Cab designs

[jeremyb]

Check out http://sketchup.google.com/ Sammy, I'm tempted to start custom building cabs, apart from the lack of time factor and it'd probably not be worthwhile financially its a great idea!!

[SammyD]

Thanks Jeremy.

I have major GAS for a 1x12 cab but am on a budget, you think it's worth me building/getting someone to build me one? Or should I just suck it up and buy one. I can install the speaker and all that easy enough it's just the wood work skills I lack

[Starfire]

Yep, used SketchUp. Certainly not as flash as CAD or something, but pretty easy to use, and good for simple drawings like a cabinet. The drawings are to scale, so here are a couple of pictures with dimensions. Let me know if there are any others you might want.

These pictures are a bit bigger, so I'll just link to them
Pic 1
Pic 2

I guess the cabinet is probably a bit bigger than your typical 5E3 combo cabinet, which is probably a good thing.

[NZRS-Dave]

Erm ... I suck at SketchUp.

OC is a genius for producing that cab pic.

That is all.

[Starfire]

It's not too difficult once you get the hang of it. Maybe this will help, I've put together a bit of a tutorial for you. Hopefully the pics aren't too small. Thought I'd demonstrate a 2x12 cabinet, just for something different. I've circled the required tools and things in red.

1)
To start with, use the rectangle tool to draw a rectangle. Doesn't matter what size to begin with, because you simply type in your dimensions and it resizes it accordingly.

For this I simply typed '280mm, 690mm' and hit 'enter' and it resized it to those dimensions. I've pretty much just pulled all these dimensions from my backside, I have no idea how big a 2x12 should be, typically.

2)
After drawing your 2D rectangle, you need to add the third dimension. To do this, you use the 'push/pull' tool. It does precisely what the name suggests. You simply 'pull' the rectangle upwards and it becomes 3 dimensional. As before, you can type in a dimension to specify the thickness.

For this, I typed '.75"', or roughly 19mm, and hit enter.

3)
Now that you have the base of the cabinet, you can add the sides. I'll just show you how to add one side, and you can simply repeat the exercise for the remaining sides. So, using the rectangle tool again, click on the corners of the rectangle where you wish to place the side, and drag it up the appropriate axis so it is perpendicular to the base. Click again and it'll become shaded, then you can, once again, specify the dimension.


So I typed '280mm, 420mm' and hit enter.

4)
You also need to make this side 3 dimensional, so repeat the steps from earlier. Use the push/pull tool and enter the required dimension. You should end up with something like this.


5)
Now I'll show you how to add a rounded edge. On the cabinet I designed for my 5E3, I rounded the front and side edges. For this, I'll just show you how to round the side edge. You need to use the curve tool to draw a line between the corners of the base and side that you've drawn, like so:

You need to make sure it's parallel with the edges of the base and side. Then you need to drag it outwards along that axis to make it curve. You can also add a dimension for the amount of curve. I used 4mm. You should have a sort of 2D curved wedge on the corner, like this:


6)
The next step is to drag that with the push/pull tool to make it 3 dimensional, like this:

You need to drag it the full width though, which is 280mm on my drawing. You can just drag it a bit, then type in the dimension and it'll drag it accordingly. So you should end up with something like this.


7)
I'm going to jump ahead a bit now, I've shown you how to create each face, make it 3D, and add a rounded edge. Hopefully you can just repeat those steps to do the rest. Once you've made all four sides, it'll fill in the rest so you have a closed box. You can just click on those faces and delete them, so you end up with a sort of frame, like this:



Then you can begin making the baffle. What I did was measure 12mm from the front edge, using the tape measure. It then puts a guide line it place.


Then, using the pencil tool, you can draw over this line on the inside of the cabinet, spanning the full width, like so:


Then repeat this step a further 16mm from the line you've just drawn. Measure, make a guidline, draw the line with the pencil tool.


Then, using the push/pull tool again, place the cursor between these lines. It should go shaded. Then you can click and drag this area upwards. Once more, you can simply type in the dimension, and let it do the rest. So that's 420mm for my drawing.


So you should then have something that resembles this.


9)
Jumping ahead a little bit again. You can then draw in the speaker cutouts. Fairly self explanatory, you can use the tape measure to mark out the centres, put it guide lines and points. Sketchup quite cleverly tells you where the middle of a line is when you're using the tape measure, buy putting a blue dot there when you move the cursor over that line. Anyway, here's what it should look like.

Use the circle tool, click on the centre point and drag the circle outwards to the appropriate size. Again, you can type in the dimensions. These cutouts have a 5.5" radius, or an 11" diameter, perfect for mounting a 12" speaker!

10)
The push pull tool also works in reverse. If you wave it over the circles you've drawn, they should go shaded, then you can push them back and the material in the middle will disappear, leaving a hole. E.g.



That's about it. Hopefully, if that's all been straightforward, you should now have the skills to do the rear panels and things yourself. Bear in mind too that this is a fairly un-detailed drawing.

[jeremyb]

Legend!!!!

[SammyD]

+1 that was a good tutorial. I've used a 3d program before but this seems a lot more simple to use than that! Or maybe I was just doing things the hard way....

[rocklander]

what an awesome turtorial... thanks very much

[NZRS-Dave]

what an awesome turtorial... thanks very much

+10000

Thanks.

[bobiron]

Never heard of Sketchup before, thanks for the excellent info you have provided. I will download and use this for sure.

[Starfire]

Glad it was helpful and not just me hijacking the thread with nerdiness. It is a very useful tool for designing cabinets as you can see. Now I expect to see some cool designs from you all!

[SammyD]

Yeah I'm going to go home tonight and draw up some plans for a 2x12 rip off of a Mesa cab I found the dimensions to, will post it when I'm done

[SammyD]

Hmm it never asks me to enter dimensions when I draw a shape, and after I draw it I can't find a way to edit them, is there a setting somewhere I need to turn on OC?

[Starfire]

It doesn't prompt you for dimensions, you just have to type them in immediately after you draw the shape. The dimensions show up in the little box in the lower right corner that I circled in some of my pics. There is probably a way to be able to edit them afterwards, but I usually just hit the undo button and start over with that bit.

[SammyD]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRjH2kZx ... r_embedded[/youtube]

Man your answer came quicker than I could watch this vid!