Creating and Organizing a Bookcase Model in SketchUp - Tutorials for Woodworkers

what's up guys Justin here with the Sketchup essentials not Compaq with another Sketchup woodworking tutorial for you so in this video I wanted to walk you through some of the basics of creating and modeling a bookcase in Sketchup so let's go ahead and just jump into it so I kind of wanted to use this video as a way to talk through some basic principles and things that are gonna make your life a little bit easier when you're working with modeling something like a bookcase so so first of all we're gonna do is you can delete out whatever your default model is in your Sketchup model so I'm gonna delete this out and then the first thing we're gonna do is we're just gonna kind of start modeling and what we're gonna what we're gonna model is we're going to model out our side panels first and so the thing we're gonna do is there's two ways you could do this you could either draw with the line tool and you could model what you're looking for or you could use the rectangle tool and so to use the rectangle tool all you would do is you would tap the R key and then you'd want to go ahead and tap probably the right arrow key you can see how when I tap the right arrow key that locks this to the red axis well then I can come in here and I can tell this I can tell this both the depth and the height that I'm going for so in this case let's say I wanted this to be 12 inches deep by 72 inches high I just type in 12 comma 72 and hit the enter key and then if I come in here and I dimension this then this is gonna be a 72 inch high or a 6 foot high by one foot deep wood panel so and then what we're gonna do is we're gonna use the push/pull tool to extrude this and give it a little bit of depth so I'm just gonna activate the push-pull tool by tapping the P key and then I'm just gonna type in 3/4 of an inch and I'm gonna hit the enter key and you can see how that extruded this to three-quarters of an inch deep well now what we're gonna do is we're gonna select this object we're gonna right-click on it and we're gonna make this a component and this is kind of the first thing I wanted to talk about is you're gonna want to use groups and components in your model as much as possible to keep them organized because if you don't do that then a all of your geometry is going to merge but B it gets really hard to get back in here and make changes move things around and get the different parts and pieces that you want that sort of thing so make sure you're modeling this with components in this case we're just going to call this an end panel and you see how this box down here called replace selection with component is checked make sure that's checked and then go ahead and click create and so there's a place in your tray where you can manage all this stuff called the outliner so if you go in the outliner it's in your tray if you can't see your tray go to window default tray and make sure show tray is checked and also make sure the box for the outliner is checked but you can see how now and this is in here I can tell that this is my in panel so if I double click on this you can see how Sketchup goes inside this group so if I click on this or inside this component so if I click on this you can see how the whole thing is selected that means this is this is either a group or a component and then whenever I click on it over here it's going to do the same thing it's gonna select that object well now what we're gonna do is we're gonna use the Move tool to make a copy of this object so I'm gonna activate the move tool by tapping the M key well I'm gonna select my object I'm gonna activate the move tool by tapping my M key and I'm gonna click on this corner and you can see how when I click on this corner it's moving this object well what I want to do is I want to tap the control key to put this in copy mode and then once I put this in copy mode once I put this in copy mode you can see how this is creating a copy of this object and you can see how down in the corner my distance is moving as I move my mouse well what I want to do is I'm going to type in 36 inches and hit the enter key what that does is that creates a copy of this object 36 inches over so now that we've got that what we can do is we can come in here and we can draw a rectangle across the top of this object so just tap the R key to activate the rectangle tool click on this corner and then move your mouse over here and you can see how that draws a rectangle across this piece well what we want to do is we want to use the push/pull tool to give us some thickness so again we're just going to call this 3/4 of and what I'm gonna do because you can see how this is made up of different faces right now all I'm gonna do is I'm going to triple click and when I triple click that's gonna select everything in this object so you can see how the whole thing is selected well now I can right-click on this and make this a component as well and so in this case where I can call this is I can call this top panel and I realize there's probably some more technical terms for this but you can you can call these whatever you want to keep them organized well now you can see you've got two end panels and a top panel in your bookcase well and you can see how now you don't want to take this object and make a copy of it down because it's too big so you can see how it's too large to actually fit in this space now there's a couple different things you could do about that if you wanted to but in this case what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna come down here and I'm