Hi,

In the same vein as Dave's question on Decking CAD:

I'm going along with making my own heatbank out of a regular (but bigger
than normal) copper cylinder with extra tappings, sensor pockets and
immersion bosses.[1]

All I need are 5 drawings - basically front, sides, back and birds-eye, with
dimensions.

I *could* bang these out on a regular CAD (I have cycas) - but I was
wondering if this was a good excuse to learn Sketchup?

Having a 3D model would be useful, so I can add the components, spin it
around and see if everything fits nicely - and less tediously, alter a
tapping once rather than in 2 or 3 elevation drawings.

So, now you know what I want to do, could Sketchup manage this fairly
easily?

Cheers

Tim


[1] Newark Copper Cylinders have got some base models very close to what I
want and are more than happy to do custom fittings - prices seem very
reasonable (it may end up being half what DPS want for functionally the
same thing, even when I've added the pumps and mixers and stuff).

Tim S wrote:
Having a 3D model would be useful, so I can add the components, spin it
around and see if everything fits nicely - and less tediously, alter a
tapping once rather than in 2 or 3 elevation drawings.

So, now you know what I want to do, could Sketchup manage this fairly
easily?

Yes, it should do that fine. It's certainly very useful for being able
to view things in 3D, put in section cuts and see how components fit
together.

It's worth mentioning that the only way to represent "thickness" of a
material in Sketchup is to draw two planes separated slightly apart.
There's no concept of "solid" - a cube is just 6 faces with no gaps.
This has implications: is the copper shell of your HW cylinder worth
drawing as the inside and the outside surfaces separately? How about
copper pipes?

You will need to read the documentation for the follow-me tool to figure
out how to draw things like the dome on top of the cylinder and piping.

Threads might be interesting: you can either leave them out, cheat
by drawing them without the pitch, or else there are downloadable
threads that you can scale to size.

Jim coughed up some electrons that declared:

Tim S wrote:
Having a 3D model would be useful, so I can add the components, spin it
around and see if everything fits nicely - and less tediously, alter a
tapping once rather than in 2 or 3 elevation drawings.

So, now you know what I want to do, could Sketchup manage this fairly
easily?

Yes, it should do that fine. It's certainly very useful for being able
to view things in 3D, put in section cuts and see how components fit
together.

It's worth mentioning that the only way to represent "thickness" of a
material in Sketchup is to draw two planes separated slightly apart.
There's no concept of "solid" - a cube is just 6 faces with no gaps.
This has implications: is the copper shell of your HW cylinder worth
drawing as the inside and the outside surfaces separately? How about
copper pipes?

Aye - there's no need for thickness. Outside surfaces are all that are
needed.

You will need to read the documentation for the follow-me tool to figure
out how to draw things like the dome on top of the cylinder and piping.

I did have a go - limited success. Now you've told me that I'm not barking
up the wrong tree I'll persevere Every "cad" (proper or otherwise)
system I've used has had a different method of thinking and it is hard work
to learn another.

Threads might be interesting: you can either leave them out, cheat
by drawing them without the pitch, or else there are downloadable
threads that you can scale to size.

Threads too aren't a problem. I would be happy enough with a pump that's
made of one cylinder (body) and two thinner cylinders (pipe unions). Pipes
will just be "follow me" tubes. Plate exchanger will be a box with 4 short
cylinders.

That's the only level of detail I need: a dimensionally correct schematic
really. Just to get the macroscopic bits to line up with minimum pipe bends
and make sure that nothing fouls. As a bonus, a Sketchup model can be stuck
into TurboFloorPlan as a component.

Then I have drop some plan drawings off it from 5 orthogonal directions with
dimensions, that'll give Newark what they need - they'll draw it up again
properly to suit their processes anyway, as long as it's clear and
unambiguous.

me goes to start tutorial in earnest

Thanks

Tim

On 19 Feb, 12:04, Tim S wrote:
Hi,

In the same vein as Dave's question on Decking CAD:

I'm going along with making my own heatbank out of a regular (but bigger
than normal) copper cylinder with extra tappings, sensor pockets and
immersion bosses.[1]

All I need are 5 drawings - basically front, sides, back and birds-eye, with
dimensions.

I *could* bang these out on a regular CAD (I have cycas) - but I was
wondering if this was a good excuse to learn Sketchup?

Having a 3D model would be useful, so I can add the components, spin it
around and see if everything fits nicely - and less tediously, alter a
tapping once rather than in 2 or 3 elevation drawings.

So, now you know what I want to do, could Sketchup manage this fairly
easily?

Cheers

Tim

[1] Newark Copper Cylinders have got some base models very close to what I
want and are more than happy to do custom fittings - prices seem very
reasonable (it may end up being half what DPS want for functionally the
same thing, even when I've added the pumps and mixers and stuff).

Try raiding the warehouse and adapting something, Scale is your
friend:

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...revs tart=120

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...prevs tart=60

Adam

Adam Aglionby coughed up some electrons that declared:


Try raiding the warehouse and adapting something, Scale is your
friend:


http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...revs tart=120


http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...prevs tart=60

Adam

An excellent idea - ta!

Tim

"Tim S" wrote in message
...
Jim coughed up some electrons that declared:

Tim S wrote:
Having a 3D model would be useful, so I can add the components, spin it
around and see if everything fits nicely - and less tediously, alter a
tapping once rather than in 2 or 3 elevation drawings.

So, now you know what I want to do, could Sketchup manage this fairly
easily?

Yes, it should do that fine. It's certainly very useful for being able
to view things in 3D, put in section cuts and see how components fit
together.

It's worth mentioning that the only way to represent "thickness" of a
material in Sketchup is to draw two planes separated slightly apart.
There's no concept of "solid" - a cube is just 6 faces with no gaps.
This has implications: is the copper shell of your HW cylinder worth
drawing as the inside and the outside surfaces separately? How about
copper pipes?

Aye - there's no need for thickness. Outside surfaces are all that are
needed.

You will need to read the documentation for the follow-me tool to figure
out how to draw things like the dome on top of the cylinder and piping.

I did have a go - limited success. Now you've told me that I'm not barking
up the wrong tree I'll persevere Every "cad" (proper or otherwise)
system I've used has had a different method of thinking and it is hard
work
to learn another.

I know an architect who uses Archicad for proper architectural drawings, but
uses Sketchup if he just wants to put together a quick diagram of how a
building fits together.

In terms of drawing 'shapes in space' there's nothing quite like it.

Hi,

OK - I'm totally impressed with Sketchup. It IS is brain-spasm away from
other CAD methodologies, but I think it is actually better - very very
powerful and it does seem to try very hard to do the "right thing".

My advice to anyone wanting to use Sketchup is to set aside a day and do the
3 getting started interactive training demos, then watch as many free
online training videos as possible. It wastes less time that fighting with
it in the absence of basic competence

Cheers

Tim

OK - quick follow up.

I went through all the Sketchup videos and interactive tutorials. I can now
get it to mostly do what I want with some fluency - though I expect there
is much I don't know.

Anyway, well worth the effort IMO. Weird learning curve, but not hard if you
just set out to "waste" a day doing following the videos and trying stuff,
before trying to draw what you actually intended (this is the road to hell,
because you waste more time trying to find out how to do something, that
was the wrong thing to do in the first place).

I had another vested interest, as I use TurboFloorPlan. This is a fairly
good (and not expensive) "walk-through" sorta-cad for houses - but being
yankie in origin, the model catalogues are useless for electrical items -
but it does import Sketchup models. So I now have a few basics like 13A
sockets, light switches and the like drawn up and imported.

Thanks for the pointers

Cheers

Tim