3-D Designs in SketchUp

I am seriously addicted to making these designs for mini dioramas for action figures. I'm a teacher and the school year is winding down, well into the last three weeks. Grades have to be done by next Wednesday, students are just finishing up their last assignments, at least those who care.

Fortunately, I've got a classroom set of computers, so students can just play games when they've caught up all of their work. 

Me? I'm just monitoring them, keeping them from irritating each other (and me) too much. I'm also just messing around in SketchUp, just creating new designs. I find it a bit relaxing, just fiddling about and making new designs. Math skills are needed as well, so that's an added bonus.

This is one of my earlier designs. It's interesting, but a bit boring to me. The panels are cool enough, but there's too many of them.

This was more of an exercise in making doors. Non-functional doors, but still giving the appearance of a door.The wall panels are boring.

 

This is my basic template. I really didn't want to keep recreating a floor along with the walls, so I generally just stick with the basic floor panel. I think I've made a few adjustments and split the larger panels on the floor.

Making brick walls turned out to be fairly easy. They are close to being proportional in terms of cinder blocks. The dimensions on the model should be roughly 1/18th of an actual cinder block.

I added a door and door frame to this version of the brick walls. I've also added some cracks into the ground for some variety. I haven't printed either of the brick wall sets yet.

For this model, I wanted to add extra elements for a little more depth to the model. For the finished product, I printed three of the girders and they fit along the slots in the wall and the impressions in the floor. I've finally printed all of the pieces and am mostly satisfied how they printed. There are a couple of small tweaks that really need to be done to the walls. I am most proud of this design.

Lastly, for now, I've designed something that will have brackets and pipes going along the top edge of the large wall. Interesting design. I haven't tried printing anything yet, hopefully soon.

Now if only the printing didn't take so long...