You are hereOn using SketchUp for modelling gingerbread
On using SketchUp for modelling gingerbread
This year I was eager to put my (limited) knowledge of Google SketchUp to work designing our family's gingerbread masterpiece... our fifth entry in the Wilmot Gingerbread Contest.
One nasty habit of SketchUp that I found particularly annoying for this task, was the way it joins pieces together as you extend or overlap them. I was hoping for a parts list at the end of the design that I could use when baking, and following the tutorials wasn't getting me there. To get around this, I found that creating each piece separately and then turning it into a component would allow me to place the piece in the model without having it become part of the other pieces. In the end, I looked over the list of components for my list of pieces to bake.
To place the components in the model, it was helpful to drag it close to the desired location and then move it based on a corner point on the piece and placing it where it would join with the other pieces already (virtually) assembled. Using SketchUp components had another side benefit as well. If I placed the same component into the model more than once and found that there was something that needed to be changed, making the correction to the component would change each instance in the model... very nice.
This year I decide to roll out 1/4 thick dough for baking, and I designed pieces in SketchUp with this thickness too. I didn't account for the expansion or contraction that might have occurred during baking, and I didn't account for the space that could have been left between pieces where they would eventually be iced together. This seemed to work out OK in the end, except for the fact that I didn't pay attention to the force of gravity in my model and the end product had some serious sags in the longer, unsupported pieces. Next year, maybe 3/8 thickness would be better to use for longer parts, and I'll be more careful about supporting pieces.
In previous years I had trouble transferring pieces from the spot where I rolled out the dough to the baking sheets. In the process, pieces would become less square, generally misshaped and ended up with varying thickness, so this time I decided to use new aluminum pans and roll the dough out directly on the sheet. With a couple pieces of 1/4 inch pine strapping on either side of the dough, this worked out really well, although I found myself baking several half-full sheets because I didn't plan out which pieces to bake together to maximize sheet usage. It's a good idea to "square up" pieces immediately after you take them out of the oven and before they cool too much.
One more lesson that is worth sharing... use plywood as a base for your creation if you think there's going to be a lot of gingerbread and candy on it. The tinfoiled cardboard sheets you get at the baking store are nice, but they can fold under the weight and end up damaging your creation.
Here are a few photos from this year's making of the gingerbread. Click on any photo for a larger view. By the way, we won second prize in the family category :)
A front view of the SketchUp model including most of the features. Note the semicircular balcony that broke off during transport:
A front view during assembly:
A back view of the model, without the step pieces added in:
A back view during assembly:
Some of the gum paste creations that adorned the finished product (Thomas the train and the Wonder Pets fly boat being assembled on the workbench). TJ and the boys worked on these, and I think they made the project so much more interesting:
Second prize, yay!
