Building Blocks of SketchUp by Robert W. Lang.pdf

BUILDING BLOCKS OF

SKETCHUP

robert w. lang

BUILDING BLOCKS OF

SKETCHUP A Comprehensive Digital Course in the Fundamentals of 3D Modeling with Video Tutorials Embedded Within the Text

by robert w. lang

readwatchdo.com Loveland, Ohio

Building Blocks of SketchUp First published in Adobe enhanced PDF format October 2013 © 2013 by Robert W. Lang

ISBN: 978-0-615-90437-5

Before you begin, please read these important notes:

all rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying,

recording,

or

by

any

▶ Chapter 1: Don't Skip This Chapter contains important information about reading this book on your computer and making the most of the features of this digital publication, including playing the embedded video lessons.

information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in reviews. Produced in the United States of America

▶ Please Read Chapter 1 FIRST with Adobe Reader, a free download available at www. adobe.com.

published by

Robert W. Lang ReadWatchDo.com Post Office Box 325 Loveland, Ohio 45140

▶ Titles and Subtitles in the Table of Contents are all active links to pages in this book. ▶ Click on the Title of a Chapter or a Video in the Table of Contents to display that page on your screen.

This book is independently published and produced. For the convenience of our readers there are no restrictions on

▶ SketchUp Make is (at the time of this publication) a free 3D modeling program available for download at www. sketchup.com.

printing or making copies for your own personal use. We thank you for purchasing this book from a legitimate source.

We kindly ask that you consider the effort that went into producing this book and the impact of the distribution of copies of this work in violation of the copyright laws of the United States and other countries on the author and others involved in the production of this book and their families.

For discounts to groups, or bulk sales for use in schools, please contact the author/ publisher.

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Table of Contents Note to readers: All headings in the Table of Contents are links. Click on a title to navigate to that page in Adobe Reader.

1 Don’t Skip This Chapter — 1 2 Set Up the SketchUp Program — 7 video Settings in the Preferences Window — 11 video Settings in the Model Info Window — 13 video Toolbar SetUp — 18 3 Navigation — 21

video D ownload a Model From the 3D Warehouse — 23

video Navigation With the Mouse — 29

4 The Mouse — 30 5 Basic Drawing — 34 video Drawing Lines on Axis — 37 video Precise Lengths, Erasing and Rectangles — 43 video Push/Pull for 3D — 45 video Practice With Push/Pull — 49 video Using Inferences — 55 6 Drawing Beyond the Box — 57 video Making Circles, Arcs & Polygons — 60 video Combining Shapes & the Offset Tool — 63 video Measuring & Creating Guidelines — 67 video U se Follow Me to Create a Turned Object — 70 7 Edges, Faces & Groups — 71 video Edges, Faces & Groups — 76 8 Move, Copy & Rotate — 77 video Selection & the Move Tool — 80 video Copy With the Move Tool — 84 video The Rotate Tool — 87 video Stretch With the Move Tool — 92 video Dividing Lines — 97 video Make a Pyramid — 102 video Practice Move & Rotate — 105 iv

9 Components — 106 video Creating & Editing Components — 115 video Unique & Flipped Components — 119 video Dynamic Components — 125 0 Component Collections — 126 1 video Local Collections of Components — 130 video Using the 3D Warehouse — 137 11 Complex & Combined Shapes — 138 video Extruding Shapes With Follow Me — 141 video Making & Using Nested Components — 147 video Combining Shapes With Intersect — 152 video Making Round Objects With Follow Me — 157 video Hidden Geometry — 162 12 Materials & Styles — 163 video C hanging the Model’s Appearance With Styles — 166 video Applying Colors to Objects — 172 video Importing Images for Textures — 178 13 Share, Export & Print Your Model — 184 video Creating Scenes — 187 video Printing From SketchUp Make — 198 4 Extra Features & Extra Information — 199 1 video The Extension Warehouse — 203 A p p e n dix 1: SketchUp Basic Tool Guide — 206

