11/ Making a Patio with a Border
With our basic structure in place we’ll backpedal a little bit and turn this rectangle into an area of pavers with a border on it, just to give us a better feel for how the pergola will be sitting in its environment.
Size the center section
- So we’re gonna go in here (rectangle) and double-click into this group.
- Pull it down into a 4 inch thick concrete slab.
- Let’s make it a little bit smaller, let’s go 10 inches on each side (push/pull tool, specify 10”, and double click other three sides).
- Double-click and make it a group within a group.
Make the border
- Copy the top surface of the concrete slab
- Exit the group
- Choose Edit> Paste in Place
- Make into a group
- To make it easier to work on the newly-pasted border, raise the slab up out of the way.
- [Insert floating slab joke.]
- Double click into border group
- Double click again to edit
- Use offset tool to make the shape 18 inches bigger all the way around.
- Delete the middle shape to form just the 18 inch wide border.
- Drag down 4 inches.
Change of plan: Matt decides to make the border concrete and the center piece of pavers. That way he can incorporate the foundation piers into the concrete slab border.
12/ Add a Pier Foundation to the Patio
To make a pier foundation under the posts, Matt first locates the center of the post so that he can shoot a guideline through the post into the ground.
- To make the post easier to work with, he stretches the top past the lattice work 20 inches.
- Use the ruler tool to locate center in two directions.
- Holding Shift helps the tool to index
- Lower the post top back into place.
Draw the pier foundation
- From under the pergola, choose the circle tool and center an 8 inch circle on the guide line (specify a 4” radius).
- Matt uses a plugin for marking center point
- Make a component.
- Copy to opposite corner
- Select two piers, copy to opposite end
- Pull down concrete pier 42 inches, which is the frost line at the digital jobsite.
—Matt Jackson is a master carpenter, remodeler, SketchUp Wiz, YouTuber, and contributing editor to ProTradeCraft. He lives and works in Rapid City, South Dakota.