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In my Principles of Technology class, we're using Sketchup to design the parts we will make for the Mendocino Motor. Though we'll fabricate the parts with hand and power tools, you can also use SketchUp to make the files needed to cut parts on a mill, MakerBot, ShopBot or other CNC tools.

The Mendocino Motor project appears in the Teachers' Pet Projects section in MAKE, Volume 20, page 79.

Here are some techniques to design parts for the motor:

First get familiar with the SketchUp interface. This is pretty easy; the software is rather intuitive. A good place to start is by making whole shapes with the rectangle and circle tools. Draw a shape, then use the Push/Pull tool to extrude it up or down. You can make a shape on the side of another shape, then pull it out or push it in. Make some shapes. Mouse over the tool icons and you should see the name of the tool in a popup.

You can also do some neat stuff with the Move tool. If you have a cube, draw a line at the midpoints (again, mouse over the lines of your design and watch for the popups). If you pull the line up with the Move tool. This will give you something that looks a lot like a roof of a house on the cube. If you pay attention to the color of the line while you are moving it, you'll see that it takes on the color of the blue axis if you are pulling straight up. This means that you are moving parallel to the Z or vertical axis.

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