video Visual Aids in SketchUp — 209

Pencil/Line Tool — 210

video The Pencil Tool — 211 Rectangle Tool — 212

video The Rectangle Tool — 213 Circle & Polygon Tools — 214

video The Circle & Polygon Tools — 216 Arc Tool — 217

video The Arc Tool — 218 Push/Pull Tool — 219

video The Push/Pull Tool — 220

v

Select Arrow — 221

video The Select Arrow — 224 Eraser Tool — 225

video The Eraser Tool — 227 Move Tool — 228

video The Move Tool — 230 Move/Copy Tool — 232

video Make Copies With the Move Tool — 235

Tape Measure Tool — 236

video C reating Guidelines With the Tape Measure — 239

esizing the Model video R With the Tape Measure — 240 Protractor Tool — 241

video Using the Protractor — 243 Rotate Tool — 244

video Using the Rotate Tool — 246 Offset Tool — 249

video Using the Offset Tool — 249

Follow Me Tool — 250

video Using the Follow Me Tool — 253 Scale Tool — 254

video Using the Scale Tool — 257 A p p e n dix 2: Most Used Keyboard Shortcuts in SketchUp — 258 A p p e n dix 3: Notes on Navigation — 259

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1 Don't Skip This Chapter With most books, you can safely skip the introduction. This book, because of its format, is decidedly different, so if you’ve made it this far please keep reading.

T

his book is intended to be read on a computer and the advantages of this format are many, particularly for learning how to use a computer program. You can easily read the instructions while trying the techniques yourself, either by switching back and forth between this book and SketchUp, or by keeping both windows open if you have a large enough screen or multiple monitors. This book was meant to be read in Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader is a free program that is already installed on most computers and the PDF format is nearly universal. There are other programs available that will allow you to read PDF files, but some of the features that make this book special and easy to use may not function in those other programs. If, by some chance you don’t have the latest available version of Adobe Reader installed on

your computer, please go online to www.adobe. com. This is especially important if you’re using a Mac. Preview, the program that Macs use to open PDF files won’t properly function with this book.

▲ This book is designed to work with Adobe Reader.

Other programs for viewing PDF files may not display the video content correctly.

▶ If you have the

room on screen, open both this book and SketchUp so you can practice. The large images are videos embedded within the text.

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don't skip this chapter

Video Content Within Text

bar may appear at the top of the screen displaying a warning. Click the Options button on the right side of the yellow warning bar, then select one of the two options. If you pick Trust this Document Always you will be able to see the videos just by clicking on them as you move through the book. Your computer’s default media player should work within Adobe Reader to play the videos. It make take a moment or two for your player to open and begin to work. When the video begins to play, a control bar should appear at the bottom of the screen allowing you to adjust the volume, pause and rewind.

The obvious, and perhaps the most unusual feature of this book is the inclusion of short videos within the text. When you see a yellow box above an image with the words “Click on Image Below to Play Video …” you will be able to view a minute of two of a screen capture of the author using SketchUp. The normal cursor will change from an arrow to a little hand when your mouse is over a video. Click on the image and in a few moments the video should start to play. The first time you click on a video, a yellow

▶ Click on one of the labeled videos to start the player. The first time you do this …

▼ … this warning

will appear. Click “Trust this document always” to enable the video player.

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Set Adobe Reader Preferences

Mac. Click on the words Multimedia (Legacy) from the list on the left side of the Preferences window. You may also need to select the next item on the list, Multimedia Trust, to allow the multimedia player to work within the document.

You can access which media player is used by opening the Preferences window under the Edit menu on a PC, or the Adobe Reader menu on a

With some computers, the videos won’t play unless you select QuickTime as the default media player. QuickTime is available as a free download from Apple at http://www.apple. com/quicktime/download/.

