Ben Buckman.net

I recently took a 4-session class at the Eliot School in Boston on Woodworking with Google Sketchup. Sketchup is a 3D modeling program that Google acquired largely to supplement Maps with accurate city models. It's like a CAD program but much easier (though it does have a learning curve, hence the class), and in Google fashion there's an open Ruby-based plugin architecture and public 3D warehouse of everything from doorknobs to the Eiffel Tower.

I had used Sketchup before, but never very effectively, and I've done a fair amount of woodworking before, but never with good preliminary design. So I took the class to fix that, and this weekend I built my first Sketchup-designed piece, a craft table for Tristyn (in time for Valentine's Day).

This was the design (exported from Sketchup):

I built the table on one "layer" and on others added the surrounding room. (The doorknobs, bed, and easel are components from the 3D warehouse.) Using "scenes" I could see different perspectives, like whether the table fit with the door open:

On another layer I added angle and measurement guides, which I used while building the table to get the pieces right. (I could rotate, zoom, pan, etc on each part as needed, so I didn't have to print anything.)

This was the table in progress:

Of course it's much harder to cut angles in wood than to sketch them. To simplify the construction, I used dowels instead of 2x4s for the cross beams. The joints I improvised as I went along. I hadn't accounted for warped 2x4s (the wood's from Home Depot), so the legs are a little twisted. But overall, it came out almost perfectly:

Now it just needs some paint and polyurethane to protect it from liquid spills.

The class was definitely worthwhile, I highly recommend it to anyone else interested in this kind of thing. I'm hoping to take their woodworking classes next, to improve my skills on the actual building process.