Ammo Can 2.0 #1: sketchup drawing of the ammo can

Hey Jason your one step ahead of me I can’t make the drawings.

-- Jim from Heirloom Woodshop Southern Oregon

I will say that sketchup does help visualize your project better where hand drawing or autocad does not. It is worth the time to check out.

-- Jason

I tried my hand at it but I cant grasp the computer thing

-- projects dont pay,pieces are profitable,production is painfull

Nice work Jason.

That’s an interesting idea.

You say you are having a hard time printing your plan from SketchUp. What do you mean by that? What have you done to make a plan beyond drawing the assembled model as shown in the images? I’ll help you get that worked out if you’d like.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

DaveR,

I guess what I mean is that I am not used to having to export a jpg of the “screen shot” in skecthup and in turn printing that out as my plans. I would think that there is a way to take what I have drawn in 3D and transfer it to a 2D format. This is where I am showing my ignorance to sketchup. I learned how to draw 2D in autocad and it is very helpful in plans but not so much in visualizing what I am trying to build. But as I am ready to build, I am finding that the 2D plans from autocad are more of importance to me. But I do not want to draw this thing twice, once in sketchup to visualize the project and once in autocad for plans.

I guess I would need to know how to print a view from the X, Y, and Z axis of the sketchup drawing.

This I have yet to figure out.

Thanks for the help.

-- Jason

Jason,,

I understand now. You can make views, called Scenes in SketchUp, to show what you want. To create 2D views, go to Camera>Parallel Projection. If you want standard front, side and top views, set those with either the Views toolbar or from Camera>Standard Views>... It’s also helpful to use layers to control the visibility of components so that you can hide some parts and leave others visible to improve clarity. After you’ve created the scenes to show the things you want, you can either print directly from SketchUp, export images for printing or, if you have the Pro version of SketchUp, send the images to Layout and create an entire plan documeent that can be saved as a PDF file.

Maybe this Design. Click. Build. blog entry will help to give you some ideas.

Dave

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Dave,

Thanks for the help on this. I will have to give that a try with the 2d projections. I figured there was a way to do it but I did not know what magic button to press.

But I think you really hit the nail on the head by talking about what the pro version does. I have created layouts in AutoCAD so I had multiple views and text and I was able to print that out and it made pretty good plans to work with. I guess I am going to have to try and get the pro version to exactly what I would like to do.

Thanks for the clarification. Now I do not feel like I am bumping around a dark room looking for the door with my eyes closed. Thats how I felt when I first started using sketchup.

Jason

-- Jason

Jason, as far as making the views (scenes) you can do all that with the free version of SketchUp. Layout is a companion program packed with the Pro version of SU that makes it easy to create document packages but it isn’t required to be able to make the 2D and other views. In fact you still have to make those views in SketchUp first.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Hello Son, I see you are learning from the pros now, thats good. At least I got you started in the right direction, working with wood. I just hope you enjoy it as much as we do. Keep up the good work till later. Dad

-- JohnB.,Miami, Fl.

Well I see I have grabbed the attention of the man that got me into this mess. Hello to you Dad, and I hope you enjoy the build of this project. It should be going fast from now because I am on a time line that I cannot change. The problem with making going away gifts is the person you are making it for is going away, the question you have to ask yourself as the craftsman, “Is your gift going with them, or in the mail?”

Anyway, I am bad about taking progress pictures, but I grabbed a few while I was waiting to get up the nerve to begin cutting the dovetails. Here are a few of the box with the cherry splines in it. The inside of the box is done and finished with shellac. It has the desert marpat camo pattern in it as did the last one. I also have one pic of the lid just laying on there and cut to final dimension. It is just waiting for the dovetails.

I still have not made a decision on what to finish the outside with yet. I am leaning towards shellac, but I can always do brush on Deft lacquer. Don’t know yet.

Well questions or comments are always welcome.

!!!

-- Jason

Here are the other two pics.

-- Jason

Not sure why the pictures are coming out wierd. It is only showing half of the above pics. Hope to fix that next time. Sorry.

-- Jason

Looking good, sir.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Thank you. As you can see I was busy this weekend. We also have the new batch of officer candidates on deck as of this weekend and things are quite hectic at work. We will busy for the next twelve weeks. Oh joy! But woodworking must go on!

-- Jason