▲ Click again on the video in the book, controls should appear and the video should start to play. If it doesn’t …

As with Adobe Reader, you will get the best results with the latest version of the software. If you need to download QuickTime and set it as the media player in Adobe Reader, you should close Reader after setting the preferences, then reopen it and then open the PDF file of this book. If you still have trouble getting the videos to play, uninstall the version of QuickTime on your machine, download the latest version and set the preferences again.

▲ Open the Preferences window in Adobe Reader …

▲ … and set “QuickTime” as the Preferred Media

Player in the Multimedia Legacy tab. You may need to download and install QuickTime. Close and reopen Adobe Reader if you do.

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If you’re accessing this book from the disc it came on, your computer will play the videos automatically when you click on one. If you choose to, you can save this book to your hard drive. That will ensure that you always have a copy, and it should speed up the performance of this book. If you save this book to your computer, copy the complete book from the disc to your drive without changing the way the folders are arranged. It may take some effort for you to get the video function up and running, but it will make the lessons in this book much easier to follow. This is especially true for this type of instruction. You’ll probably need to go back to something you’ve read before as you learn to model in SketchUp, and the videos can be a big help for you to find something you read earlier.

The videos also reinforce the text on your first time through. Often something that takes a page or two of text to explain can be demonstrated in a few moments, and the video portions will show you where to click and what things should look like on your monitor as you work in SketchUp.

▲ You can view Page Thumbnails and Bookmarks in

▲ The Bookmarks are all links to topics in the book,

Where To Find It This format has other benefits. Finding information within the book is fast and almost foolproof. You may need to change some settings in Adobe Reader. Click on the View menu, then Navigation Panels and finally Pages. This will open a secondary window that you can expand and collapse by clicking on the page icon near the top. That will display thumbnail versions of all the pages in the secondary window.

Adobe Reader. That makes it easy to find content in this book.

and the videos are labeled.

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You can scroll through the thumbnails, and a simple click on a thumbnail version of a page will bring that page into view in the main window. As we designed the layout of this book, we kept all of the videos on the lower half of the pages, and the videos are a full page wide. As you scroll through the icons, you can quickly identify video content. Navigating is also easy from the Table of Contents. Each chapter heading is a link to the opening page of that chapter, and the subheadings in the TOC are also links. If you need to come back and look something up, find it in the Table of Contents and click. That page will appear in the main window. One more way to get around in this book is through Acrobat Reader’s Bookmark function. The title of each chapter, subheadings within chapters and every video has been tagged as a bookmark. With the Bookmark Navigation panel

open, you will see a list of these in the panel. Click a name on the list, and the program will take you there.

▲ There are two ways to search for specific words in

▲ The Advanced Search will find the selected term

Seek and You Shall Find Finding what you are looking for is easy even if you don’t have any idea what chapter or part of the book the information is in. Click on the Edit menu and select either Find or Advanced Search. Find opens a small window and from this window you can search for a word or phrase. Advanced Search opens a larger window with more options for finding specific information. Adobe Reader will search the entire text, and a list will appear that shows you where in the document the search term appears. Click on any of the search results and that page will open, and the term you searched for will be highlighted. After this introduction, and a chapter on setting up the program on your computer is a chapter devoted to how to use the navigation commands in SketchUp. Like this chapter, you really shouldn’t skip it.

Adobe Reader.

wherever it appears in this book.

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Getting Around a New World

If you don’t make it all the way through in one setting, it will be waiting for you if you get stuck later on or need to refresh your memory about how a tool works. These are like notes from a class – designed as a reference while you play with the tools and start making things, moving things and changing things. Also at the back of the book is a “cheat sheet” for keyboard shortcuts, and a few pages on notes regarding Navigation in SketchUp. In my classes, these are handouts for students to refer to as they learn the basics of SketchUp. They are good reminders and it’s worthwhile to print them out and keep them handy.

