DIY - Modeling a Car/Truck in SketchUp

[CADken]

I've seen a lot of requests here and on other forums about how to model a car in SketchUp... and sadly not many DIY Tutorials on how to do it.

There are many ways to model a car, so I encourage everyone to model the way it suits you, and I'm not claiming these are the rules you must follow or how it must be done.

Please try to keep this thread clean and if you have any questions, feel free to ask them, but as long as they are dealing with modeling cars/trucks... and most of all please do not hi-jack this thread. Also, this is quiet a large project so bare with me as I will be updating this thread over the course of the next few days (or how ever long it takes me to model this project).

First and foremost, when it comes to modeling any car, try to find as many reference pictures as possible and even blueprints in the highest resolution possible (this will come in handy).

A great reference for blueprints for those who would like to model as close to the real thing as possible:

SMC Car Blueprints
Blueprints Database

Now, find the vehicle you'd like to model. In this case mine will be a 1951 Chevrolet Pickup (modeling for my 1949 Chevy Fire Engine, Chevy Pickups from 1949 to 51 were relatively the same).

Anyway, let's begin.

Open SketchUp and "IMPORT" the blueprint picture (make sure it is in jpeg form).



Select your blueprint and insert it at the origin. Select a size for the blueprint, in this case it asked for a distance and I entered 50' (keep that in mind).



Now Import your blueprint 2 more times (make each 50', or whatever distance you entered before, just remember, stay consistent). Move them around and make your "staging ground" look something like this. Make note of the 3 views, "TOP", "SIDE" and "Front" view. Keep these in mind as I will reference them from time to time.



Now take note how large "Bryce" is (Bryce is the default "guy" you see at the origin each time you open SketchUp). Bryce is small compared to the blueprints, in this case I made the height of all the blueprints 50', the higher the resolution of the blueprints the larger you can make them and the easier they are to work with.

Select all the print views and place them on layer 1 (this will come in handy when you need to hide the prints to edit our components).

[CADken]

Now, I'm going to start with the Fender (driver's side). Trace the outline of the fender (you may want to toggle the "X-Ray" on and off to be able to tell want you are doing on the "Side Blueprint".

This picture already shows the outline being extruded, but for reference, the outlined fender:



I position the "blueprints" to use for accuracy while I'm extruding the face of the fender. By position, I mean you want to line up the blueprints so that the views match, In this case I drew a line on the top of the fender on one print "SIDE VIEW", and a line on the top of the fender on another print "TOP VIEW". Using the lines as guides I match up the "TOP" and "SIDE" views to resemble something like this.

Here is roughly what I mean:



You want to make sure your prints line up, esp when time comes to extrude faces. In this case I lined up the fenders so that way when I extrude the face, it follows the "Top" view.

[CADken]

Alright, now that we have a solid rectangle fender we can move on. In this step we are going to utilize the "Intersect with Model" function. Be sure to select all the lines that make up your fender and create a component, name it "Fender" (or at least in this case that's what I did).

Using one of the blueprints, I trace the "TOP" view of the fender to achieve the overall shape when looking at it from the top.



After the outline is created, extrude the face to a size larger than the "Fender" we have created.



Now select all the lines that make up this shape and create a component named "cut". Rotate "cut" around so that it lines up with the print we are using as the "TOP" view. Make sure it is in place cutting through our "Fender" (make sure that "cut" is lined up exactly where it should be so that when we intersect with our "fender" it will give us what we are looking for).

Explode "CUT" and go to edit, then select cut. Now double click on "FENDER" to edit this component. Then go to edit, then select "PASTE IN PLACE" (this will insert our "cut" part right where it was before). Right-click on cut (after pasting in place it should be blue, indicating it's selected), from the right-click menu select "INTERSECT >WITH MODEL"



Now begin to delete the excess lines and faces (also as a side note, go to your layer manager and "HIDE" layer 1, this will hide the prints and make it easier to edit our component without ruining our print locations):



When finished we end up with something like this:

[ReMark]

That is so cool. I'll have to try it. Thanks.

[Lazer]

Quality tutorial, keep us posted

[Bloodwig80]

awesome. subscribed to see how it goes, im sure ill learn something new out of this.

[CADken]

Sorry it's taken so long, work has been busy. Anyway, The above is the basic approach to modeling an object in SketchUp, using the above principles you can model the entire vehicle using the above features...

Now, let's try another approach!

Here we are going to utilize the wonderful blueprints to really "model" our truck. First things first, Start SketchUp and select "Import" (sounds familiar don't it?)

Once again, select your blueprint and repeating the same steps above, snap it to the origin and make the height 50' (or whatever units you are comfortable with).

So, we'll end up with this again:

[CADken]

Now here is where things change, we are going to change this image into a "texture", we will achieve this by right clicking the image and selecting, "Use as Material"

Seen here:

[CADken]

After we have made our blueprint a material, we will then "Explode" our material so that we can use it in the following steps. To explode the material, right-click the blueprint and select "Explode".

Now, with the blueprint exploded, draw a rectangle around the top view of the truck (or whatever vehicle you choose to use).

You'll have something like this:

[CADken]

Alrighty, now select your "push/pull" tool and "pull" the face upward in a distance you think is about the height of the truck (or vehicle you are modeling). This will be adjusted later, but for now just guess the height.

Now, here's where the fun begins, select the paint bucket tool and go to Materials, "In Model". From here it will show you the blueprint as a material (just what we wanted), now with the paint bucket, select the side of the raised rectangle that will be the "front" of the truck.

Here's what happens:



Now this isn't where we want it, so we are going to move the material around to where we want the "front" of the truck, right-click and go to "Texture" and select "Position" and move the material around to where we want it:



Here is what we have after we have moved the material to where we want the front image to be (click "Done" when you are satisfied with it's location):