The other day a woodworker I know contacted me about using an image to create a cutout in a panel for a project he’s working on. He wanted to know the best way to convert that into geometry so he could pierce the panel. One option is to import the image into SketchUp and then use various drawing tools to trace it. I’ve shown that sort of thing in previous blog posts. Since the image he supplied is a simple black silhouette on white, there’s another option. That’s the subject of this video.

I used two extensions for this. The first is called Image Trimmer which is part of the SKM Tools set from Sketchucation. The second one is called Draw Bounding Box which is available through both the Extension Warehouse and Sketchucation.  you’ll also need an image editor. There are a number of different ones available, of course. I use PaintDotNet on my PCs and find it does everything I need and more.

I hope you find something you can use here.

–Dave

	Using SketchUp to create patterns Using SketchUp and Layout, Dave Richards demonstrates how to create full-size printed patterns to use for router templates or bending forms.
	Drawing an Inlay Pattern in SketchUp Dave Richards shows the process for drawing a SketchUp model for Kevin Rodel’s Arts and Crafts-Inspired Bed for the printed and digital plans.
	Using SketchUp Layers to Visualize Design Variations SketchUp guru Dave Richards shows you a few ways to leverage layers to show some different things in your models.