Drawing an Armrest with a Volute

Recently I was having a discussion with another SketchUp user about drawing volutes like you would find on the tops of some classical columns. While showing him a way to draw those, it occurred to me that the same basic idea could be applied to drawing a classic armrest found on many rocking chairs as well as armed dining chairs. Here’s a video showing the process. For this demo I’m just making up the armrest shape as I go along. You might actually start with a drawing you could trace or you might work from dimensions picked up off of a real chair.

I used several extensions and plugins in this video. Links are listed below.

Bernoulli Spiral from the Curve Maker extension.

Bezier Spline from the BZ Spline set.

TIG-Weld

Curviloft

Be sure to read the descriptions for these tools before you install them. BZ Spline and Curviloft also require LibFredo6.9 or higher.

–Dave