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
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.
Tutorial Video
https://youtu.be/ANAjb02EnR0?list=PLxUo4IvucruefSR-dwEs7pHAjQZgoOhw0
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!
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This video tutorial revisits a parametric 3D printable panel that I created a while ago using plain Ruby code. 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.
Tutorial Video
https://youtu.be/UmvTROcPETY
3D Model
You can explore the original 3D model using the viewer below. Just click the image to start it.
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A rendering of the candle holder
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...
Need to unfold a shape in SketchUp? And you are running into problems? Read my tips and tricks article that describes how to best do that with my extension:
https://alexschreyer.net/sketchup/unwrapping-unfolding-correctly-sketchup/
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The new knob is in its place
I recently had the need to replace a broken knob on our dryer and instead of tracking down the original replacement part, I 3D printed the knob from a SketchUp model I made in a few minutes. Check out my blog post and see how I did it:
https://alexschreyer.net/sketchup/dryer-fix-made-easy-3d-printing/
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