Learn how to construct a detailed structural truss using SketchUp software. This step-by-step guide demonstrates how to accurately measure and draw each part of your truss, including adding the support plates and bolts.
Key Insights
- The construction process begins with creating a new SketchUp file and importing a template of structural truss drawings. These templates are used as a reference to ensure your structure is accurate and to scale.
- Next, the modeled truss is constructed piece by piece, starting with drawing 'A'. The size and shape of each piece are determined using the dimensions provided on the truss template. Furthermore, precise measurements, such as the spacing between bolts, are also crucial to the accuracy of the model.
- Once the first plate is drawn, each bolt hole is marked, and the openings are created using the Circle Tool. Following this, bolts are constructed and duplicated using the Polygon Tool, ensuring consistency throughout the truss.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Alright, in this lesson we're going to continue to build our structural truss by adding on our metal support plates. So let's open up a new file.
We do not need to work in this one anymore. We'll go to File, New. Before we go to New, make sure that your file is saved.
I'll double check and make sure it's saved for the latest. And then go to File, New from Template, Architectural Inches. And again, I'll select the man and hit the Delete key on my keyboard to delete him.
And then I will go File, Import. And this time we want to bring in Structural Truss Drawings 2 as an image. Import, select the origin, and Scale.
And again, we will use the same process that we did before to make sure that these drawings are scaled in our SketchUp window. We will draw a line from a point that we know is fixed dimension. We can choose any of these.
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I will choose this 4 inch one right here. So I'll zoom in until I get to the middle. And then along the red axis, get to the middle here.
You can see that this length is actually 8 3 8 inches. So I will go to my Tape Measure tool and select this point to this point and type 4, Enter. And I want to resize the model so that that center line right here would be 4 inches.
I'll double check and it's 4 inches. I will select this and then delete this line. And now we are ready to start drawing all of these shapes.
We have all the general dimensions to each of these pieces. And so we do not have angles on these. So in order for us to determine what these angles are, it's best to have our truss model onto the side so we can reference that as we go.
So let's go to File, Import. And let's import our Clubhouse Structural Truss. And we'll place this guy right over to the side right here.
And now we can begin to draw. So I will start with drawing A. We can see all these general dimensions. And we see we have some dimensions but not all of them.
We will need to kind of work backwards as we go to determine how this is going to work. So from this corner here, we'll go 4 and 3 quarters inches. And then again we'll go 1 feet, Enter.
Go up 4, Enter. And we'll go this way 1 foot, Enter. We do not know this dimension here so I will stop.
But what I can do is I know that this is 1 inch spacing between each of these. So I can do a guideline from this line and go up 1 inch. We know where that point is.
Now what I want to do is I want to go over to our truss that we have drawn because we want to place this right along here. So let's go draw a line right on this angle. Just so we can have that as a reference.
And I'll select these two lines. And I'll actually go to the move tool and I will move these over. And then panning, holding down control, I want to place this right there.
That's roughly where I know along this guideline and where I can see that this angle matches that. So that's what I want to do. Now I can go back to my guidelines and I can go along the magenta, go 1 inch.
So I'm having trouble finding that line. And then now we can go from this line to this intersection point. And then we see that we have a dimension from here to here as 1 feet.
We'll type in 1 feet, Enter. And then hovering over this on edge to snap to the magenta line, go 4, Enter. And now here we can draw a line that is along magenta and we can overlap it.
And then from here we'll go along the green axis and overlap it. And now that we have, we can erase this end point and this end point. And before I make this a group, I want to now add these guides of where these circles are.
So since I can't see that, I can go to my View Style and I can go to Face and I can go to X-Ray. So that way I can see my face and I can also see the circles. So let's draw some additional guidelines between each of these.
We know that this is 2 and then 4. And each time I'll hit Escape to cancel that move. So 2, 4, and 4. And then again we'll go along the magenta, 2, 4, and 4. And then since we know that this is in the middle, we'll go from here and we'll go down 2. And then from this point, go down. Making sure that this is not in the blue because the blue is going vertical, right? Making sure that it's this kind of tangent from that line.
So 2, Enter. Now we have each of these points where we're going to want to attach our holes for our bolts. So let's go to our Circle Tool and click the center point.
And we'll want to make these holes. We can kind of trace over that and we can see that the holes are around a half an inch. We'll go type in .5, Enter.
And then do the same thing, this intersection, .5, Enter. And we can see that it automatically wants to snap now to .5. And again, .5, 1 half inch, 1 half inch. Now we have each of the openings.
We can actually go select each of these and delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. And now I can triple-click this group and I can do right-click, Make Group. And now let's add some bolts for each of these.
Because I want these bolts to be duplicates, we can make these as a component. We'll go to our Polygon Tool and we want to make sure that we make this as a five-sided. Go into our Polygon Tool and we want to make sure that this is a six-sided bolt.
So sides are six, that is correct. And then we want to select a point here and then drag it out. We want to go to 3 quarter inch.
Actually, let's go to one inch, just like that. And now let's double-click this and we'll make this into a component, Make Component. And we'll call this Bolt Head.
And then we will set our component axis to the center point with the blue going up and do Create. And now we can go into our Components in our dialog box and click Bolt Head. And we can begin clicking on each of these points.
And now as we modify each of these bolts, it will modify all of them. We don't need to go into that level of detail yet. Let's draw our basic shapes for every other one of these plates.
Now that this one is done, I can do a selection window of just these components and these groups. And I can do right-click, Make Group. And I can go to Edit, Delete Guides.
And now we have this one plate drawn. And we can go again and we can work on this plate now.
