Let’s say you have just tediously drawn a set of dovetails on the end of a board. Now you need the same thing on the other end, can you do it without re drawing them? With Sketchup yes you can.
Let’s start by drawing the tails on the first end.
Draw a 6 by 12 board and pull it out to ½” thick. Draw a vertical line parallel to the end of the board line ½” away from the end. P1
We will be drawing three dovetails so we need 6 guide points along the line. This is done with the tape measure tool. Place the first one at ½” down, then ¾”, then 2 7/8”, then 3 1/8”,then 5 ¼, then 5 ½’.
Now take the protractor tool, click on the top guide point move the mouse along the green axis and click. That sets 0 degrees, now move the mouse up and enter 14 and hit enter This draws a guide line at 14 degrees. Now go to the next guide point and draw a 14 degree guideline in the other direction. (see picture)P2
You have guidelines outlining one dovetail. Do the same on the other four guidepoints to outline the other two dovetails.
Draw lines with the line tool to form the three dovetails. Then hit edit, delete guides your picture should now look like this. P3
At this point you should be able to use the push pull tool and push out the area between the tails.. P4
Now erase any unnecessary lines. P5
That is it for this section. In the next one we will mirror that end on the other end of the board. Save your work.
