Tutorials about making things with SketchUp: Design for fabrication, 3D printing, CNC, laser cutting, etc. Learn more about this topic in Chapter 6 of my book
As I discuss in Chapter 6, you can create a mobile in SketchUp and design it in the software so that - when 3D printed or otherwise fabricated - this mobile hangs perfectly in the balance. This process works for all planar designs, independent of how many levels such a mobile may have.
Example mobile with highlighted free-body diagram levels
Step 1: Break the mobile down into individual Free-Body Diagrams (FBDs)
The previous image shows one of my recent students' mobiles. It has a great theme and while it doesn't push this method enough (it is very symmetrical), it helps me explain this step.
From a structural perspective, you need to break down the entire mobile into its sub-structures and their respective free-body diagrams (FBDs). You basically need to separate each of its individual levels in this step. The image shows how this looks for my student's mobile.
Once broken down this way, you would analyze this mobile from the bottom to the top, following...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2W0bKW8guM
In this tutorial I cover several approaches and techniques for creating 3D-printable pendants from SketchUp. This includes designs that need to be hanging in the balance (for pendants, earrings, mobile elements, etc.) as well as those with multiple support points (e.g. for name necklaces).
The extensions and websites that I mention in the video are:
Shapeways 3D printingFace Centroid and Area Properties ExtensionSolid Inspector extension
Did you design anything with this approach? Share it below in the comments.
...
https://youtu.be/ANAjb02EnR0?list=PLxUo4IvucruefSR-dwEs7pHAjQZgoOhw0
In this video I cover how to create the mobile from Chapter 6 in my book. This involves finding the accurate centroid for irregular shapes, which is easily done with my centroid extension. Just model this, send it to the laser cutter, and then hang it.
This is a free sample instructional video from the book "Architectural Design with SketchUp: 3D Modeling, Extensions, BIM, Rendering, Making, and Scripting" (2nd Edition). I discuss this topic more in detail in that book's Chapter 6.Want more of these videos? If you own the book, use the password from the inside cover to gain access to all of my remaining videos on Wiley's website: http://www.wiley.com/go/schreyer2e. If you don't yet have your own copy, follow the links in the sidebar to get one. It is a great reference for SketchUp!
...
https://youtu.be/UmvTROcPETY
This video tutorial revisits a parametric 3D printable panel that I created a while ago using plain Ruby code. You can explore the original 3D model using the viewer below. Just click the image to start it.
Since the underlying code is now included in my Scale By Tools extension, I used it to re-create the same panel. Watch the video to see how you can very easily create the same design (or whatever else you want) with it. You can then 3D print it, laser cut, CNC cut, or use a waterjet cutter to create this panel out of many materials.
...
Now that the days are getting shorter, it may be a nice home decorating idea to create a decorative candle holder. Having the powers of SketchUp and computational design methods as well as 3D printing at our fingertips, it does, of course, make sense to create something more interesting than just a boring lampshade.
This brief example uses the patterned panel exercise from Chapter 7 to create the basic geometry. Of course you can replace the sinusoidal wave pattern easily now with another beautiful function, or you could even have the cutout pattern generated based on colors in an image, which allows you to make it look like a logo, landscape, etc.
Since the resulting shape needed to have the pattern cut into a curved surface, there were basically two approaches: 1) create a curved surface and place the geometry onto it by arranging it radially (and then subtracting it), or 2) creating the panels flat and then curving them. Also, this...
