Newbie needs help with angled brace

Hi all,

I’m somewhat new to sketchup, I’m trying to design a wooden gate, similar to a barn door with a 45º angled ‘brace’ across the front and back. I understand this is very simple, if you’re working with a square object, which mine is not. To make up for the non-square shape I attempted to measure the angle with the protractor from the bottom inner-edge to the top inner guide (measured to the width of my stock) so it would be edge to edge, but it still didn’t line up. I know the angle can’t be exactly 45º due to the object being an odd size.

I’ve attached my .skp for reference, and in the attached image you can see what I’m trying to achieve… I just don’t know the proper way to do it.AutoSave_Gate.skp (169.9 KB)

You can draw an arc from the edge to where you want it to align. That gives you a point of reference to use with the rotate tool. A bit tricky to describe.

,

2 Likes

Remember you are a very new user if you looking what I saying. So in this case my advice you are new user so first time read guideline or saw a helpful tutorial which you saw YouTube and other sources. So at first you working little project please never mind.

It often helps to approach building a model in SketchUp as you would building in the real world.

And as a new user, you’ll become far more proficient with SketchUp by learning the full potential of its native tools before resorting to unnecessary plugins.

So, how would one position the brace board properly to mark it for the cuts?

Most likely you’d place the top edge of the lower end in position and rotate the board about that point until the lower edge of the upper end is in position.

One can easily do the same with SketchUp’s native tools.
Click through the Scenes in this tutorial model:
Brace Modeling Tutorial.skp (211.1 KB)

Key to the process: Understanding the power of Inferencing and use of the Arc Tool

1 Like

@Geo I appreciate the time you took, to teach me each step. A new approach that I never knew was possible. Thanks very much!!

1 Like

Thank you for the quick solution!

1 Like

Hi there, I am brand new and trying to do something similar, X cross on table ends. I found this awesome step-by-step but am stuck. Can someone help me understand this step please?
Shared with CloudApp
What does it mean “use line A-B to construct brace”?
Thank you

It just means draw a rectangle so that one of its long edges lies on the line AB. You could use the rotated rectangle tool to put it there directly, or just draw a normal rectangle and rotate it into place. Or you could just draw it with lines starting with AB and inferring perpendicular, or drag a guideline off AB to mark the width of your bracer or any way you want to draw it.

Then the arc A-B-C means an arc with centre A from B to C, exactly the same as at the top of this thread, making an arc so that you can rotate the bracer through the same angle as that arc.

1 Like