gonna use I'm gonna use some guides in order to model out my base piece so I'm kind of figuring the way this would go is the first shelf on here would start about 4 to 6 inches up so I'd probably have some kind of like toe-kick board in here just to kind of protect it to have kind of a piece of trim and also to protect it down at the bottom but what I'm gonna do first is I'm just going to draw a rectangle inside this space I'm gonna push pull it to give it my thickness and then I'm gonna make this a component and I'm just gonna call this shelf just shelf and hit the enter key well now what I have in here is I have an object called shelf but I don't want it to be on the ground so I'm going to use the Move tool to move it up probably about 4 inches and so you can see how now I've got this kind of gap in here and we'll come back in and we'll fill that in in a second but right now we've got our gap in here and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use I'm gonna create a guidance just to kind of space out my shelving so I'm gonna figure I'm gonna activate the tape measure tool and come down here and click on this line and you can see how when I move my mouse up it's creating a guideline I mean a guideline is just a basically a dotted line in here that doesn't merge with geometry but I can basically put this in here at different heights so in this case I'm going to create a 12 inch guideline from there so there's a couple different things you can do here you can either use your guide to create a couple copies so you can select this bottom piece by clicking on it you can use the move tool in copy mode to create a few different copies so you can just again select this object activate the move tool by clicking on this corner piece tap the control key and then click on this piece but what you can do is you can type in x 2 or x 3 or even more and hit the enter key in order to create multiple copies so if i type in x 5 it's gonna create 5 copies and you can see how that creates a little bit of a spacing issue up here so we don't necessarily want that so I'm gonna go back in and you can see I'm not clicking on anything but I can type in x 2 and hit the enter key and you can see how that's actually removing the copies that I made but that basically created two copies evenly spaced from this bottom piece well what we're gonna do here is I'm actually going to move this up and I'm actually going to move it into this piece right here and the reason I'm going to do that is because I'm going to use the divide tool to create some equally spaced copies so not only can this create a multiplications or multiple copies it can also create objects spaced evenly between two points so in this case what I would do is I would activate the move tool and copy mode I would move this up so it's actually inside this piece and then I would type it and divided by 3 and hit the enter key and what that did is that created three equally spaced copies between this point and this point and if you don't like that if you want them to be closer together you can type in divided by 4 divided by 5 you can basically create as many copies as you want in here you could do divided by 50 I wouldn't necessarily recommend it but you can definitely do that so in this case I'm probably going to do it divided by 4 so what I've got is I've got some shelves down here they have some kind of smaller or bigger spacing and then some kind of smaller spacings up here so that'll give me my different shelves and the nice thing about these is if you remember we created these as components so if you were to come in here and you wanted to make these thicker you can see how since they're all copies that same component if you made one thicker you could make them all thicker so it's really easy to come in there and make changes and one thing you may want to do because we did make a copy inside this top piece is delete out that copy up there but you can see how now what you have is you have a basic bookshelf that's all organized over here so you can find your shelves easily you can find your end panels easily you know and one thing I might do and not not everybody does this but you can come in here and you can group these in the outliner so you can group your components and then you can rename your group and you can call this shelves you could group these and you could rename them and you could call them in panels and then you can come in here and you can minimize all this stuff so it's really easy to find your different parts and pieces you can see how when you click on these it's going to select them for you so you can get in here and you can adjust your individual pieces you can get to all this stuff by keeping it organized in your outliner so and the next thing we want to do real quick is we're gonna come in here and we're going to create some trim pieces so probably what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna create my in trim pieces first and so all I'm gonna do to do that is I'm just gonna gonna come in here and I'm going to activate the rectangle tool so I'm going to tap the R key and then I'm just going to move my mouse up to this top piece right here and you can see how down in the lower right hand corner you can see the dimensions in here I can use that whoops I can use that to really easily figure out what dimensions I need so in this case this is actually small enough where I can move this and you can see the numbers changing in the corner I can actually move this until I get the dimension that I want you can also type that in so in this case I want six foot three quarters of an inch by