Hi,
I’m new to Sketchup and am just trying to make a simple model for a cabinet. I have the basic shape and dimensions now I want to to divide the front face into 3 equal sections for the doors and drawers.
Is there an easy to select a face and divide it into equal sized pieces?
tks, louie
Louie, there are several ways to do that. The best way kind of depends upon how you’ve built your model to this point. You can create a linear array using the copy function of the Move tool to space out copies of edges or guidelines. See this for some guidance.
You can use the Divide command to divide an edge (right-click an edge > Divide > key in number of divisions.
However, that really isn’t a good way to build a cabinet. You should make the cabinet more or less the way you would in the real world. Build the cabinet box and make it a component. Build the cabinet doors and make them components. Assemble the cabinet complete, and make it another component.
Going the other way, each board and panel making up the cabinet should also be components. For instance, a board would be a component consisting of six faces and twelve edges.
If you do all your modeling using raw geometry (faces and edges) up against raw geometry, sooner or later things are going to get all stuck together and make a mess.
If you wish to practice your skills using only raw geometry for a while longer before jumping into groups and components, I suggest modeling things that are intended to be a single homogeneous object, like an individual part cut from a single piece of wood. When you’re ready to build an assembly, like a cabinet or a chair or an airplane, it’s time to learn about groups and components.
-Gully
As has been stated, there are multiple ways to do it; I used to use the “divide” from the r-click menu and move components so that they snapped to the correct place. However when you have bevels and need to take into account the thickness of materials and even spacing it can be a bit more involved than that:
Now the way I work is to draw a line (outside of the existing geometry) that is the same thickness as I want the dividing bits to be. I move it to line up with the bottom edge, then copy it to line up with the top edge and use /3 to lay down 3 copies between. Now I have multiple reference points in the correct place outside the main model that I can use as inference points to snap to.
Thanks this got me going in the right direction once I figured out that I can use move to copy the vertical edge all the way to the opposite edge and use /3 to make three equal spaced vertical lines.
-louie
Exactly! That’s the easy way to do it.
Thanks for your help.
Yes I understand what you are saying. At this point I am just trying to build a prototype model that has all the external dimensions to get a good feel for the look and proportion. Things like do I want 3 sections or 4 sections.
Next I plan to use this prototype model to start constructing a detailed model that has all the individual components. This way I can use the prototype as inference points to build my components to the exact dimensions I need. This is a method that was described in a SketchUp DVD tutorial I got from Fine Woodworking.
-louie
Louie,
I think that’s a good way to work. No reason to put a lot of extra work in as you sort out the overall look and dimensions. Then flesh it out after you’ve got those details figured out. Keep in mind you can still make adjustments after you’ve made the components so it’s still not carved in stone.
It makes sense to me and it is sure a lot easier than drafting it out on paper!
Since you seem to be on line can you tell me how to find the end points of each segment of a line the was split into equal pieces using a divide. That is pretty easy to do but once its done I can’t find a way to reference the segment ends to set guides for instance.
tks, louie
Louie, you can do it by “feeling” along the line until you get the green endpoint dot or you can go to the Styles window and edit the style to show endpoints. This will put a little lump at each end point.