Navigation in SketchUp is a critical skill to develop, and even if you have experience with two-dimensional graphics programs, it will take some time for your hand and eye coordination to get used to getting around in three dimensions in SketchUp. An hour or two practicing the exercises in Chapter 3 can shorten the learning curve by days or even weeks. At the end of this book is an appendix titled “Basic Tools Reference.” This part of the book is short and sweet, a page or two describing the essential tools and how they function. Feel free to breeze through this chapter while you play with the tools in SketchUp, or refer to it while working through the other chapters.

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2 Set Up the SketchUp Program Before you begin to model, take a few minutes to get to know the program and adjust settings to suit your preferences.

B

efore you get started using SketchUp, take a few minutes to set the program up. If you haven’t already, open your web browser, go to www.sketchup.com and download the latest version of SketchUp. There is a free version called SketchUp Make and a paid version called SketchUp Pro. The biggest differences between the two versions are in the types of files that can be

imported and exported. With SketchUp Pro you can use files made in other vector graphics programs such as Adobe Illustrator or AutoCAD, and you can send a compatible version of a SketchUp model to these programs. In SketchUp Pro there are also a few more tools, called solid modeling tools that allow one complex shape to modify another. There are two

Ground plane

Axis origin

This guy is standing in the corner to give a sense of scale. He won't mind if you select and delete him.

▲ The colored lines are called the red axis, blue axis and green axis and they represent direction. Where they

meet is called the origin. The large, dark flat area is called the ground plane. When you draw something, it will stick to the ground.

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set up the sketchup program

▲ Before you can download SketchUp Make, you have to agree to the license. Don’t worry if it says “SketchUp Pro”, the first 8 hours of SketchUp Make is a trial version of SketchUp Pro.

ride-along programs called Layout and Style Builder that come with SketchUp Pro. Layout is for preparing printed versions of a SketchUp model, with more control over what appears on a printed page. Style Builder contains additional tools for the appearance of lines and backgrounds in a model.

Click this button to get started in 3D modeling.

Learn Before You Invest Everything in this book can be done with the free version, SketchUp Make. One thing that can be confusing is that the first eight hours of use is actually a trial version of SketchUp Pro, even if you download SketchUp Make. Read the license agreement that comes with the download and this can be another source of confusion, the license refers to SketchUp Pro. SketchUp Make is only intended for personal use in a non-commercial setting. If you need the additional features of SketchUp Pro, the cost is very reasonable compared to other 3D modeling and CAD programs. You can upgrade at any time from SketchUp Make to SketchUp Pro. In any case, you can learn how to use SketchUp with the free version SketchUp Make, even if you will someday need to upgrade to SketchUp Pro. After you agree to the license agreement and download the program, install the software on your computer and open the program. When the

▲ A template is a collection of settings for the

way things appear in SketchUp. Click the "Choose Template" button first, then select “Simple Template”.

program opens, you will see a window that says Welcome to SketchUp. During the eight-hour period, you can try Layout and the solid modeling tools of SketchUp Pro. At the end of the eight hours those features will disappear and the starting window will appear as shown. There is a button on the window that says Choose Template. You need to select one before you can get started, even if you don’t know what a template is. A template is a group of settings that control the way things appear in SketchUp. Later

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on, we’ll go over all of these settings, but for now, select Simple Template-Feet and Inches from the list, then click on the Start Using SketchUp button. Unless you upgrade to SketchUp Pro, this window will appear every time you open the program. Just click at the lower right where it says Start Using SketchUp.

draw or move things, most of the time we want to move in the same direction as one of the axes. It takes some time and practice for your hand and eye coordination to adjust to using SketchUp. Don’t worry, there are many features within the program that make it easy to stay oriented. Before we start to model we want to tweak a few settings to make sure that what happens on your screen matches what you will see in this book. You can change these things (and many more) later on if you want to make the program work and look to suit your preferences. We will also look at a couple of places where you can fix problems you might encounter with your computer. Most newer computers can handle SketchUp, but an older machine or a machine with a basic video card or a small amount of RAM might struggle. If your display gets jerky or slow, you can usually fix it with a few clicks in the right place.

