Discover the process of designing and creating structural elements in 3D design software. This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to create a wooden column beam, add texture and material, and modify its elements such as bolts and plates.
Key Insights
- The design process begins with drawing a rectangle to represent a 6x6 piece of wood, which is then adjusted to align with the actual dimensions of the beam. This element is then "push-pulled" to a height of 7 feet, after which it is turned into a component and given a name.
- The material for the beam is selected from the in-model material, with a new material being created to represent the wood column. The texture image is adjusted to represent the grain of the wood, with the grain being orientated in the correct direction by modifying the component axes or the texture position.
- Additional elements such as the top plate and bolts are created and added to the beam. The top plate attaches directly to the top of the column, created using a reference line from the middle point of the column. Bolts are then added to the surface of the beam, with the size and position being adjustable due to them being made as components.
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Next, let's draw an actual column beam. So again, we'll draw a rectangle, and we'll do 5.5 comma 5.5 for a 6x6 piece of wood, and 5.5 inches is the actual dimension. And I will move this point here to this point.
And then now I will Push/Pull this element up 7 feet. And then I can triple-click, right-click, Make Component. I want to call this one 6x6 Wood Column.
And my component axes are set right on the corner where I first drew it, which is perfect. And now I want to modify this material. And I will go into my actual in-model material.
And I want to select the wood that we've been using, which is door wood grain. Instead of doing that, however, I want to go to create new material. I want to call this Wood Column and then use a texture image and select from my SKP 2 file downloads my wood grain texture.
Select Open. I will hit OK. Now I will paint this material.
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You can see that the grain is oriented in the wrong direction. I can fix that by either modifying my component axes or going into texture position. With this element, click on the green handle and drag while holding down the mouse button.
You can drag and move it 90 degrees. Now, if I want to copy the same sort of position, I can use the Eyedropper tool for this and paint everything along that same direction. Now I can select out of this.
And now I have my wood beam or my wood column. The next thing I would like to make is my top plate. So I will select these two components, Make Group, and double-click this group so I can isolate this element here.
And I want to create a top plate that will attach a horizontal beam directly to the top of this column. So the first thing that I want to do is create a reference line from the middle point here. And then using my line tool, I'll hit L on my keyboard to draw a line from that intersection out 1.25 and then down 7.5 inches and across 2.5 inches and then up and then to the center point.
I will Push/Pull this piece out 3/16th inch and then use another reference line to create a line 3/8 inch from the end of this. I want to create another kind of beveled edge on both ends of these and then Push/Pull that to auto-fold. Delete those elements, and I will triple-click.
Make Component, and I want to call this one 6x6 Column Top Plate and Create. I'll double-click into this component, and I want to make this a group, and then I want to add some bolts onto the surface. So I'll create a center point reference line and a reference line from the bottom up. I'll go up 1.5 inches and then from this point go up 3 inches.
So I want to do a bolt here and a bolt here. I will select my bolt component right there. Select my bolt component again right there.
If I ever want to modify these bolts and say that I think overall these bolts may be a little bit too large, because they are a component, I can actually double-click into this piece, and I can offset a little bit smaller. Let's say I want to offset it a 1/16th inch smaller. I'll do 1/16th, and then I'll Push/Pull this to auto-fold that to delete it. Now it's a little bit smaller bolt, which looks a little bit better for these ones.
Now I'll double-click into this component, and I want to group this side panel piece, Make Group, and then I want to copy this over here. It doesn't matter where it's at.
Flip along red and then move this back to here, and I want this to be 5.5 inches apart. Now I'll do 5.5, Enter. If I hit H on my keyboard, I can see that this is right here on the side plate, perfect on my column centered.
Now let's create a top panel piece above here that would connect our beam across. So from this center reference line that we have, let's go out 1.75 inches and we'll go up 6 inches, and we'll go this way to 3.5 inches and down to here into here. I want to Make Group.
This is going to be our beam piece. We want to actually double-click into this group and offset this out one-quarter inch thick. We can draw a line here and draw a line here, and then delete this portion, this portion, and this portion, and then let's round off this edge.
So let's click our two-point arc and we'll click from here. Actually, let's draw a reference line so we know where we want to start from. We want to draw a 3/8 inch this direction, and we'll draw an arc from here to here, and then we'll do from here to here, and then from here we'll just roughly do it—it doesn't have to be completely exact. You know what, I want to make that a little bit more accurate.
I want to draw a reference line from here down 3/16ths and then we'll go here to here and here to here, and now I want to Push/Pull this element 11 inches long. I will close out of this group, and I want to pull this piece up just above here. Then I want this piece to be centered between these two elements. I know that these are five-and-a-half inches apart, so I can draw a reference line between here and here, and one half of that is 2.75. So that's where I want my top plate to be centered on, so I can click my Move tool and find my midpoint in the group, and then move it along the red axis. We'll have to move this further back here, and then we can move here to there, and then we can move here to there, and there we are centered on that piece. Let's add a few more bolts on these side plates, on this side and this side, to finalize this top plate.
Let's draw an additional reference line from here: one inch (one, Enter), and from here: one, Enter, and on the other side one, Enter, one, Enter, and then from the top from this point here we'll go down one, Enter, and then three, Enter. Likewise here we'll do one, Enter, and then three, Enter. Now we can add a bolt. We'll do View, Hidden Geometry. You can see that it doesn't want to snap correctly due to this orientation, so we can actually modify our component axes inside this group. We'll make this another group inside here, and we'll modify these component axes to ensure that this direction is red, this direction is green, and this direction is blue. Now when I go to add these bolts inside this group, they're now in the right orientation. I'll hit H to see these reference lines that I had before. I'll click there, click here, click here, click here, orbit around, and I'll do the same thing. You can see here that it wants to snap on this side and not on the outside, so I'm just going to select all four of these and I'm going to move these across and hit Control to toggle copy to right here. I will flip along the red direction, and I have the bolts. Again, I feel these bolts are still a little bit too large. If I measure from side to side, they're actually over one and an eighth inch. I want these to be one inch, so I'll again modify these by going to my offset and changing this to one-eighth, and then I can delete that. I can actually auto-fold to close that back up, and that feels like it's a much better size. The final thing to do would be to paint this the same metal, so I can actually use my Eyedropper tool to select this metal, which is our base-plate metal, and I will paint this top the same metal. I'll double-click into this component and then hit Control-A to select all and then paint. I will Edit, Delete Guides, and I'll do this one more time: Edit, Delete Guides. I'll go to View, turn off Hidden Geometry, and you can see here that I have a group of columns and plates. I will explode this group, and now that I have all three of these components, I want to nest these three components inside of another component. So I can actually right-click, Make Component, and I want to call this 6x6 Column with Plates, and hit Create. Now if I were ever to modify one of these, it would modify all. This is a good place to stop this video, and then we will continue modifying our pergola in the next video.
