Building a Recycle Can Using Circles and Polygons in SketchUp

So in this video we are going to build our recycling can. The recycling can is built using a combination of circles and polygons.

I'm first going to pan over a little to the right so I have a good space over here to build the recycling can. The first step is to build the base. So I will go to the circle tool right here, click it, and as you can notice, the default setting for size of a circle is 24.

I want it to be 16. So, before I click anything, I will type in 16 and then press ENTER. Now I will click right here and then drag my circle.

I want the base to be two feet in diameter, so I need to type in 12 inches or one foot for the radius. So, I'll type in 12, then press ENTER. Next, using the push-pull command right here, I will hover over this, click it, and I want to drag this up one inch.

So, I'll type in one, then press ENTER. Next, using the scale command to create a more cone-shaped base. So, click the scale tool, then hover over this face and click it until we see these little green cubes.

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I will click this red scale about the opposite point. Click that. Then I want to hold down Shift and Control at the same time to lock it in, and then I'm going to click any point.

It doesn't matter at this point. I'll just click my mouse just to stop that command. Then, before clicking anything else, I will type in 26 and make sure you add the inches command because for some reason with the scale tool, if you type in 26, it won't read it as inches, it'll actually read as feet.

We’ve got to make sure we type in 26 inches, then press ENTER, and now it will make this distance 26 inches. I will go back to my cursor and deselect. I'll scroll down, and I can see that I made this more of a cone shape.

Before I make this a group, I will select this edge here, then right-click and select Find Center. This is a helpful option when working with stacked geometry. Next, I will triple-click, then right-click and select Make Group.

Next, let's create the body of a recycling can. To do this, let's use the polygon tool. The polygon tool is right here.

Polygons work similarly to circles in that they are drawn from the center and have a number of sides. However, the default setting for polygons is six sides, as noted here. We would like to use 16, like our circle, so I'll type in 16 and press ENTER.

Now, orbiting up so we can see the center, we’re going to want to use this point as our center for our polygons. We'll click this, then drag around, or move our cursor along the green axis. We’ll stop right here.

I'm going to go back to my Select tool and click this. As you can see when I orbit around the model, there are two faces stacked on top of each other.

SketchUp has a hard time understanding which surface to read, so it jitters and shows multiple faces.

We can ignore that because the next thing we want to do is extrude this mass up. We'll go into our push-pull tool.

We will click this and begin to push-pull this shape up. As you will see, the polygon tool creates defined faces and edges around this, unlike the circle, which is a very smooth cylinder. This is the main difference between a polygon and a circle. A circle will have smooth edges, while a polygon will have defined edges.

I want this to be 26 inches high, so I'll type in 26 and press ENTER. Next, let's go to our Select tool, then click on our edge, right-click and select Find Center again. Then, we'll triple-click and right-click to make the group again.

Alright, for the lid of the recycling can, we will use more Auto Fold, but this time we'll use the Rotate tool.

So, to begin, let's go to the circle tool and click on the center point.

We will create another circle along this face, snapping to the green axis and this point. We have this face here, and then we'll go to Push-Pull. Selecting this, we'll click and pull it up four inches.

So, type in four and press ENTER. The next thing we want to do is rotate this face at a diagonal angle for the top of our recycling can. We can do that by selecting this face, then going to Rotation, where we get this little gizmo right here.

This gizmo shows which plane it's perpendicular to. If I'm on each of these, you can see that it automatically snaps to the face and shows what plane I want to rotate around.

If I highlight this corner here, you can see that it's red, and that means it'll be perpendicular to the red axis, which is this one.

Then, I want to rotate it around this red axis right here.

To do that again, we will go back to where we were, click this face, use the rotation gizmo, and then in this corner, you may need to rotate to see the horizon line.

Click this or hover over it, hold down Shift to lock it in place, and then we want to create this point right here, which is perpendicular to the center point.

Click, and then it will ask you for your first reference angle line. We want to go along the green axis and click. As we move up, you can see that we can angle this top plane around certain degrees.

I want this to be 15 degrees, so I'll type in 15 and press ENTER. Now, we can use a similar workflow to finish our recycling can. So, I'll go back to my Select tool and click out of that, and now we want to use the Scale tool just right here, covering over this face. Click that.

Now we can see that we have a 3D bounding box around this face, and there are multiple options now. We can scale around an opposite point, along the red axis, or the green axis, or diagonally. We want to use the one that scales about the opposite point horizontally.

So, we'll click this, then hold down Shift and Control again to scale uniformly. We want to drag this down, making it smaller so the top folds in. So, we'll click this, type in 24, then add the inches and press ENTER.

Next, we'll go to the Offset tool and create multiple offsets. We'll click on the center, where we can see this red dot, and click this. We'll want to offset the first line 2 inches from the edge, so I'll click 2 inches, then click Escape to end the command.

We'll do the same thing again, clicking this and typing in 5, then pressing Enter. We'll do one more time, click this, and type in 3, then press ENTER. Next, I'll go to Push-Pull and recess this portion down 1/2 inch.

So, I can type in 1/2 inches or 0.5 inches, then finally we want to go to the very center, drag this down 5 inches. So, type in 5 and press ENTER. We'll go to our Select tool and orbit around so we can see this face right here. We'll click this, then delete that.

Finally, we'll triple-click, make the group, right-click and make the group, and there we have it—our recycling can lid. As we orbit around our model, we can start seeing some jittering happening on the inside because we have multiple faces overlapping each other. So, what we can do is right-click, hide this, then delete this face, leaving us with a hollow recycling can.

I'll double-click this box, click this, then click Delete or right-click and Erase. Then, on the bottom, we'll do the same thing. Click this, then click Delete to delete that bottom face. I'll go back to my Select tool, click out of that, then go to Edit and select Unhide All.

Now, I would like to see all the way through. However, there's still a solid base on the bottom of this lid, so I will do the same thing. I'll double-click, click on this face right here, and then delete that.

Now, I'll click out, and as you can see, there's a hollow recycling can. There we have it! I will save my file, and in the next video, we're going to add some 3D text and materials to both the trash can and the recycling can.