Explore a New World On the screen you will see a dark flat area on the lower part of your screen, and a lighter area above the horizon. The large dark area is called the ground plane, and you can think of it as the floor of an enormous room or the ground of an infinitely large field. In the lower left corner of the screen is a man standing near the intersection of three lines. A blue line goes up and down, a red line goes from right to left across the screen, and a green line goes from front to back. Each of these lines is called an axis, and the three of them are called axes. These represent directions in SketchUp. Because we can spin our point of view around any way we want to, it’s easier to keep track of directions by referring to these colors instead of left and right or back and forth. In the upper right is a window labeled Instructor. The information in that window changes whenever you select a tool by clicking on an icon. When SketchUp first opens, the black selection arrow is the default tool so the Instructor window explains briefly what the tool is for and how to use it. I recommend that you leave the window open. You can click next to the name in the bar at the top of the window to expand and collapse it. We’ll talk more about the Instructor window toward the end of this chapter. The ground plane, and the axes go on forever. Each axis is at a 90-degree angle to the other two, even though it might not look like it. SketchUp displays things in perspective, so things on screen don’t always look the way we expect them to. It can take some time to get used to that. When we

Set Your Preferences Remember that you want to make these settings in SketchUp, not in the Adobe Reader program you are using to read this book. If the menus on your screen don’t match the pictures in this book, switch to SketchUp to make the changes or resize the Reader and SketchUp windows so you can see both of them. Most things in SketchUp look and act the same on PCs and on Macs. A SketchUp model created on one platform can be opened and used on the other without any problems. The first thing we want to look at is the System Preferences window. On a PC this is under the Window Menu/Preferences and on a Mac it is under the SketchUp Menu/Preferences. Most of the options can be ignored, but there are a few settings to change now. Later on you may need to return to this window if you experience problems with your display, or if you want to change the way you click and drag the mouse to draw lines. Settings you make in System Preferences stay with the program until you change them.

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Drawing, the third item in the list on the left, is important – it lets you choose the way you want to use the mouse to draw lines. If you select ClickDrag-Release you will need to hold the left mouse button down to draw a line. Click-Move-Click means you click to start a line, then click on a different point to stop the line. This is easier on your index finger and most of the tools in SketchUp are easier to use with this method. Auto Detect lets you draw either way. If you don’t have a strong preference, or a lot of experience in a different graphics program that uses one method, select Auto Detect. Checking the Continue Line Drawing option means that the program will assume that you want to start a new line from the point you ended the last line drawn. Some people prefer this, and some don’t like it. If you’re not sure which group you’re in, check the box. If you get frustrated in the future, you can come back to System Preferences and set things the way you want them. The last thing to check is Display Crosshairs under Miscellaneous in the Drawing window. This will add colored guides that line up with the red, green and blue axes to the cursor. Staying aligned with the axes is important as you draw, and because SketchUp displays objects in perspective the crosshairs give you an important visual cue as you draw and move things around. In the General window, check the boxes marked Create Backup and Auto Save. Both of these are insurance in case your computer decides to get a little crazy or crashes. Checking both boxes under Check Model for Problems is more insurance against disaster. The last option, Warn of Style Changes when Creating Scenes will become annoying later on so un-check the box. The Open GL window has options that should not be changed, unless you experience problems with the way your model displays. If movements get shaky, or faces turn a solid blue instead of little dots when you select them or some other visual weirdness appears, return to this window. Check these boxes one at a time, and see if that helps.

Checking "Display crosshairs" adds colored guides to the mouse cursor.

▲ These settings control the way lines are drawn with the mouse.

▲ These settings are insurance in case something goes wrong.

Displays information about your computer's graphics card

▲ Un-check the top and bottom boxes if you experience problems with your display.

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If one or more of these options doesn’t help, you may need to upgrade the video memory card, or add more RAM memory to your computer. The details button will display information about your computer’s graphics card. Restarting the computer is also worth a try if you begin to experience display problems.

To add your own shortcut

SketchUp commands

Shortcuts & Templates One of the best ways to become proficient in SketchUp is by using keyboard Shortcuts. Many tasks in SketchUp require you to do two things at once. You may need to zoom, orbit or pan while moving or copying something. Or you may need to use several tools in rapid succession. Typing a single letter to start a command is usually faster than using the mouse to select a tool from a toolbar, or from a drop down menu list. This window will show you the default shortcuts (see also the list on page 258). Within the program, the shortcuts are listed to the right of the

▲ This is a list of all the commands in SketchUp. If there is a default keyboard shortcut, it appears in the “Assigned” window. To add your own shortcut, highlight a command, enter a letter and click the plus (+) sign. tool or command name on the menu. But if you only click on tool icons to start commands, you may never be aware of them. If you’re not happy with the default shortcuts, you can change them

click on image below to play video ▶ settings in the preferences window

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in this window. And if you would like to add a shortcut of your own, you can do that here. Find the command and highlight it. Then type in the shortcut you want and click on the button with the plus (+) sign. The next to last window in System Preferences is labeled Template. A template is an empty file, with a number of parameters preset. The scroll list contains the default templates, and you can select one from this window or you can make your own. At the end of this chapter we’ll save all the settings and changes we’re making now to a template. From then on, the program will open the way we

like it, we can get to work quickly, and we won’t have to go through all of this again. The last window in the list is labeled Workspace. The check box that says “Use Large Tool Buttons” controls the size of the icons in the toolbar and checking the box will make the icons easier to see. The Reset Workspace button will change the settings back to the default settings of the Template.

Model Info Window The Model Info window also controls many parameters of the program. Make it visible by selecting it from the Window menu. Later on you

▶ Many windows are

available from the menu. Select “Model Info” to adjust the settings for units, dimensions and text.

▲ Un-check this box if you experience problems with your display.

▶ Dimensions and Text control what fonts are used

in your model. Units lets you choose what units of measurement are used in your model.

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can explore all the options and adjust the settings in this window to your liking. Dimensions and Text give options for the way those items appear and we will look at them later. For now there are two items to check, Rendering and Units. You shouldn’t need to change anything in the Rendering window, unless you experience display problems. The window presents a list of symptoms, and if you have any of them, try unchecking the Use Anti-Alias Textures selection box. If lines don’t appear when you draw a box with the Selection arrow, unchecking the box almost always works. The program default is to work in feet and inches. If you want to work with inches only, or millimeters instead, you can select them in the Units tab under the Model Info window. The available options appear in the drop down list labeled format. I suggest that you leave the box labeled Enable Length Snapping unchecked, but

this and all the other options in the Model Info window may be changed at any time.

Toolbars SketchUp starts with a minimal set of tools called the Getting Started Toolbar. Some of the really useful tools are missing, so we need to display more toolbars. When you know more about the program you can add more tools to your kit, but adding all of them at once can be overwhelming and it can make it difficult to learn the tools you will use most often. Toolbars is one of the few areas in SketchUp with a significant difference between Windows and Macs. Before the release of SketchUp 2013, Macs had the advantage of customizing the toolbar. Now there are still some differences, but both versions of SketchUp have customizable toolbars. Before you spend a lot of time making a custom toolbar, you should get familiar with the basic

click on image below to play video ▶ settings in the model info window

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▲ Select “Toolbars …” from the View menu to display

additional toolbars. When they appear, drag them to the top or side of the screen.

tools and how to use them. With some experience you will develop your own modeling style. At that point you should revisit making your own custom toolbar for now, here are the basics that I use throughout this book:

▲ Make sure you display the Screen Tips, they

are a helpful aid to learning the tool icons and their functions.

