Building a Trash Can in SketchUp: Step-by-Step Guide

Alright, in this video we are going to build our trash can. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to save our picnic table file.

We're going to close out of that. We're going to save, then go to File, New from Template, and then our architectural inches template. Alright, we got a new file.

Now we're going to save this. We're going to file, save as. We're going to scroll down to our C drive and then go to our SKP 101 file downloads folder.

We're going to save a new file called 'trash-recycle-cans'. I'm going to save that in there. Remember, we never want to be working in an untitled or unnamed scheduled file because every now and then SketchUp will crash.

And if you never previously saved it, there's no auto save or no way to come back to any sort of, you know, older version of it. It's just everything is gone forever. So always make sure you save something.

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So let's first go to our eraser tool. So to build a trash can, we're going to be using the circle tool, the push-pull tool, the move tool, and the scale and offset tools down here. These are two new ones that we're going to be using in this lesson.

So let's first click on the circle. As you can see, the circle is segmented. It's not a perfect circle.

SketchUp doesn't work in perfect circles. Everything is segmented with straight lines. If you look in the bottom right corner, where it says 'radius', it shows the distance.

But prior to clicking on the 2D space, if I escape out of it and first click the circle, you can see that it says sides 24. That'll determine how many sides this circle has. If I was to type in 16S and press ENTER, now this one will have 16 sides, versus 24.

I can do that same thing again if I go back and type in 4S. Now, this is a four-sided circle, which is technically a square. Now back to the circle, we'll do 16S.

We're going to click right in this area right here, and we're going to make this one 12 inches for our radius of that trash can. So roughly two feet wide. I'm going to go back to my select tool and zoom in to this portion.

So it looks something like this. We have enough to pull this up and see what's going on. Control S to save my file.

Next, let's go to the push pull tool and push our circle up two feet, 9, press ENTER. So I would like our trash can to have slanted sides, so it kind of concaves in. To do that, the best way would be to use SketchUp's auto fold feature.

When we modify one face in our geometry, auto fold uses sticky geometry to keep the adjoining faces connected to the face we are modifying. If we go to the move command right here and move my face up or down, you can see that SketchUp automatically locks it along the blue axes. If you see in the bottom down here, control, copy, ALT, toggle, auto fold.

If I click ALT, auto fold, now I'm able to move this, you know, plane around. And you can see that all the adjoining faces are staying connected. I'm going to escape out of that.

If I go to rotate and rotate this, you know, around wherever, you can start seeing that it'll start twisting the geometry of the trash can in the cylinder. And if I use the scale tool right here and click our face, you will see my yellow bounding box with green cubes at the corners and midpoints. When you hover over one of the cubes, you will see that one cube is highlighted as well as the opposite one is highlighted.

If you select this corner grip and drag it out, you will see that it’s scaling from the opposite corner. If you look down at our status bar at the bottom, it says control, toggle scale about center, shift, toggle scale, uniform scale. If we hold down control while we're scaling, it's scaling about center.

And for holding shift, it's kind of has a more uniform scale that's not really, you know, scaling about anything. So scaling around center, we can start, you know, splitting it out or bringing it into becoming more of a cone-like shape. I'm going to escape and cancel this move.

All right, so if we scale from one of the midpoints and hold control, it's basically making that more of an oval shape. And if I hold down shift, it'll keep it within one of these sides. So, you know, you can kind of create some really interesting shapes by using the scale tool.

All right, I will undo that move. All right, so I would like our circle's diameter to be exactly 26 inches at the top. So let's select this point, which is opposite the green axis.

And I'm going to hold down Control and Shift to scale proportionally and evenly. And I'm going to have this, I'm going to select a little bit larger than what I want. And then I'll now type in 26 inches and make sure you type in inches and not just leave it blank.

And I click enter. So that made this exactly 26 inches wide at the diameter. So, you know, our trash can is slightly flaring out like a typical trash can.

Next, I will go to my Select tool and deselect my objects. And you can now see that our sides of the trash can are slanted. Let's do the same for our trash can lid.

I'll go to the push pull and pull my surface up one inch and click enter. I'll go to my scale command and click on my top surface. And I'll scale from this point while holding down Control and Shift.

I'll put it down smaller and I'll type in two feet. Now this is two feet, or 24 inches, at the top. The next step in our trash can is to put the hole in the middle.

So to do that, we will need to move our inner geometry down into the model. We will need a new workflow. If we go to the offset tool, this new tool right here, and click on our top face, you will start to see another circle that is being previewed on that face.

If we click, you will notice that this face got split into two, one outer ring and the inner ring. I will undo this because I want to type in a specific distance. If I go back to my offset tool, have that selected and select this face, I can start to see that my distance in the bottom right corner of my status bar shows what that distance is.

I want this to be 7 inches. So I will type in 7, press ENTER. Next, I will orbit to the top of my model.

I would like to move this inner circle down 2 inches. So let's go to the move tool and select our circle. But as you can see when I move around, the blue axis is not being selected, only the green and the red.

This is because the circle is drawn on a flat face. So SketchUp is locking it to that face. But you can see in our tooltip section below that ALT equals toggle Auto Fold.

And that is the option we would like to use. So, I will hit the ALT key to toggle Auto Fold. And now you can see the blue axis is being shown.

I will move this circle down with the blue axis and type 2, press ENTER. Let's use that workflow one more time. If I go back to Offset, select this inner circle, and offset this by 1 inch, then press ENTER.

You can see that we have a new concentric circle, but Auto Fold only works when modifying adjoining faces.

I went back to my cursor, selected, and hit delete. And then, pre-selecting the inner edge and using the move tool, we can now move this down by selecting ALT while clicking.

I want to move this down 1 inch as well.

So, 1, then press ENTER. I would like to group or isolate a portion of this trash can separately. So I'll go to my Select tool.

I will orbit around and click and drag from this point with a selection window. It will only grab the edges and faces within that window.

I will right-click and select Make Group to make the lid a group.

Then, from this point, I’ll create a crossing window to select everything, and holding down Shift to deselect that, I can make this a group.

Then, I will make all of these into one group.

We will come back later to add materials to these groups.

But right now, let's save our file and we'll jump into our next video where we will create a recycling can.