Building a Carousel Sleigh: Step-by-Step Guide

So the next model we're going to begin to build and work on is this whole carousel. We will begin to build the sleigh.

And then we will edit the materials for the horse. And then we will build the entire body of our carousel. So let's get started.

The first thing that we need to do is we need to go to File, New from Template, Architectural Inches. And let's first save as the file. Let's go to our C drive to our skp101 file downloads folder.

And let's save this file as carousel-sleigh.skp and save. And the first thing that we always need to do is delete our man. Go to Eraser, click Erase.

So let's zoom in to this area over here. To build the profile of our sleigh, we are going to use a combination of the tape measure tool and the protractor tool. The tape measure tool will allow us to create parallel lines off of either axes or edges like this and like this.

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The protractor, however, will allow us to create angled guidelines by selecting one plane and then the angle, one direction and then the angle off of that direction. And we can type in whatever direction we want, 15, and it will create guidelines. I'm going to erase these.

So to start, let's build some guidelines for our sleigh profile. So let's orbit around in our model. Go back to our spice select key and let's, you know, using our orbit scroll wheel, using the combination of orbit and pan to get this kind of right kind of in the center so we can start modeling kind of in this general area where we can see it.

So this looks pretty good. So let's go to the tape measure tool and let's select the blue axes. And we're going to click this and create a guideline parallel to the blue axes.

Let's make our first guideline two feet from that. Let's do the same thing again, but this time let's type in 1'8" and then four. And now let's kind of get a little bit closer and we'll do it from the red axes now and we'll go up along the blue direction.

We're here. We will type in four. And then we'll do that same thing again and type in two feet.

And then we'll go up again. Six, enter. And finally, one foot three.

We should have a series of guidelines that look like this. The next guidelines that we need to create are angled guidelines using the protractor tool. So let's go to the protractor tool and let's see a little gizmo.

And we're going to make a series of angled guidelines. So our gizmo is green because we are looking off into the green direction of this green axis here. Which is just what we want to do.

So let's first click on the origin point. And then we'll click on our first direction so that we can make our angle off of that direction. We want that direction to be along the blue.

So while your mouse is hovering over this blue line, let's click once. And then move your mouse towards the left and you can see this angle is starting to appear. We want this angle to be 15 degrees.

We type 15 and then enter. Next, I will go to this intersection here. Click this along the blue.

Click and then drag into the left. I will type in 10. And then we will go to this intersection down here with the red and our last guideline here.

And I'll click this and then our reference line. And then this time we will go towards the right. Let's go 15.

And then our final guideline with the protractor tool will be this intersection point right here. We'll do the same thing. We'll click the vertical on the blue and then go in this direction to the right.

We'll type in 20. Then the last thing that we need to add is a parallel line from this angle. We will go back to our tape measure tool.

Click this line. We'll create a parallel line from that angle. We will type that in 10.

Enter. These are all of the guidelines we will need to draw the basic outline of our sleigh. So before I draw the outline, I am going to erase these three vertical lines right in the middle right here.

This one, this one, and this one. We use those to generate our angles. So let's draw the sleigh.

So let's go to our line tool. And let's create the profile of our sleigh. We'll start at the origin right here.

We'll click. And we'll go up to meet this intersection point here. And click.

And then moving across this point. And moving down to this intersection. And then across this intersection.

And then down to here. Across here. Up to this point here.

And then this intersection. Along the red axis to the right. Click.

And then down. We really want to snap to this bottom point here. But there is no intersection point.

We will have to hover over this end point. And SketchUp will infer upon this red axis. We can snap right there.

And then we can close our shape. And there is our sleigh profile. As you are making different models in SketchUp, it is up to you if you decide if drawing without guides or with guides is more beneficial.

Certainly it takes longer with the guides. However, it is more accurate. Especially dealing with angles.

So a certain project may require that you have that level of detail. Others, it may not be as necessary. So the next thing I want to do is I want to create some bump outs on the back-end here.

And on the front-end. And I want to smooth out some of these curves. Or these harsh corners of this sleigh to make more curved edges.

So let's first make some bumps. We will go to the two point arc tool. And click this top point right here.

And then drag it along the edge. On edge. I will type in 10.

And then you can see that the magenta line is being inferred perpendicular. And I want to go drag out until I get to the point where it says half circle. And it will kind of snap to that point.

And it will click. And then let's do the same thing down here. Click and then down this direction type 6. And then find where the half circle snap is and click.

We will then erase this edge. And this edge. And next we will go to the two point arc tool again.

And we will utilize SketchUp's built in fillet tool. So using the fillet tool. What we can do is if we go to this midpoint here.

And then moving along down here to where it becomes more magenta. Tangent to edge. If we single click it will just make an arc at that line.

However if we double click SketchUp will automatically fill that in. And that is called the fillet tool. We can do the same thing here.

And find the tangent magenta line. Double click. Do the same thing up here.

Double click. And we will do it over here. We might need to zoom in a little bit so we can see this midpoint.

Into that tangent magenta line. Double click. And then we will do the same thing on these two bottom ones.

And these don't really matter too much on how far they need to be spaced. So let's do it around there. And around here.

The last thing we are going to do is we are going to push pull our geometry. To make the edge of our sleigh. So let's go to the push pull key.

Kind of orbit around your model so we can extrude it along the green axis. We will click. And then we will extrude.

And we will type in 2. Enter. There we go. So in the next video we are going to pull out our seat.

And clean up our geometry. And finish up our sleigh. I will save my file.

And see you in the next video.