The Arcade Project!

Here are two pictures of the cabinet plans I drew up for our project:

I created the plans from scratch using Google Sketchup, which I found to be a pretty fantastic tool once I learned to work with it. Sketchup ships with a woodworking template that makes it a snap to work with inches and feet, which was crucial for me because the imperial units make my brain hurt. Now that we our plans in Sketchup, we can get any angle or measurement in a matter of seconds. I can’t see working on this project without it.

The cabinet design is heavily inspired by Knievel’s “Arcade Mania” and other similar cabinets. One of my main design objectives was to create a cabinet that had as little footprint as possible. I’m hoping to place the finished cabinet in our living room (pending my wife’s approval… wish me luck with that!); building a bulky cabinet was therefore out of the question. As you can see above, our design is very thin; the base of the cabinet measures only 18″ in depth. Hopefully this won’t cause any stability issues; MDF is pretty heavy stuff, so we should be OK. When (if?) the project turns out successful, I’ll post the plans so that others may use it as well.