Exploded view drawings in Sketchup

I posted this response to some comments concerning exploded view diagrams in Tom's post of his fall Sketchup challenge. Then I figured it should probably get a posting of its own. I’ll do a tutorial sometime soon.

But in the meantime, just so folks know it’s not only possible but typical….

Exploded view diagrams is how I do all my final dimensioning in Sketchup. It’s a pretty typical process. If you subscribe to FWW online take a look at the Design, click, build blog. I haven’t been contributing to it much since finding LJ but Tim Killen , one of the other contributors is a master Sketchup user and has done some great explanations of his methods. Very impressive stuff. Very well documented design process.

During development of the piece every individual piece of wood is made into it’s own component (components are the key to working effectively in Sketchup). Once I have the design finished I’ll make a copy of the whole thing and then create an exploded view. I then dimension the individual parts. I can then either print them out, print full size templates, or just review them onscreen while I build.

Here’s a view of my Morris chair an exploded dimensioned view of the side pieces.

-- Bob, Carver Massachusetts, Sawdust Maker http://www.capecodbaychallenge.org