Learn how to build a wood pergola for a clubhouse using actual dimensions of lumber with steel attachments. This article includes step-by-step instructions on drawing and constructing each part of your model, from the base plate to the side plates and bolts.
Key Insights
- Start by modeling in a community park, ensuring that your axis in the model is on the project north axis versus the true north axis to maintain proper orientation.
- Create a square of five and a half inches to serve as the base plate for your wood columns, then proceed to make components such as a six by six base plate and side plates.
- Make use of tools such as the tape measure, offset, and push-pull to construct complex components like bolts, and always ensure to modify your component axes to maintain proper placement and orientation in your model.
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All right, in this video we are going to build our wood pergola for a clubhouse. We are going to use actual dimensions of lumber with steel attachments and really kind of dial this into something that shows how you would actually construct this.
So let's start off by modeling in this community park right around this area right here so we get some space to create some posts and bases. Let's make sure that our axis in this model is on project north axis versus true north axis so that way we are modeling in this direction. We can see that when we draw a rectangle it should be oriented basically aligned with the clubhouse.
So let's start by drawing a square that is five and a half inches comma five and a half inches. These are basically going to be our wood columns. A six by six column in actual dimensions is five and a half inches but this is going to be our base plate.
Let's double-click this group and right-click Make Component. We're going to name this component six by six base plate and we'll hit Create. Now we'll double-click into this component and I'll click H to hide rest of model so we really just isolate whatever we're building.
And then first step is we're going to offset this one quarter inch and then we're going to push pull this up one half inches and then we're going to push pull this element hitting the Control key to make copies, so we're not moving this bottom edge; we're making a copy up one eighth inch. I can erase these lines and now we have our general base plate. I will triple-click, make group inside of this component and now we will create some side plates.
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Let's draw a reference line, go to our Tape Measure tool and click this edge and we know that this is now six inches so we can draw a line that's three now we'll be at our center point and now let's draw a line from this point right here 2.75 inches up four inches and hold down green to this point right here which is five and a half inches and then down to this middle point and then we will pull this to match here so it's one quarter inch side plate and then we will draw a line a reference line from this edge down one half inch and then we will draw an angle here and then snap on edge and then from here hover over and then on edge so we have these 45 degree angles and then we'll push and pull to erase those and then we will triple-click this element right-click Make Group and now we will create some bolts for this element we'll go to our Tape Measure tool again and we'll draw a center line along green to snap right there to our midpoint which is two and three-quarter inches and then we will create a bottom line two inches so we want to create a bolt right here so let's go to our polygon tool and select, make sure we have six sides and we'll start off with the center and then we will go out five-eighths inch and hit ENTER and then we will push pull this out three-eighths inch and hit ENTER and we want to make this bolt an actual component because we're going to use it throughout this project so we are going to triple-click, right-click, Make Component and we want to modify our component axes, so we'll click Set Component Axes and click Create, but now I want my axes to be on the other side so when I place it I place it right on that point so I'm going to actually flip this along Green and then let's move this axis to be over here so we'll go to our axes tool and we'll hover over this point here and then drag down till it snaps to our center. We want solid Green to be in that direction, not dashed Green.
We want our Red axis to go this direction and our Green to go perpendicular to that and then our Blue to go up. We want solid Blue up. Now we have it correct. I'm going to click Yes, and now if I go back to my select component you can see that it's going to snap right on these intersections. If I go to View, Face Style, X-ray, you can see that I can snap right on these points, and that's exactly what I want to do in the future. Now I'll close my X-ray view, and I want to select this element and this element and make that a group. Then I want to move this and make a copy, so I'll hit Control on my keyboard here and then right-click Flip Along Red and then once again move this to this point.
I now want to paint this base plate black metal, so I can go into my Metal and I will go into this metal aluminum anodized. I'm going to click that and I'll go into my Create Material and I will call this base plate metal and I can modify this color to be a kind of a darker color. I can get rid of the saturation so it's mostly just black, and I'll hit OK. Then now I can Control + A to select all and I can paint this material. I can see that the material maybe is a little bit too large of a scale, so I'm going to edit and I can change this down to be one foot or maybe two feet to kind of get the right kind of texture. Now I can click out of this component. I'm going to Edit, Delete Guides, and now we have our base plate for our column.
We want our Red axis to go in this direction and our Green axis to go perpendicular to that, and then our Blue axis to go up. We want solid Blue up. Now we have it correct. I'm going to click Yes, and now if I go back to my Select Component panel, you can see that it's going to snap right on these intersections. If I go to View, Face Style, X-ray, you can see that I can snap right on these points, and that's exactly what I want to do in the future. Now I'll close my X-ray view, and I want to select this element and this element and make that a group. Then I want to move this and make a copy, so I'll hit Control on my keyboard here and then right-click and select Flip Along Red and then once again move this to this point.
I now want to paint this base plate black metal, so I can go into my Metal materials, and I will select Metal Aluminum Anodized. I'm going to click that, and I'll go into my Create Material panel and I will call this base plate metal, and I can modify this color to be darker. I can get rid of the saturation so it's mostly just black, and I'll hit OK. Now I can press Control + A to select all, and I can paint this material. I can see that the material might be scaled a bit too large, so I'm going to edit, and I can change this down to be one foot or maybe two feet to get the right kind of texture. Now I can click out of this component. I'm going to Edit, Delete Guides, and now we have our base plate for our column.
