Learn how to construct a 3D model of a recycling bin using a combination of circles, polygons, and other geometric tools. This comprehensive guide covers the entire process, from the building of the base to the creation of the lid.
Key Insights
- The tutorial starts with the building of the base of the recycling bin which involves using a circle tool and resizing it to 16 inches, creating a 12-inch radius, and pulling it up by one inch. The shape is then scaled to create a cone-shaped base.
- The body of the recycling bin is created using a polygon tool with 16 sides, similar to the circle. The polygon is then extruded up to a height of 26 inches using the push-pull tool, creating a defined edge as opposed to the smooth edges of a circle.
- The lid of the recycling bin is constructed with the circle and push-pull tools, but also involves the use of the rotate tool to create a diagonal angle. The lid is also scaled down and multiple offsets are created to provide more detail.
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So in this video we are going to build our recycle can. The recycle can can be 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 recycle can. The first step is to build the base. So I will go to the circle tool right here, click this, and as you can notice the default setting for size for a circle is 24.
I want that to be 16. So before I click anything I will type in 16 and then click enter. Now I will click right here and then drag my circle.
I want the base to be two feet in diameter and so I need to type in 12 inches or one foot for the radius. So I'll type in 12, enter. Next, using the push pull command right here, I will hover over this, click this, and I want to drag this up one inch.
So I'll type in one, enter. Next, using the scale command to create more of a cone shaped base. So click the scale tool and then hover over over this face and then click this till we see these little green cubes.
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I will click this red scale about 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 in just 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 if you type in 26 it won't read it as inches it'll actually read as feet.
We got to make sure we type in 26 inches and we'll click enter and now it'll make this distance 26 inches by doing that. I will go back to my cursor and deselect. I'll scroll down and I can kind of see that I made this more of a cone shape.
Before I make this a group I will select this edge here and then right click find center. This is a helpful option when we are working with stacked geometry. Next I will triple click right click make group.
Next let's create the body of a recycling can and to do this let's use the polygon tool. The polygon tool is right here. Let's click this.
Polygons work in a similar way 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 noted here. We would like to use 16 like our circle so I'll type in 16 enter.
Now kind of 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 and then dragging around or you know moving our cursor along the green axis we're going to stop it right here. I'm going to go back to my select tool and I'm going to click this and as you can see when I orbit around the model that there are two faces stacked on top of each other.
Sketchup has a hard time understanding which surface to read so it kind of jitters and shows multiple faces. We can ignore that because the next thing that we want to do is we want to extrude this mass up. We'll go into our push pull tool.
We will click this and then we will begin to push pull this shape up and as you will see the polygon tool and as we pull it up has 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. Circle will have smooth edges a polygon will have defined edges.
I want I want this to be 26 inches high so I'll type in 26 enter. Next let's go to our select tool and then click on our edge right click find center again then we'll triple click right click make group again. All right for the lid of the recycle can we will use more auto fold but this time we'll use the rotate tool.
So to begin let's go to circle and then click on the center point. We will create another circle along this face along the green axis snap to this point. We have this face here and then we'll go to push pull then selecting this we'll click and we'll pull this up four inches.
So type in four enter. So the next thing we want to do is we want to rotate this face kind of at an angle diagonal angle for our face of our recycling can. So how we can do that is by if we select this face and then go to our rotation we get this little gizmo right.
This gizmo shows which plane it's perpendicular to right. If I'm on each one of these things you can see that it automatically like snaps to this face and shows what plane I want to orbit or which plane I want to rotate around. If I highlight kind of in this in this corner over here you can see that it's it's red and that means it'll be perpendicular to the red axis which is this one right here.
If I was to hold down shift that locks this gizmo at that desired axis or the point that you want to make. If I was to snap it here it'll lock it on along this one but I want to lock it on the red. So and then I want to rotate it around this this red right in this corner right here.
So to do that again we will go back to where we're at we want to click this face use the rotation gizmo and then in this corner you may need to rotate so we can see the horizon line. Click this or hover over this and hold down shift to lock this in place and then we want to create this point right here that's kind of you know perpendicular to the center point. Click and then it's going to ask you for your first kind of reference angle line.
We want to go along the green axis and click and now as we move up you can see that we can we can basically angle this top plane around a certain degrees. I want this to be 15 degrees so I'll type in 15 enter. Now we can use a similar workflow to finish our recycling can so I'll go back to my select and then click out of that and now we want to use the scale tool just right here and covering over this face click that now we can see that we have a 3D bounding box around this face and there's multiple options now right we can scale around on an opposite point scale around an opposite point along the red axis scale about an opposite point around the green axis scale around the kind of more diagonal through the middle we want to use along the middle around the opposite point horizontally so what we'll do is we'll click this and then we want to hold down shift and control again to scale uniformly you want to drag this this down right we can we want to do it smaller this time so the top kind of you know folds in so we'll click this and then we'll type in 24 make sure we add the inches and then enter and next we'll go to the offset tool and we'll create multiple offsets so we'll click on click on the center where we can see this red dot and we'll click this and we'll want to offset the first line two inches from the edge so I'll click two inches and we'll do the same thing and we'll we'll have to click escape to kind of end this one to start a new one we'll click this and we'll move this and we'll type in five enter and we'll do one more time click this and we'll type in three enter next I'll go to push pull and I want to recess this portion down one half inch so I can type in one dash two inches or I can type in 0.5 inches and then finally we want to go to this very center we want to drag this down five inches so we'll type in five we'll go to our select tool and we'll kind of orbit around so we can see this this face right here so we'll click this we'll delete that and finally we'll triple click make group right click make group and there we have it there is our recycling can lid so as we orbit around our model we can start seeing some kind of jittering happening on on the inside and that's because we have multiple faces kind of kind of overlapping each other so what we can do is we can I want to right click hide this I want to delete this face that way we actually have a hollow recycling can so I can double click this box then click this and then click the delete key or right click erase and then on the bottom we'll we'll do the same thing we'll click this then we'll click delete to delete that bottom face and I will go back to my select and I'll click out of that and I'll go to edit unhide all and now I would like to see all the way through however there's there is still a solid base on the bottom of this lid so I will do the same thing I will double click and then click on this face right here and then delete that and then I will go out click out and now as you can see there is a hollow recycling can and there we have it there is our recycling can 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
