Shop Cart w/ Drawers: Sketchup Model

[Jeremy Scuteri]

I think you should go with red wheels. Apart from that, a fantastic design.

The wheels that I have are actually red, so I will be all set there. The ones I found in the sketchup library happened to be blue.

 

[Mike Davis]

What kind of drawer slides?

 

[Dave Richards]

Jeremy,

I finally had an opportunity to look at your model. I'm not sure how or why you inverted the axes but that's what happened. If you right click on the origin, you'll see there's an option to Reset. This will set the axes to the correct orientation and the origin to the global 0,0,0.




This isn't the end of the world but it makes components that were created with the inverted axes more difficult to use if you were going to reuse them. While it may be that you wouldn't reuse these components in a future project, it's something to be aware of. When a component is created, it's own axes are created in alignment with the global axes. When you insert a component into a model, it will come in with the axes oriented parallel to the current global axes. So in this case, when I brought the drawer component in, it came in upside down.



Regarding the wood material, you should really apply materials to faces and not component wrappers. It might be a little faster to apply the material to the wrapper but you sacrifice all ability to adjust the orientation and position of the texture on the model. in the next screen shot you can see that I've resized the material down to 12" square which is more correct for the image. The grain runs vertically on the drawer fronts. It's not a bad look and maybe that's your plan in this case but it isn't the most common way to orient the grain on drawer fronts. If you open the components for editing before applying the materials, you can then adjust the orientation of the grain so it is correct.


Keep up the good work and keep plugging away.

 

[Jeremy Scuteri]

What kind of drawer slides?

I plan to get some inexpensive full extension drawer slides (side mounted, ~100lb rating). I have allowed 1/2" on each side for the slides. Once I purchase the slides, I may need to adjust the plans based on the specific slides.

 

[MarkE]

Here is a good source for inexpensive, full extension slides, if you can use a ten pack.

 

[Hmerkle]

Here is a good source for inexpensive, full extension slides, if you can use a ten pack.

WOW! $40 - $50 for 10 slides - THAT IS a good deal - I take you have used them Mark? any issues (stickiness, squeaky, hard to install...???)

 

[Jeremy Scuteri]

Thank you very much for taking the time to look at my model David. I do recall trying to move the origin at one point. I suppose I should just move the components instead of moving the origin itself.

I have fixed the axes, added some drawer pulls from the 3D warehouse. The handles were definitely a pain to place on the drawer fronts. I also fixed the wood grain and most importantly, I made the wheels red.

 

[Dave Richards]

Jeremy, I'm sure glad you made the wheels red.

I think, at least for woodworking type projects, it is best to leave the axes and the origin in their default location. There are occasions when it might come in handy to change the orientation of the global axes but I've never found it useful for woodworking sorts of projects. Certainly it is going to be better to move components instead of the axes.

As for the drawer pulls, I've done a couple of blog posts about inserting components including pulls. You can see them here and here. There are others but these'll get you started. When you download a component from the warehouse, it might be worthwhile spending a few moments to adjust the component axes and the insertion point to make them easier to use. Sometimes the components you find on the warehouse are so poorly made, their origin and axes aren't anywhere close to where the need to be.

The material on the cabinet at least looks more like wood, now. Good on you. Do you plan to run the grain vertically on the drawer fronts?

 

[Jeremy Scuteri]

Do you plan to run the grain vertically on the drawer fronts?

Probably not. I made the faces a unique texture and rotated the grain on each drawer front face individually. I had to change the aspect ratio of the image or it would tile the grain pattern many times on each face. It took a little time to get something that looked right, but it wasn't too bad.

Thanks for the links!

 

[MarkE]

WOW! $40 - $50 for 10 slides - THAT IS a good deal - I take you have used them Mark? any issues (stickiness, squeaky, hard to install...???)

I have used these drawer slides on quite a few shop projects. I also recently replaced the 3/4 extension slides on my kitchen drawers with soft close, full extension with over travel slides.
The standard full extension slides are easy to install and work great. The soft close slides are a little fussier on alignment.

 

[Dave Richards]

Probably not. I made the faces a unique texture and rotated the grain on each drawer front face individually. I had to change the aspect ratio of the image or it would tile the grain pattern many times on each face. It took a little time to get something that looked right, but it wasn't too bad.

Thanks for the links!

Looks better now.

FWIW, you don't have to make a unique texture to be able to rotate it on one part. Some people make vertical and horizontal versions of wood grain textures but that's a waste of time, often leads to sloppy modeling and can create other problems down the line.

So you should have pictures of the completed cabinet by Monday?

 

[Jeremy Scuteri]

It seemed like I didn't get the "Texture --> Position" option until I made the face a unique texture. Originally I just applied the material to the entire component as you pointed out earlier.

 

[Dave Richards]

To get the Texture>Position option in the context menu the material must be applied to the face and you must be right clicking on a single face. No need to create the unique texture first. If you want to repaint the texture on the cabinet, first get the default material (looks like a white and blue dive flag in the upper left part of the Materials window and click on your model. If there are still areas that are painted, you might need to go into the nested components and paint the individual components with the default material. After you get your model back to white you can open components for editing and paint the faces making adjustments as needed. You can see how I do that here.