I make my own furniture from DTD boards (18 mm thickness). When in my garage drilling holes, I either have to take my laptop with me and measure hole position from 3D model or I have to manually draw the position of the hole, add Dimensions and print every component. This is very time consuming and I would like to automate the process a bit.
I have provided an example of what I would like to achieve.
On the left there are two boards screwed together at 90° (it is always at 90°). On the right there are the same to boards with marked dimensions for the holes. The hole is always located 10cm from the edge I need the height of the hole position.
I also provided a more complex model, which is a wardrobe (just so you have a better picture).
Is there a way to do this? Could you give me some pointers? Thanks.
The first thing I would suggest is to eliminate redundant dimensions and labels. In your example that would eliminate at least half of your work of dimensioning.
Since you know this and you’re the one drilling the holes, there’s no need to put the 10 cm dimension in the drawing at all. You can create a drilling guide to use in the shop so you only need to mark the distance from the end of the panel or the centerline on the end of the shelf. That would save you more time.
I do furniture design and plans for a professional furniture maker. We came up with a list of things that are just understood. When he puts dadoes or grooves in panels as you might for shelves, he always uses the same depth. I know what that depth is and model accordingly. When I create the plan for the project I only need to dimension to the edge of the dado from the datum but I don’t have to give the width or the depth because he already knows that.
I wouldn’t bother modeling the holes in the ends of the shelves. That would save time. Since those holes are likely always going to be centered in the thickness of the shelves and 10 cm from the edges, I wouldn’t even bother to dimension them on the shelf. I also wouldn’t bother to make the holes on the side panels. I’d locate them with small centering + marks which could be components that get dropped onto the face of the panel.
Also make sure you avoid conflicting dimensions. Put in the important ones and leave out the rest.
I would do the dimensioning in LayOut and only show what is needed. It’s easier to control the dimensions so they can be read and you can use break lines to show the components where there’s information to relay and eliminate the model. This is from a project I’m working on right now. It’s not complete but you can see the center region of the part is not shown. There are no features in that area so it’s dropped out. The component is still its full length in the SketchUp model, however. This is for a plan for others to build from so it has more dimensions than I would put in if it was just for myself to work from.
Can you export existing 3D model to Layout as is? I am watching some 3D to layout tutorials and they have to take the model apart, and export each component separately.
It depends on what you want to show in your LO document. The viewports in LayOut are based on the scenes you create in SketchUp. If you want to show the panels for dimensioning you would make copies of the components and lay them out to create appropriate scenes.
Example: This is the first sheet of another recent plan project. I’ve turned off the dimensions and labels. Each view of the model is a viewport and is linked to a scene in SketchUp.
There are only a few scenes and most of them are used more than once within the LayOut document. Again, this was done for use by other people who aren’t as familiar with the project and maybe not as familiar with woodworking as I am so it has a whole lot more detail in it than I would put in for myself if I was building it in my shop.
