"What is Case Modding? It's a slightly peculiar hobby of mine and many others. The original concept was that of taking the ugly beige case in which many computers reside and making it more interesting to look at. In the past couple of years it has taken the more useful turn into performance modifications - mainly in the form of improved cooling.
What has it got to do with SketchUp? Many people are designing cases from scratch, and a very important phase of modding is the layout -- all the parts must fit within a certain space, and in such a way that cables can reach etc.. Visualising this can be difficult with some of the complex designs people have come up with, and this is where SketchUp's speedy concept design capabilities come in.
SU's ability to also work at high precision is particularly useful for the design of Water-Cooled PCs -- very often a complex system of pumps and blocks and radiators must be crammed into a case, or a new layout must be designed to allow the best heat dissipation. (Or best looks!)
SketchUp's concept of components is perfectly matched to all the necessary parts of a computer - motherboards, hard-drives, power-supplies and so on. Naturally there are standard sizes for all of these and so models can be used over and over. This is where I realised there was a lot of work being duplicated and so I created the SketchUp Component Collection which lives at http://scc.jezmckean.com as a resource for fellow modders."
Figure 1. USB Card
Figure 2. Mobo Motherboard
Figure 3. PC Case
Case Studies | Industries | Watch Pro videos | Contact Sales | Corporate Purchases
