View Full Version : Finding Volume of an Odd-Shapped Box?
01-15-2009, 01:17 PM
Hi there, I was messing around in SketchUp and made a box for 2 12"s, and I was trying to figure out the volume, and I can't figure it out.
Any idea how to do it?
This is what it looks like:
01-15-2009, 01:20 PM
fill it up with sand ....then pour all the sand into a large square shaped box...then it will become as simple as measuring the volume of sand in the square box...:)
01-15-2009, 01:21 PM
fill with water.
01-15-2009, 01:22 PM
01-15-2009, 01:24 PM
See the plan was to figure out the volume before I built the box.
Anyone else? Or should I just give up a build a rectangular box?
01-15-2009, 01:25 PM
Divide the box into sections, taking the volume of each part and adding them together.
assuming that is a right angle you figure the full square and divide by 2.
If its not 45° or are not very diligent at math then fill it up with sand. Or packing peanuts will also give you a descent guestimation.
01-15-2009, 02:07 PM
^Yea, devide and concur. And pythagoreans therom will come in hand I'd bet..:)
01-15-2009, 02:08 PM
fill with packing peanuts then pour them in to a 12in square box thats one cubic foot
01-15-2009, 02:13 PM
He wants to calculate before making it, guys..
01-15-2009, 11:24 PM
I think making an enclosure like that would be a pain in the *** with all the angles, and all the trig involved in making the cuts, what about the port? The bottom of the port will be longer that the top, what will you do to compensate? I think your better off with a simpler enclosure, take Calc III, you would be able to figure out the volume, I know we learned how last semester, im sure if I had the eqn's of the odd face, I would be able to figure it out, but that requires to crack open my book.
01-15-2009, 11:27 PM
i learned how to calculate volume in middle school.
01-15-2009, 11:27 PM
well what subs will be in it? and if you don't make it slant back it would be easier to calculate/build
01-15-2009, 11:32 PM
Break it up into different shapes and calculate those shapes volume, then add.
01-15-2009, 11:39 PM
Fill it with resin than remember how many cans it took......BAMMMM........its that easy
01-15-2009, 11:40 PM
you could also go back to 8th grade and relearn math
01-15-2009, 11:48 PM
Assuming that both the triangles on the top an bottom are identical, just take each triangle find the area, then multiply it by the diangonal height to find the volume of each trinagle cylinder on each side, then find the area in the square in the middle of the two triangles, and multiply again by the diagonal height. Then you are left with a wedge shape after simplifying it down by solving for the complicated area in the front. Make sure to subtract the material thickness where need. Using that method should get you really close, since slanted material calls for subtracting a little more than material thickness due to the Potagorean Theorum.
01-15-2009, 11:52 PM
Jdawg the reason I said Calc 3, is because we learned to calculate awkward shapes using integrals and eqn's of planes and contraints, in short we learned the mathmatical way to do it. For example we learned to calculate the volume of a sphere that was sliced randomly, so basically it has a slice missing. And so on But I finally realized how to do it the easy way.
01-15-2009, 11:56 PM
If you built it in Solidworks with the material thickness subtracted out it would tell you the volume of the enclosure.