SKETCHUP Cabinet Doors

Dave Richards

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There are several ways to draw paneled doors. Here are the first two. I'll do more this evening and post them..

First, The Dead Simple One Component Shaker Door.
Door_Simple.jpg

1. Draw door to outside dimensions. Start with rectangle and Push/Pull to thickness. 3/4" thick shown here.
2. Use Offset tool to draw inisde of frame.
3. Use Push/Pull to create recess. 1/4" recess shown.

Second, The Dead Simple One Component Raised Panel Door.
Door_Simple_Raised.jpg

Starts the same as the previous door.
4. Offset tool used to create the limit of the fielding. Diagonal drawn in between corners to create fold lines.
5. Double click on field only. This selects the center field and its four bounding edges. Hold Alt with the Move tool. Move the field up making sure you're moving in the direction of the blue axis. Type the desired height. I used 1/4". If you can't get the move to go in the right direction, orbit to a lower viewpoint.
 
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Man, Dave! You are so helpful with this kind of stuff. I check out just about every tutorial you post on FWW. When I get my new laptop, I'll have more computing power to play with SU more often. I can't wait to apply these great lessons! :D
 
I couldn't wait. Here's another method of building a door. This one consists of five components just like a real frame and panel door would. I wouldn't go to this kind of detail unless I needed it for working drawings or other illustration purposes. There's another method to create the raised panel profile and the rail and stile profiles that you could use if you don't care about pulling the door apart into the individual parts. I'll show that way after this.

Note: The arcs used for this demo consist of 6 segments each. This is to help keep file size down. I don't think you could even tell looking at the end product anyway.

Door_5Comp_1.jpg

1. Basic board for a stile.
2. Draw the profile of the cutter on the end.
3. Push/Pull and you've got the stile. Make it a component.

Door_5Comp_2.jpg

4. Copy the stile and mirror it with the Scale tool. Move it to the desired position.
5. Copy one of the stiles and rotate it into place as a rail. Right click on it and Make unique. Copy the rail and mirror the copy to make the other rail. don't panic about the length.

Door_5Comp_3.jpg

6. Use Intersect with model, Eraser and some tracing to fill in faces for the cope on the ends of the rails. Since the rails are related you only need to do one of them. The other one gets the same treatment.
7. Figure out the dimensions of the panel. Draw a rectangle to that shape. The edge of the rectangle will be the Follow Me path. Draw the profile of the raising and back of the panel as needed. I deleted the face of the rectangle mainly for clarity but it also means there's no geometry in contact with the profile. This makes it easier to select the path for Folow Me.

Door_5Comp_4.jpg


8. Select the rectangle path by triple clicking on one of the lines. Get the Follow Me tool and click on the face of the profile. If the faces are reversed, triple click on the panel, right click and choose Reverse faces.
9. Trace along an internal edge to p and bottom to put in the faces. Clean up the unneeded lines. Go to X-ray or wire frame view to make sure you get them all. Make the panel a component.
10. Move the frame and panel together. Select all five components and make a component of the lot.
 
Just for fun, here's the finished door from the previous post. It's on the left with hinge mortises and a hole drilled for the knob. In the center are copies of that door. The right hand one of that pair has been mirrored with the scale tool so that the mortises and hole are in the proper place.

On the right are more doors and panel made from that original door. I didn't draw another bit of geometry to make these. I made an initial copy and then made the individual parts unique so editing them wouldn't change the original. Then I used the resizing technique discussed in Jeff's thread employing the a left to right selection and the Move tool.

Don't make components unique if they aren't going to get edited, though.

You can probably imagine that a whole kitchen full of doors could be made from a single door component using this method.

Doors.jpg
 
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:clap: Yet another one I need to walk through when I have a few moments (and it's not 3:00 AM). There are several new tricks in this one that I've only read about -- not done. Thanks for the tutorial, Dave. :thumb:
 
Are those first two doors one piece? I see just routing out the inside of the first one, but what about the second one, how is it made if in fact it is just one piece. As you can tell I haven't made many projects with doors yet.
 
