Building French Doors for a Clubhouse: Step-by-Step Guide

So let's get started. In this video we are going to build the main French doors for our clubhouse. You have the one right here and then three in the back.

The build process is going to be very similar to how we constructed the French windows. Let's start with this one right here. So first let's create the trim.

We'll go to our rectangle tool and click from this point to this point—the entire door opening. And let's use our offset tool, clicking our face and moving out, 4, Enter. And using our move tool, we'll click the bottom edge here, making sure that we don't hit our floor plan, and move this out along the blue axis until it hovers over the edge.

Then we'll go to Erase. We will delete this line at the bottom. Now let's Push/Pull the trim out one inch, Enter, triple click, Make Group, and then we will copy this model group, click CTRL to make a copy to the inside.

And then we will select and hold down CTRL to also select this trim piece, right click, Hide. We will unhide those later as we create a component for our door. Now let's create each individual door.

Learn SketchUp

• Nationally accredited
• Create your own portfolio
• Free student software
• Learn at your convenience
• Authorized Autodesk training center

Learn More

So let's go to Rectangle and let's draw from this point to the middle. And then let's make some thickness for this door. So let's pull this door in, 1.5, Enter.

And then I'll do an Offset, and I'll offset this face 3, Enter. And then I will Push/Pull again on this face so it's On Face inference, then delete that face to create an opening. And then I will triple click, Make Group.

So that is our door frame. Now let's create our glass infill into our door. So let's draw a rectangle and fill that entire opening.

Just like we did with the windows, we can either use the Divide tool, or we can just draw some lines. Since we have this selected, I'm going to use my Move tool and hold CTRL to copy this line all the way down. Then we'll do Divide using /5 to divide that line into five segments.

Now I'll draw a line from the middle all the way down to the bottom. Then let's offset each of these squares by 0.5, and then double click to copy the same 0.5 offset until we've offset all of them. Go ahead and offset all of the windows, and then let's erase these lines.

Next step would be to Push/Pull this middle trim piece into the building—this direction—0.5, Enter. Then let's make a group of all of these panes of glass. Holding down CTRL to select multiple, right click, Make Group. Then let's go into our Materials, click our translucent glass gray that's in our 'In Model' to paint that. Now we click our Move tool and move this to the middle, and then go into our Select tool.

Let's select this trim piece and make that a group. Triple click and then select our pane, make that a group. Now let's move our glass, so it's one and a half inches thick, so let's move it three-quarters of an inch to the center.

The next thing we need to do is add a doorknob. Before we do that, I will save my file. Let's add our doorknob on the inside trim piece of our door.

So let's create some guides so we know exactly where we want to position this doorknob. We'll go to the Tape Measure tool and click on the bottom edge. We'll go up in the blue, 36, Enter. Then from the inside edge, we'll go towards the left along the red axis, 1.5, Enter.

This is where we want to place our doorknob. We'll go into our Components and go to our 'In Model' tab and find Doorknob Round. This is the doorknob that we placed on our other doors that we'll also place here.

As you can see, it does not want to snap onto this vertical face when I hover over the intersection of my guides. So I will place it right here, and now I want to move this point right here—origin of Doorknob Round. Find that origin.

If you have a hard time finding the origin, you may go into your Face Style > X-Ray to see it, but I can see it right here. Click that, and then snap it right to my guide. Now I would like to make a duplicate of this doorknob.

Select down here, then move in, and then click CTRL on your keyboard to make a copy, and then along the green direction, go in that direction. Now we want to flip this along the blue axis. Remember, when we Flip Along, it's going to flip along the component's axes and not the primary axes in our group.

So this primary axis blue is going in this direction, and now I can click on this endpoint, and holding down Shift to lock the green, I can snap it and pin it right there to the face of my door frame—on the inside of the door frame. Now let's do Edit > Delete Guides, and let's group this door together. We should have the door frame, the door glass, and the two doorknobs—four groups total. Right click, Make Group. Now we'll copy this door panel to the other side.

Use our Move tool, hit CTRL to copy, and then endpoint in group, right click, Flip Along > Red Axis. Now we will Unhide All, and we will select our door trim pieces and our doors, and we will make this a component. Let's name this component door_dbl_3070 for Double 3070, and then in the description I will write French Door 3070. I will set Glue To: None and update my component axes to not be on the end of my component, but rather right where the wall meets.

So set my component axes right here, again following the same direction: Red positive, Green positive, Blue up. Then I will click Create. Yes. Now I have my door_dbl_3070 in my Components. We can again start adding that door component to these other door openings.

Select my door_dbl_3070 and place it where it snaps into the wall. You can see here that it is wanting to snap to the inside, the same orientation as the door over here. However, this is not the direction we want the door to go. We want the door panels to be on the outside face of the wall, so I can right click, Flip Along > Green Axis, and then adjust my trim by moving out a little bit so I can see, and then clicking this point and moving it back so it snaps to the endpoint.

You could go into View > Face Style > X-Ray to double check to make sure it's right on the edge of that wall—and it is. Now let's make two more copies of this door in these next two locations. I will use my Move tool, hit the CTRL key to make a copy, and then select this point. Because this is an equal distance and I haven't touched anything, I can type x2 to create two duplicates of that door to make an array. Now there are three equally spaced doors. I will go back to View > Component Edit, uncheck 'Hide Rest of Model', and then go to View > Face Style > X-Ray.

I now want to adjust my tags to also include Windows and Doors. So I will add a tag named 'Windows' and another named 'Doors'. Now let's select, while holding the CTRL button on the keyboard, all of the doors in the model—including the interior and the exterior—and under Entity Info, change the tag to 'Doors'. Let's double check that we have these correct by turning off the eyeball. That looks correct. Then let's select the windows and tag them as 'Windows'. Let's double check—uncheck 'Windows'—yes, they hide. All right, I will save my file, and in the next video we're going to edit our components some more and clean up our model.

I'll see you in the next video.