an inch and a half and then again all you're gonna do is you're gonna push pull that out to whatever thickness you've got these pieces out and then you can triple click on that and again you can make it a component you can call it whatever you want I'm gonna call this tall trim piece and then you're gonna use the move tool and copy mode to create a copy just like we have been this whole time so you'll have those tall pieces over here and then same thing you can figure out how tall you want this little hang down piece to be and you can see how I can move my mouse until this gives me the dimensions that I want so let's say I wanted this to be three inches I might just activate the rotate or the rectangle tool draw a rectangle across here until I get the dimensions that I want and you can just push pull this out so it's the same thickness on this face and then I'm going to triple click on that I'm gonna make this in this case I'm gonna make this a group because I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be using another top trim piece but we can go ahead and just come in here and call that top-trim peas and then we can use the move tool to make a copy down and you can see how I can lock this to the blue axis by holding the shift key so if I if I make a copy of this along this axis and then I hold the shift key you can see how I can move this up and down and it will lock this to the blue axis so as soon as this gets on the blue axis like this if you hold shift its gonna lock it to that up and down axis then I can move this copy down here and then what I can do because I didn't make this a component is I can edit this one individually and I can just push pull this piece down until it meets the ground select that so now you've got your basic bookcase piece and again remember to come in here and you can see how since I made a copy this retain the same name we're just gonna rename this bottom trim piece and again this this is just one of those things where if you keep this organized and it's really easy to find the parts and pieces that you want in your model you definitely don't have to do it this way I like to do it this way because I like keeping things organized so and then the last thing you can do if you wanted to and this is definitely kind of an optional step but if you wanted to if you wanted like a trim piece along this perimeter I talked about this a little bit last week but you can actually use the follow me tool in order to create that so what we're gonna do in this case is we're going to draw a little canvas so and a canvas is just a little rectangular piece that you can come in here and you can draw on so I'm gonna set this I'm gonna create a little canvas piece and it doesn't matter how big it is because we're just gonna come in here and we're just going to draw the profile of what our base piece would look like so in this case let's say we have a simple profile for our base piece someone again if you remember the profile is just what what your piece would look like if you were to cut it straight across the face and I'll leave a link to the follow me tool tutorial that I did last week for this but all we're going to do is we're just going to draw a quick path so a path is just drawing a line around this face so that we can select it so all I did is I drew a line here a line here and the line here and what we're gonna do is we're gonna select that line you're those three lines by doing a shift-click and that's us telling it this is the path I want you to extrude this piece along we're gonna come over here to the follow me tool which can be found in the large tool set then we're gonna click on this face and you can see how what that did is that extruded this base piece all the way along that path so it took that profile and it extruded it along that face and so the only thing I don't like about that is that brought that in here with the back face the darker face showing outward so I'm just gonna triple click on that to select the whole thing I'm gonna right click and I'm gonna click reverse faces and so now what you've got is you've got this bookcase with this trim piece around the bottom and you can do the same thing up here at the top if you wanted to as well but again remember to triple click on this right click and make it a group and just name this base trim and so if you use this strategy you can basically model anything you want you can use this for cabinets you can use this for basically anything but this is a real good way to just real quickly keep your model organized make it easily editable and also to be able to create all the parts and pieces that you want leave a comment below let me know what you thought if you liked this video please remember to click that like button down below if you're new around here remember to click that subscribe button for new Sketchup content every week feel like what I'm doing in this channel please consider visiting my support me page on my website that's the Sketchup essentials comm slash support but in any case thank you so much for taking the time to watch this I really appreciate it and I will catch you in the next video thanks guys

Channel: TheSketchUpEssentials

Views: 69,161

Rating: 4.9414802 out of 5

Keywords: thesketchupessentials, the sketchup essentials, thesketchupessentials.com, sketchup tutorials, sketchup lessons, sketchup modeling, sketchup 2016, architecture, sketchup 2017, sketchup tutorial, justin geis, sketchup woodworking, sketchup model organization, sketchup outliner

Id: 9-yv70ssrLM

Length: 16min 31sec (991 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 11 2017