Sketchup Tutorial: Making A Rounded Square in 6 Steps

Google Sketchup is a free program that is quite limited, but it has a very intuitive UI so getting a product draft done in minutes becomes very feasible.

I'm going to post a short tutorial on making a rounded square, which I used as a starting point to make this render image.

Design submission to Quirky.com's butter twister design phase.

MAKE A ROUNDED SQUARE IN SKETCHUP

1.  Start by making a square.  You can click on the square tool and drag out your square or click the square tool and type in the dimensions i.e. Typing "300,300" and pressing Enter gives you a 300 by 300 square with the metrics you've set for the project.

2. Use the ruler tool to mark out the dimensions of the rounded corner.  I wanted the rounded edge or fillet to be on the last 40mm of the square.  So I click on one corner and lead the ruler on the green axis and type "40" and Enter.  I repeat this on the same corner along the red axis.  I then move to the opposite corner and mark 40 mm along the green and red axis.

3) I then use the pencil tool to make a line from one side of the square to the opposite site starting at the ruler marks I made in step 2.

4) I repeat step 3 on the opposite corner and magically all 4 corners are marked off!  :)

5) I use the arc tool to create an arc that starts and ends on the ruler marks/line ends I've made.  

6) Delete the lines around the arcs you've created.  I've left one behind in this image on the bottom right.  At this point you are all set.  Delete those inner lines and dance a jig!  You have a nice rounded square.