Google Sketchup - Come Along for the Ride #12: Simple Sketchup bookcase

Here I am going to try a little bit more of this Sketchup program. I’m having a bit of trouble getting the hang of things – but I’m determined to whip this program into submission! I was going to work on a hall table – but decided that’s still out of my SU talent range so I’ve decided to do a simple bookcase. I’ve picked up few tricks. Nothing to fancy – but more than the baby steps I took with the table blog.

Between the medication for my neck and the cat sitting on my keyboard – I might get this accomplished.

First start with a rectangle the outside diameter of the bookcase. I’m shooting for 14” deep and 32 wide.

Use the push/pull tool to pull the rectangle up to 5’.

Now we’ll use the “offset tool.” This is the tool that looks like a half circle with an arrow coming through the top (13th tool from the left of the small tool bar).

Position the offset tool on the top edge of the rectangle so that the red inference dot shows up. Then slowly move the tool inward – you should see a second rectangle being created – left click and type in ¾” in your VCB box. This will give you ¾” sides.

Next select the face of the rectangle and use the push/pull tool to push the face back 13.75”

As it appears this is just a simple box that will have shelves added. Nothing fancy. I’ve not figured out how to show the rabbet on the back or the dados for the shelves. But I’ll get there!

Next so that nothing happens to my shell – I’ll make this into a “group.”

Select the box by triple clicking so that all the edges are blue.

The right click and select “make group”

Now onto making a few shelves.

Select the rectangle tool and draw a rectangle on the bottom of the case. I choose to make mine 12” deep (by 31” long).

Then select the rectangle and right click and select “make component.”

Now select the rectangle/component by using the select tool and double clicking,

Bring the move/copy tool onto the shelf component you should see four red crosses (x’s) and it should say on “on face on group”

Left click and hold the control key down—and move your copy up to the top of the case. Type in /4 then hit Enter. You should get four additional shelves evenly spaced.

Click on the bottom shelf (the original rectangle) and delete.

Now select one of the shelves by double clicking and use the push/pull tool to expand the shelf – ¾”. Because you made the shelf a component – what ever you do to one shelf will happen to the others.

Certainly nothing fancy here. I want to work on figuring out how to put the rabbet on the back and the dado’s for the shelves. I still need to figure out how to show the screen I’m looking at into the blog. That would probably help a lot. But I’m missing something in my fellow LJ’s explaination of how to do that. But will keep trying.

Hope this makes sense!

-- Like a bad penny, I keep coming back!