SketchUp represents curves with a series of straight edges and curved surfaces as a collection of flat faces. Depending on your tolerances, you may decide you need a different tool for the job.
So three different components required. Make them and put them together as needed.
Thank you. Will give it a try.
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I suggest that you read this: