Friday, April 18, 2008

Playing with Google Sketchup

I thought I would take the afternoon to see if I could draw some battery boxes with Google Sketchup. I was surprised by how easy the program was to use. Here are some tentative 3/16" polypropylene battery boxes for the Civic-EV design:


This is the front (headlight) battery box that holds four batteries.


Here is the tentative firewall battery box that holds five batteries


And finally the rear trunk battery box that holds nine batteries.

All the boxes above are made of 3/16" polypropylene sheet. These are modeled after the boxes from the Porsche 914 EV I converted awhile ago with a kit from Electro Automotive. I plan on adding lids with battery hold-downs in them just like the Electro Auto ones.

Again, I was surprised by how easy it was to draw the models above. I plan on e-mailing them to a local plastic welder (Apex Industries) to see if I can get a quote for making them.

You can get the Google Sketchup files for these at the Civic-EV Google Group in the files section.

2 comments:

onei57 said...

Hey Tim,
Are there going to be fans? You don't show them on the prints. If you are what about using 110 ac instead of the 12 v? If I leave my car plugged in to long the 12v battery is weak. I'm thinking the exaust fans run only when charging and ac current is used. I intend to use the system Ross did to shut off the fans on mine but I think the ac fans would me more logical. Matt

TimK said...

Hi Matt,

Yes there will be fans. I intend to use 110 ac to power the fans (like I do in the 914EV) to prevent the 12V battery from draining. I use a small 12V laptop power supply to run the fans.

Cheers,Tim