Draw 45 diagonal deck with borders & estimate

SketchUp
1

Hello everyone, I am new to sketchup and this forum. I am going to be using sketchup for deck design and estimates/materials list.

I am just starting to understand groups and component and their uses. I am designing a rectangle deck 30’ by 12’ . There will be a double border around the entire perimeter and interior boards will be on 45 angle. I wish to buy “estimator” or a similar plugin in the future (any recommendations?) in order to make estimates and materials lists quickly.

I have made 2-10, 2-8, and also an exact length deck board component that will fit between the borders on the deck top and already has 45 angled cuts on the ends of the boards.

I put the first deck board component in the bottom left corner on a 45 angle- then I make enough copies to fit across the deck.
My question is-should I be using groups or individual components for the smaller angled boards I have to fill in at the beginning and ending sections where a full size deck board is too big.

Is there a way to use a regular deck board component for these smaller sections and use some sort of line tool to cut them all off at the edge of the deck border. Would this give me accurate size measurements for each board in an estimator type plugin.

I hope I made this kinda clear-I apologize for the rambling.

2

There are several extensions available that would be useful for making your materials estimates. CutList which is available at no charge in the Extension Warehouse would work for this.

I would use components for all of the deck boards. Instances of the same one where possible and then use Make Unique to separate out those that need to be trimmed shorter. It sounds like building decks is part of your business and so you’ll be using SketchUp Pro. You could use the Solid Tools’ Trim tool or better Trim and Keep for trimming deck boards to length or there are several other ways to do it. You could draw a diagonal line at the cut and use Push/Pull to get rid of the waste or select the mitered end and move it to shorten or lengthen the board.

If you commonly use deck boards mitered at 45° you could save a typical board as a component for later use. Lots of options.

3

Hi - I have created a plugin to do exactly this called Builder, after having many problems myself with trying to get Cutlist to work properly. There is a free version limited to 50 parts here: Extension | SketchUp Extension Warehouse and an unlimited pro version too: Extension | SketchUp Extension Warehouse . Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you need any help with it!