Sketchup Mirror

[Matt Meiser]

Played around some more in Sketchup. The design for this mirror is blatently stolen from the president of my woodworking club. I'm planning to build one, so I thought it would be a good way to play around with Sketchup.

Most of it was pretty easy, except doing the roundovers/coves. To make them, I first pushed/pulled a rabbet the size of roundover along each edge. I then made 1/4 circles and pushed/pulled them along the appropriate edges. Next, I used the line tool to connect the intersecting points of the extruded quarter circles and deleted the extra stuff. Seems like there has to be an easier way? Don't they have a Sketchup Router?

[Dave Richards]

Matt, they do have a router but it is called Follow Me instead. Here's a very quick simple example. Select all the edge working around the part before running Follow Me.

[Dave Richards]

Here is another quick profile. It took me longer to make the screen shot and post it than to make the molding. Too bad you can't make it that quick in wood.

[Jim Becker]

I used the follow-me for the crown on this one...nice feature...as long as you start at the end--something I learned the hard way!

[Matt Meiser]

Uh, yeah, that was a little easier!

[Matt Meiser]

as long as you start at the end--something I learned the hard way!

I just figured that out too. I copied Dave's example in no time, then took a while to figure out why what I was trying to do wouldn't work.

[Dave Richards]

A quick thing about doing crown molding or any other molding for that matter. Think about applying it to the rest of the model like you would apply the real stuff. Group the cabinet or its parts so that the molding won't stick to it. Trace the top of the cabinet to draw a path for the Follow Me tool. Draw the profile at one end. Select the entire path and run the Follow Me tool on the profile. Voila'! molding.

Note the first line segment of the Follow Me path must be perpendicular to the profile for it to work properly. If you are doing a curved path for the molding, draw a short starting segment and erase the unwanted part of the geomtry later.