Jeff Gainey's Lube Center

[eTraxx]

I was on a 'Walkabout' the other day in Lugoff, SC. I have passed this Lube Center a gazillion times in my car but walking I stopped to snap some pics .. love the lines. The entire structure is made from cinder blocks with fake siding here and there.

[eTraxx]

So. Time and again I see people posting something like "I have a photo(s) of my grandfather's shop .. how do I make that into plans so I can build a model?"

The answer (ok .. one answer) is to use Sketchup's Match Photo. You import a photo and then align Perspective Lines with handles .. basically re-creating the view the original camera had. You can then trace the structure and create a 3d model. Pretty cool. There are tutorials on YouTube.

[oldbloodhound]

very nice, Ed.

[ReadingBob]

Very nice.  I tried playing with Sketchup in the past (even bought a book on it) but never got very far.  Maybe when I retire and don't have to spend 8+ hours a day on a computer I'll sit down and try to figure it out.  Maybe.   

[eTraxx]

Here's the tutorials on YouTube .. as you can see .. there are a ton of 'em

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sketchup+match+photo+tutorial

This was the very first tutorial .. quite old now but still good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRM7WXU5GrY

[eTraxx]

.... aaaannnyyyyyyhooooo ...

Here's the 'thing'. With the 3D CAD model you can separate the walls, group each and spin so they are all on the same plane. I did a couple here just to show what I am talking about. To start .. somewhere near the .. well .. starting point, you scale the drawing. Shrug .. this isn't exact .. camera lenses all distort a bit so we are getting 'close nuff' here. With the building in CAD we simply find something that we can guess the size of .. in this case the side door. I figure it is 30" wide. I can then use the Tape Measure tool .. measure that width on the model .. hit 30 and enter key (I am in decimal inches when I model structures. If in another units measure I would simply hit 30") .. and the model rescales.

Note the front wall which scales to 226.28" .. that is 4.714 inches in O scale and 2.6 inches in HO scale. Once I had the walls all laid out on the same plane .. and suppose I wanted to make the model in HO. I would simply use the Tape Measure tool to scale that front wall. You can also leave the model in Full-Size and when the print screen comes up tell it that 1 ft in Sketchup is equal to 0.138 inches in the print out.

The cool thing being that you can therefore print your own plans for modeling.