You might notice that even at this early stage, I'm already thinking about how I can minimize the number of blade changes I'll need. But it's something you'd want to keep in mind if your tolerances are getting tight. I definitely want at least a couple of inches of play, and preferably more, and from this rough initial layout, it looks like I'll be fine. I know that each cut will take up about 1/8', so for example the cuts for the leftmost I-shaped shelf will require a minimum of four cuts, and if each has a 1/8' kerf, that's 1/8' x 4 = 1/2' minimum that I haven't actually accounted for in my layout. Note that I'm not accounting for kerf here, so I want to be sure to give myself plenty of extra room at the ends. Then I made a copy of each shelf, and laid out each piece for the shelf on its own board:

So I laid out a grid with markings for 8' and 16' boards, 12' wide. I have a pretty good idea that I would want to build this out of poplar, and my local hardwood dealer supplies rough cut poplar up to 16' lengths. Then I created a separate layer to plan my cut list. So first I designed the shelves for each Tetris piece: Then I fit the pieces to those boards with an eye towards keeping common cuts together.įor example, I was thinking about building some Tetris shelves as a Christmas present for a friend.

I usually have an idea of what kind of wood it's going to be, so I use the Tape Measure tool to lay out a grid of the board or sheet good sizes I'm thinking of purchasing. What I do is make a copy of the file or create a new layer to serve as the cut list. Once I have my design complete in Sketchup, I find it useful to make my own cut list.

Jay bates sketchup