Sketch Me Up!

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125 Enclosure Model

Here’s the table of contents for the whole DIY pedal building series:

  1. Intro to DIY Pedal Building
  2. Beginner’s Course in Sketchup
  3. Drilling a 125B Guitar Effects Pedal Enclosure
  4. Pedal Enclosure Finishing: Surface Prep, Priming, Painting
  5. Using GIMP to Create Pedal Artwork
  6. Printing and Applying Waterslide Decal to Pedal Enclosure

This is part 2 of my new series on building guitar effects pedals.

This part of the project ended up being far more grandiose than I originally intended.  I started out planning to just show how to model this diecast aluminum 125B guitar pedal enclosure, to make sure my PCB and components would fit properly inside.   But by the time I was done with it, it was essentially a complete beginner’s how-to course for Google Sketchup.  (Note, Sketchup is now part of Trimble instead of Google). 

To give you an idea of how long this took for me to complete, I started filming the intro and the Sketchup tutorial videos in June of 2011.  Over the last year, in the time-spaces between the rest of life, I’ve been gradually editing, revising, extending, and composing music for the project.

In this tutorial, I start out with the absolute basics, and gradually pick up the pace, progressing to more and more advanced topics.  I divided the video up into 5 sections, but kept them all together in one 55-minute video.  In my previous multi-part videos, I had to split them into multiple YouTube clips, due to the YouTube length restrictions, but now that they’ve relaxed those for my account- I hope it’ll be better having it all in one video.

Here is the Sketchup file that I used in the tutorial if you’re interested: Download sketchup file.

Each section assumes a familiarity with the previous section topics.  Here’s the table of contents:

Part 1 (02:39): Parts of the Sketchup Window, Mouse Tooltips, Instructor Window, Entity Info, Layers and Components, The Red, Green and Blue Axes, Rectangle Tool, Typing to Change Dimensions, Zoom Tool and Zoom Extents, Using a Mouse with Scroll Wheel, Orbit Tool, Undo Tool, Push/Pull Tool, Offset Tool, Infinite Undo and Redo, Tape Measure Tool, Reference Lines, Select Tool, Components, Open & Close Component for Edit, Select All

Part 2 (15:34): Modeling the Battery, Panning with Orbit Tool, Move Tool, Anchor Points for Moving, X-Ray Mode, Custom Keyboard Shortcuts, Modeling 3PDT Footswitch, Finding Center of Rectangle, Circle Tool, Delete Guides, Positioning a Component, Cutting a Hole in a Face, Moving the Switch into a Hole, Zoom and Fine Positioning

Part 3 (26:18): Placing Components in Layers, Using Entity Info, Hiding and Showing Layers, Modeling a Neutrik Enclosed Jack, Arc and Circle Tools, Typing Measurement- One Dimension Only, Placing Jack in Enclosure, Rotate Tool, Axis Reference When Rotating, Fine Control of Move Tool, Locking Inference Direction, Display Crosshairs Preference, Components Window, In Model List, Copying a Component, Changing All Component Copies, Make Component Unique, Standard Camera Views

Part 4 (38:54): 3D Warehouse, Download into Model, Renaming Component, Copy/Paste from a Sketchup File, Drag from Components List, Drag to Select, Shift Click for Selection, Modifying the 16mm Potentiometer, Chicken Head and Davies Knobs, Offset Tool, Makng a Circle in a Circle, Making a Compound Component, Pot/Knob Group, Placing Pots, Advanced Reference Lines, and Inference Points, Pencil Line Tool, Cutting Holes for Pots and Switch, Placing Pots and Knobs

Part 5 (47:33): Modeling a Simple PCB, Select All Connected Faces, Checking the Overall Fit, Hide Layers, Drilling Template Top, Marking Small Drillbit Guides, Change Active Layer for Drawing, Circle Center Snapping, Drilling Template Sides, Printing in 1:1 Aspect Ratio, Use Standard Camera View, Use Parallel Projection not Perspective, Use Landscape Printing, Turn off Fit To Page, Set Scale 1:1, Experiment with Use Model Extents and Pan Model in Window, Make it Look Right in Print Preview

In the next parts (coming soon), I’ll actually drill the enclosure, and then move on to painting and finishing.