Toolbars for PCs From the View menu, select Toolbars and when the window appears, check the following items:

Uncheck Getting Started so you won’t have duplicate tools. When you become more familiar with the tool icons, you can add other toolbars or customize the default ones. On the Options tab of the Toolbars window are two boxes. Check the box that says Show Screen Tips on Toolbars and a yellow text tag will appear when you hover the cursor over any tool. The text explains briefly

▶ Camera ▶ Construction ▶ Drawing ▶ Edit ▶ Principal ▶ Standard ▶ Views

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what the tool does and this can be extremely helpful when you are learning how to use SketchUp. You can also choose to make the toolbar icons larger by checking the other box. When you want to make your own toolbar, select New under the Toolbars tab. Give the toolbar a name and click OK. A small, empty toolbar will appear and you can drag icons from the existing toolbars to the new one. This removes the tool icons from their original location. To restore a toolbar to its original state, click on its name in the list to highlight it, then click Reset. A pop-up window will appear warning that your changes will

be lost. Click Yes to restore the default appearance and tool selection. That will leaves copies of the tools you moved in place on your new toolbar.

▶ You can

create your own custom toolbar.

▲ Highlight a toolbar name and click “Reset” to replace the tool icons you move.

▲ Drag tool icons from the other toolbars to your

▲ When the Toolbars window is open, you can

custom toolbar.

rearrange the position of the icons.

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▼ Drag the toolbars by clicking in the title bar to dock them on the top toolbar.

▲ Right-click over any tool to display the active toolbars and to access the Toolbars window.

You can also rearrange the order of tools on any toolbar when the toolbar window is open, simply click on an icon and drag it into position. You can also delete tools from a toolbar and change some aspects of their appearance when the toolbar window is visible with a right-click over a tool icon. None of the tools will function until you close the toolbar window. When the window is closed, a right-click over any tool icon will open a popup list of the toolbars and you can open or close them from this list. At the bottom of the list is text that says Toolbars …. Click on that to reopen the Toolbars window. It is also available from the View menu. You can dock the toolbars on the side of the screen as well as add them to the toolbar area at the top of the screen. Click on the colored band with the title and drag them where you want them. Getting the first toolbar to park on the side can be

▲ Toolbars may also be docked on the side of the

screen and moved by clicking on the row of dots after they are in position.

tricky; it’s easier if you maximize the SketchUp window. You can rearrange the position of docked toolbars by clicking and dragging on the row of dots near the end of the toolbar. Remember that you want to learn how to use SketchUp, so don’t spend a lot of time playing with the toolbars until you are familiar with them and what they do. When you start it is better to only have one icon for each tool displayed and for most of the tools you are better off learning the keyboard shortcuts than picking the tools from the toolbar.

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Toolbars For Macs

Hover your mouse cursor over an icon and a tag will appear with the tool’s name. Click on the icon and drag it to the toolbar at the top of the screen. Tempting as they look, you don’t have room for all of the tools. Here are the ones you really need:

The first item on the View menu is Tool Palettes. Click there, then on Large Tool Set. At the bottom of the View menu is a selection called Customize Toolbar. Click on that, and a screen will appear with all the available tools.

▶ The six little houses in the upper left labeled Standard Views ▶ The blue curved arrows labeled Undo/Redo ▶ Zoom Previous You have Orbit, Pan, Zoom and Zoom Extents already on your toolbar. Drag Zoom Previous next to the other navigation tools, click Done to close this window and return to your model. On both types of machines you can drag the toolbars to the edges of the screen to dock them. You can also let them float around the model window, but you’re better off to keep them docked. They won’t get in the way, and keeping them in one place makes it easier to remember where to find them and what they do. Appendix 1 on page 206 is a guide to the most often used, and most useful tools. Like many programs, SketchUp includes tool tips. If you hover the mouse cursor over a tool icon, its name will appear in a small box.

▲ Toolbar setup is different on a Mac. Select “Tool Palettes/Large Tool Set” from the view menu.

▲ This window appears. Drag the highlighted tools to

▲ Select “Customize Toolbar” from the View menu to

the toolbar at the top of your screen.

add additional tools.

