is there a woodworking sketchup how-to out there somewhere?

Mike Gager

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118
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Topeka KS
im talking like a tutorial on how to perform certain woodworking procedures in sketchup, such as making dovetails and M&T joints?

i have figured out ways to do both but wonder if there is a quicker, better, easier way to do it?
 
thanks the dovetail box article helped a bunch. as far as M&T joints go the way i do them is i draw both pieces including the tenon, making each piece a component. i put the pieces where i want them, select the piece with the tenon and click intersect with model. this puts a mark on the other piece where the tenon lines up. then i just select to edit the other piece, trace the mark for the tenon and then push/pull it to the depth i want.

i guess im wondering if theres a simpler way to do this?
 
Mike, I don't find the Intersect thing to be all that useful for creating mortises since you still have to draw lines and Push/Pull the waste. Instead I shift to X-ray mode, open the part getting the mortise, trace the base of the tenon with the Rectangle tool and Push/Pull the waste. the Push/Pull tool will snap to the end of the tenon so you don't need to know how deep the mortise has to be. Doing it in X-ray mode makes it easy to see what you're doing and you don't need to create any sort of layout. With Intersect there's also the potential to create intersections where you don't want them. The way I do it, there isn't and chance of that.

See the following images. these are from a tutorial I did starting here.

table40.jpg

table41.jpg
 
i've always made my mortises and tenons the same way i would with real wood. i'd figure the size of the tenon i would need, then set up the mortise. hasn't failed me yet.
 
Dan, I think that's a good approach for mortise and tenon joints in SketchUp.

It's easy to layout the the tenon on the end of the rail, apron, whatever. Then cut the mortise to fit as I showed above.

Another thing that makes it easier is to copy (Ctrl+Move) the rail, apron, whatever component out away from the rest of the model. Draw the tenons on the end of that copy (obviously open it for editing first) and when you've completed the tenons, close that instance of the component and then delete it. Since you're working with components, the tenons would be completed on the other instances. No need to worry about moviing the component back into place.

And after drawing the tenon on one end, use it and a pair of guidelines to mark out the one on the opposite end. Well, if they are symmetrical to each other.

table36.jpg

table37.jpg
 
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