I’ve been meaning to get into sketchup for years and played with it on many ocassions, looks like it’s my chance now!
I looked at a bunch of beginners tutorials (including major tools) and a 2D → 3D conversion on pluralsight. However I think I’m now out of my depth and would appreciate some advice.
I’m trying to model my offroad trailer so that I can prototype some things. I managed to get the main body of the unit going. I’m only trying to work on the right (visible) side, and then copy and mirror the left side.
I’m stumped on how to model the right hand side wheel so it’s appropriately sized and placed and the fender flare.
Would appreciate any advice, and links to tutorials of course. There’s so much learning material out there, it’s hard to narrow things down.
Check out the VIDEO… Pay attention to the first part where Aron puts a WaterMark on his modeling space. It can be traced and copied to the model space.
I hope this helps.
Draw a circle about the red axis (assuming that goes to the right in the image), bigger than the wheel, draw a simple profile (cross-section) of the wheel in the red/blue plane, then use FollowMe.
Draw the outline of the fender - three rectangles for top and two ends, draw an arc in the outside corners; then a profile with a flat rectangle part and a few segments of arc and a rectangle for the turn down, then run FollowMe all round.
Thank you, I wasn’t aware of follow me. I’ll do some further research.
That’s how I started, as you suggest:
draw a circle about the red axis
extruded it to the approximate width of the tire
I ran into a problem though. I couldn’t quite figure how to determine the center of the wheel on the image to position the tire correctly. When I scaled my “tire” visually it wasn’t properly placed in the image. It should’ve been because the image is otherwise to scale. I research followme further!
You’l still need to position the cross-section profile properly.
I’d suggest just measure your wheel to get the overall diameter, and make a simplified profile of it. Soften the edges, show hidden geometry and apply tire texture. Don’t go over the top with many-segment rounded edges. Then work from your drawn geometry to position it.
There’s the circle, I drew a simple profile, rotated it, projected a tire texture (from a google search) onto a part of the rim while showing hidden lines, and copied it round the rest. Then applied a dark or lighter gray onto the rest.