Aaron, are you referring to the images in the first post of this thread? Those doors are one component. I didn't add any detail around the inside of the rails and stiles for those doors although it is possible and easy to do.

The other doors are all five piece doors. In the last image I posted, all the doors you see were made from the one on the left. the one on the left is the exact same door that shows up in step 10 of the previous image.
 
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Here's kind of a cross between the first doors and the five piece doors. The door ends up as a single component so it wouldn't be real useful for construction drawings but if you want to show a more complex door with out having the cope and stick work, this will be your method.

Door_Simple_Raised2.jpg


1. Draw the profile of the frame and the raising. You can stop at the edge of the field. Draw a Follow Me path. I've drawn the path well below the profile for clarity but you don't need to do that.
2. Select the path and run Follow Me on the profile.
3. trace along the edge of the field and the edge on the back of the door to fill in the faces. Delete the unneeded lines on the back.

In the back ground you can see three doors made from that single door. Resizing was a matter of making a left to right selection around the part of the door that needed to be moved and then moving the selection.
 
And just when you thought I was finished boring you with doors, here's another set. :D

Door_Simple_ArchTopped.jpg


For these I used the same profile and essentially the same method as the last set. In this case, though, I split the profile into an outer and inner part. the inside part included the profile for the inside of the frame as well as the raising. I drew a second path for that part of the door with the exaggerated arch top. I ran Follow Me each of the profiles with its associated path. Then I filled in the space between and did a bit of clean up. Resizing the doors is still absolutely simple with the left to right selection and the Move tool.
 
aaron, are you referring to the images in the first post of this thread? Those doors are one component. I didn't add any detail around the inside of the rails and stiles for those doors although it is possible and easy to do.

I was just making sure they were not actually going to be made from one piece.
 
I was just making sure they were not actually going to be made from one piece.

Ah ha! I see. No, I didn't mean that those doors would be made that way from wood. If you are drawing to show a client what something would look like, they aren't going to care or even be able to tell if you've drawn the door as a single component or drawn all the individual parts. There's little point in going to the trouble of modeling all five elements of a door if you end up building an entirely different door. Only draw what you need to get your point across. Save your time and energy for the serious modeling after you get approval to proceed.
 
Dave
Using the scale tool to mirror in post #4 would rotating the object accomplish the same thing. I guessing theres something more to the mirroring?
Dan

BTW Nice tutorial illustrating the down and dirty to the more elegant way of drawing
 
Dan you could just rotate the door. It looks like it works here:
ForDan1.jpg


But look what happens when you drill the hole for the door pull.
ForDan2.jpg


And suppose instead of this being a door, these are frames and panels for the ends of a tall case. If you simply rotated the copy around its vertical axis it might look right. What happens though if you then cut a stopped dado for the bottom or a rabbet down the back for a back panel?

When drawing things like this, consider whether you could get away with simply rotating one of them to make the opposite one. If you could get away with it in wood, you could get away with it in SU. But also consider what you need to do to those components after you've made the copy. If you rotate instead of mirroring, you could make the rotated copy unique so you could drill the hole of cut the rabbet in the right place but then you have to edit both doors or both side panels instead of doing the work on just one.

Here's another example. Without the joinery drawn in, it would appear you could just copy one of the back uprights for this chair. But if you do, where are the mortises on the the copy?
ForDan3.jpg
 
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Dave thanks
Gotcha on the mirroring in your last example I guess the mortises wind up on the wrong side
 
Right you are. In the same way rotating the doors could cause you problems. Mirroring is easy and quick, too. Once you get the hang of it, you can manage it very quickly. Imagine you're drawing a table. You can draw a leg, make it a component and then mirror a copy of it. Place the copy in the proper place, select both legs and copy them again with Ctrl+Move. While the copies are still selected, choose the Scale tool and mirror them. You'll have four legs properly placed and with corresponding surfaces correctly oriented so you can do whatever editing you like to one of them and all of them will get the proper treatment. It can save you a lot of time.
 
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