A Sheraton Leg in SketchUp

comments (4) March 14th, 2010 in blogs

DaveRichards David Richards, contributor
thumbs up 5 users recommend
- CLICK TO ENLARGE
Add CommentAdd Comment
PrintPrint

Watching Philip C. Lowe's current video series showing how to make a Sheraton-style leg got me to thinking about drawing it in SketchUp. The turned portions at the top and bottom are fairly straightforward Follow Me operations but the tapered reeded section in the middle adds a little bit of complexity. As I began to draw the leg I was wondering about what plugins I could use to create that section. After beating the over-engineer in me back into his cave, I decided the simplest approach doesn't need any plugins at all.

I used the PDF plan file for the leg rather than inventing my own design but there's really no reason you couldn't use most of this process to draw your own designs.

I did take a little bit of time to break down the leg into smaller components which I then copied using the copy function of the Rotate tool which is accessed by hit the Ctrl key or Option on Mac. Using copies of components of smaller sections helps to keep the file sizer down. It also makes it easier to modify the leg component if needed for other projects. The length of the leg can be changed and you could replace the reeded section with a straight taper or flutes or what have. You could replace the foot or the top section with something different without redrawing the whole leg.

If you haven't seen it, take a look at Mr. Lowe's website. I think there's a lot of nice work there that will inspire you

The file size of the leg as drawn ended up at about 370 Kb. I exploded all the components and it saved out at almost 2Mb.


 

 

Dave

posted in: blogs
Add CommentAdd Comment PrintPrint
Back to List

Comments (4)

Bobflyer Bobflyer writes: Dave:

Thank you very much for your woodworking SketchUp videos. This is a great contribution for anyone wishing to improve there SketchUp skills. I have learned alot.

Again Thanks

Bob
Posted: 11:37 am on March 23rd

SNMARK SNMARK writes: This post is unrelated to the Sheridan leg project, but more general in nature.

I just wanted to thank Dave publicly for recent help he gave me on some plugin issues I was having in SketchUp.

I hope everyone appreciates all the untold hours of time and commitment Dave spends helping computer challenged Woodworkers like me, I know I'm not alone.

I don't know how much Fine Woodworking is paying him, if anything but he
definitely deserves a huge raise!

Google should also give him a market share, as his training, I'm sure brings them much business, as well as free advertising.
ARE YOU LISTENING GOOGLE ?

Thanks again Dave!

Mark Burnside
SunMark Forge 'N' Fires
Posted: 9:32 am on March 17th

DaveRichards DaveRichards writes: Woodntop,

Thank you. I understand it will be fixed soon.

Dave
Posted: 6:08 am on March 16th

Woodntop Woodntop writes: Hi Dave,
Thanks for all your & Tim's contributions & looking forward to the video of the 'Sheraton' leg.

On another tack can you tell us when the Archive going to be fixed?

Posted: 4:24 am on March 16th

You must be logged in to post comments. Click here to login.