Lesson 04: Sketchup how to make resizable rotable Dynamic Cabinet Doors

Resizable and Rotatable are two of the most impressive and most-used features of SketchUp Dynamic Components. This lesson will help you make a framed, rotating cabinet door. These techniques still work in SketchUp 2026, but a couple of details have changed since this tutorial first went up — Dynamic Components is no longer bundled by default; on SketchUp Pro/Studio 2024 and later you install (or re-install) it as a free extension from the Extension Warehouse, and it does not run at all in SketchUp Free/Web, which uses Live Components instead.

Video Lesson:

Download Example Models:

Dynamic-Rotatable-Resizable-Cabinet-Door.skp

Lesson objectives

• Master the size constraint between objects. This is the first skill to master because it is the most used. Resizable object.
• Set the Attribute Onclick with the Animate Function with the RotZ parameter. So you can understand Onclick Attribute can be done with many different functions, and that the Animate function can control motion with many different parameters.
• With this lesson set up Onclick: Animate (“RotZ”, 45,90,135,0)

Tips:

• With this object at the outermost of the parent object, Flip Along should be the outermost coordinate axis; at that point it takes less effort to set Position. The less you have to set up, the cleaner the trick keeps the Component Attribute table, with fewer parameters.
• The Animate function can be swapped for Animateslow to move slower (one second per step) or Animatefast for faster (a quarter second per step).
• In Animate (“RotZ”, 45,90,135,0) the values “45,90,135” are rotation angles and “0” returns the door to its starting position; each click steps to the next value in the list, then cycles back. Contrary to a common belief, RotZ does accept negative angles — SketchUp’s own examples use values like ANIMATE(“RotZ”,0,-130,10,100), so a value such as -90 simply swings the door the other way. If your door won’t rotate, the problem is almost never the sign of the angle.
• The real cause of a “stuck” or jumping door is editing the axes (or using Flip Along) directly on the same component that holds the RotZ animation — SketchUp ends up writing an unexpected value like -180 and the rotation breaks. The reliable fix is to nest one extra level: apply the axis change to BOTH the inner and outer components, then put the Animate (“RotZ”, …) attribute only on the innermost component so the two axis systems stay separated.
• If you only need a configurable, cross-platform object rather than a click-to-animate one, note that SketchUp’s newer Live Components are the modern parametric alternative and, unlike Dynamic Components, also work in SketchUp for Web and iPad — but Live Components have no Onclick/Animate behavior, so for a door that actually opens on click, classic Dynamic Components in desktop SketchUp Pro/Studio remain the tool for this lesson.