Elongated Holes in SketchUp

In my book Chapter 9, Step 30, there are instructions for placing elongated holes in the Top Frame for fastening the Top. They're elongated to account for seasonal movement of the Top cross-grain.

Here is one of the elongated holes shown with a Back Edges Style so you can see the hole all the way through the Top Frame.

After making one hole, I ask the reader to copy the hole to the other locations in the Top Frame. Here I am moving a copy of the hole down the red axis.

After placing it, the reader will surprisingly notice that the hole is "covered over" - having a face. So, is there a hole there or not?

Also, you are horrified upon clicking the hole covering, the entire face of the frame piece is selected. You can't get the small face of the hole to select only. My book explains this phenomenon - it is normal SketchUp behavior. As explained in Step 30 - "trace over a small part of the hole outline" and the hole face can be selected and deleted, leaving a hole.

Here is way not to "trace over a small part……". These are extraneous lines and will cause problems in removing that face of the hole.

Rather, make sure you zoom in close and, with the Line Tool, trace over a line segment endpoint to endpoint.

 

Now you'll be able to select the hole face, and delete it.

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Editing SketchUp Materials

Sometimes I find I want to give the idea that the wood grain material I've used in my SketchUp model has been stained, shellacked or varnished. there are some limited controls available under the Edit tab in the Materials browser. Often, though, it is nice to be able to use an external image editor such as Photo Shop. Fortunately this is very easy to do in SketchUp. Before you can actually do the editing in your external image editor, you have to tell SketchUp what editor you want to use and give it the path so it can find it. Go to Window>Preferences>Applications on the PC or SketchUp>Preferences>Applications on the Mac. Browse to find the program you want to use and choose it. In my example, I am using Paint.NET which is a freeware application that works quite well. You only need to make this setting once and it should be available any time you need it.

So to edit a material first get it into the In Model materials library. You can either apply the material to a face or faces in the model or you can simply right click on the material thumbnail and choose Add to model. In this example I painted all of the surfaces with this material. Then, in the In Model library, right click on the thumbnail and choose Edit Texture Image.

The image editor you selected in Preferences will now open with the material image ready for manipulation.

Make the desired changes to the color. If you use additional layers in the image editor remember to flatten the image before saving.

After you've made the desired changes to the image, save it. Once the image file has been saved, go back to SketchUp, you'll notice the thumbnail image and any faces to which you've applied the material will show the change automatically.

Short, easy and sweet. Note that this doesn't modify the texture image in the original library. It only changes the one in the In Model linrary. If you wish to save the modified texture, open the secondary pane in the Materials browser. Set the lower pane to the destination library then click and drag the thumbnail from In Model to the other library.

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Showing Off Your SketchUp Inventory

  It recently occurred to me that I could create display rooms of my furniture models in SketchUp. I'm not sure what benefits I can achieve by doing this, but it is fun to assemble furniture in the context of the rooms in the house. I suppose this was partly an experiment - how many furniture pieces could I include before SketchUp bogs down. (I never reached a point of noticeable degradation in performance. )Yes, this creates big files, as these pieces of furniture are very detailed and full of complex surfaces. And I just scratched the surface, not applying textures, colors, and fancy room treatments.
Here is my redwood shed out back with included furniture. The shed - a timber frame construction - was designed in detail in SketchUp. I've included several pieces of Shaker furniture installed there - a garden bench, blanket chest, cupboard, table, and Windsor chair.
Here is our family room that includes, a corner cupboard, Maloof chairs, lowboy, entertainment center, breakfast table, Windsor chairs, mahogany bookcase, and sideboard.

This is so much fun, I may just assemble furniture in all rooms of the house.
Tim

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