Hey guys, this is Aaron.
I want to take a look at creating an exploded view of a model today.
You've seen this before.
We see it a lot on furniture drawings, or anything where I have multiple pieces assembling
to create a model.
So in this case I have a little robot model here, and I want to explode him and show all
of his different parts separate from each other.
Now, I hope it goes without saying that what I really want here is every piece of whatever
I'm exploding to be in its own component or group.
If that's not the case then you need to back up, get that set up first, before going any further.
I do have a couple of what what I would call "assemblies" here.
Which are components made up of multiple components.
The arms and legs, if I click into those, are actually made up of a bunch of different
pieces . That's great because it's actually going to make exploding a lot easier.
Down here also, same thing.
I have pieces groups inside of groups, or components inside of components.
So what I'm going to do, first thing, is create a reference.
And this is just a little piece that's going to make it easier to use Move to explode my pieces.
So this is just a 1" by 1" by 1" cube.
I know with this model that I want about an inch of explosion.
So what I'm going to start with, I'm going to start with the upper body.
I'm going to take this whole thing right here, and I'm going to grab that screw too.
I'm not going to bring, yeah, I'll bring this piece up too.
And I'm going to use Move.
I'm just going to go into Move, and this is where this cube comes in handy because I know
now that I can just click, click, and I move that piece up.
So now I've separated the top from the bottom.
What I'm going to do now is just work through and deselect one piece each time, and then Move.
So now I'm just separating vertical parts.
So Select those again, Move.
So now I'm going to actually deselect this whole middle piece.
Again, Move.
And just work my way up, deselecting a piece each time, moving it.
So now I have some pieces I want to move horizontally.
So right here, in the jaw, I have this screw.
I want to move that out to the left.
So I can grab it, Move, again use my reference box here.
Same thing on this side here.
Move that out.
And then I have this jaw.
I might move that forward and down.
There you go.
Really get a good look there.
That looks great.
I do have right here I have this screw, I have a nut and bolt right here that I want
to separate out.
You'll notice this is a component, the two pieces are connected together.
It also repeats through the model, so what I'll be able to do is grab this piece right
here, use Move, and I can actually use my reference box even though it's outside of context.
Scoot that over.
Grab this screw, or I'm sorry, the nut.
Move that over too.
And see what that did is that actually spread out all of the nuts and bolts throughout the
whole model.
That'll save me some time later on, I don't have to go through again and again and again.
I can just do it once, that's kind of the power of components right?
So I'm going to come down this section here.
I had these two pieces which I want to move forward an inch.
Back pieces move back an inch.
And now I can look at my arm assemblies really quick.
Same thing here, this is going to be pretty easy.
Take the whole thing first and move it out an inch.
And then I'm going to drill in and do some editing.
So now I'm going to grab these pieces, and move them over an inch, because that other
arm is a mirrored copy of this same component, I only have to do this stuff once.
And those pieces move for me.
Real nice.
Real easy.
So I'm going to quickly do the same to the legs.
And move this arm over.
And there I go.
I've got a pretty good exploded view of that model.
Now one of the other things you see in exploded views a lot is a change in perspective, so
I may want to go to Camera and change this from Perspective to Parallel Projection.
That kind of gives me more of the traditional look, if I go to a 3/4 view then.
Maybe even come in and turn off my axes, and I have a pretty good exploded view of that robot.
So if I was to, say, 3D print this I could look at this and pretty much see where all
those pieces go to put that together.
So there you go!
Quick and easy way to explode your multi-component model inside of SketchUp.
Thank you!