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Windows and Palettes There are several windows or palettes that provide useful information, allow you to control the appearance of things and add already made objects to the model. These can be docked on the right side of the screen, and you can expand and collapse them to make the best use of your screen space. If you open up all the available windows, there will be no room left on your screen to make anything. As your skills advance you will explore some of these specialized windows, but you can go a long way with just the basics. At the top of your screen, click on the Window menu and check the following from the drop down list: ▶ Instructor ▶ Entity Info Drag these windows to the right of the screen and dock them by releasing the left mouse button. It may take a few tries to place them exactly where you want them. You can collapse and expand a

▲ Other windows are available from the Window menu to help with certain tasks in SketchUp.

click on image below to play video ▶ toolbar setup

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window by clicking on it’s title bar. If one disappears, you may have clicked on the “X” in the corner when you meant to click on the title bar. That’s no big deal, If you close one by mistake, select it again from Windows menu.

will give you a general idea as well as what terms to look for in the Help/Knowledge Center menu, or to search in this book. The entries in the Instructor window that are highlighted in blue are links to more information that is available online in the SketchUp Knowledge Center. Click on one and your web browser will open and take you to the web page where a more detailed answer can be found. The image at the top of the Instructor window is animated, and if you leave it open that can become a distraction. You can collapse the window without closing it by clicking next to the name in the title bar at the top of the window. When you aren’t sure of your next move, click again next to the name to re-open the window.

The Instructor Window The Instructor window is SketchUp’s version of training wheels, and when you’re starting out it can be a big help, if you remember that it exists and you pay attention to it. When you select a tool, the Instructor window tells you what the tool does and how to make it work. Select a different tool and the Instructor window display changes. The instructions are brief, and you may not understand the terminology at first. It may not answer all your questions, but it

▶ The Instructor

window is an inprogram tutorial. The information it displays changes when you select a different tool.

◀ Text in blue in

the Instructor window links to help topics online in the SketchUp Knowledge Center.

19


Entity Info Window

use the Zoom tool from the toolbar to adjust his size, click on him with the black Selection arrow and hit the Delete key. To preserve all of these settings, go the File menu and select Save As Template. A window will pop up, that asks you to name the file. Give your template a name in the box at the top, click in the box that says File Name and check the box that says Set as Default Template. The next time you open SketchUp, all of the settings you made to create your template will be complete, so you can get started creating something amazing.

This window is a source for details about any object that you select. Click on anything in your model, and the Entity Info window will tell you what it is, and additional information such as how long a line is, or the radius of a circle. What about the man standing near the intersection of the red, green and blue axis lines? He is there to give you a sense of scale. Without him it is hard to tell if you are zoomed in close to the origin or a mile away. You can safely delete him and he won’t appear any more. If he is teeny-tiny or huge,

▶ The Entity Info

window provides information about any selected objects in your model.

▼ To preserve the

settings, select “Save As Template” from the File menu.

◀ Check this box

and the next time you open a new file in SketchUp it will contain the new parameters, so you won’t need to make them again.

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3 Navigation Learning how to get around in SketchUp is as important a skill to develop as learning how to make things. Practice navigating 3D space first and making things will be easier.

O

ne of the most dificult parts of learning SketchUp is the need to develop two sets of skills at once. While you learn to create objects with the drawing tools you also need to learn how to navigate in the SketchUp world. In time you won’t need to think about it, but in the beginning you need to think about when and how to zoom, pan and orbit around your model. It is essential to develop these skills, and if you struggle with navigation while you learn to draw, spend some time with someone else’s model for practice. Before you begin exploring, let’s take a few minutes to explain what is happening on your

screen. The rules in SketchUp aren’t quite the same as on planet Earth, although they are similar. First of all, in SketchUp the world really is flat.

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore When you open a new file in SketchUp, you see a dark flat area on your screen. This is called the Ground Plane and it is perfectly flat and goes on forever. You will also see red, green and blue lines. Each line is an axis that represents a direction and continues on to infinity. Each axis is at a right angle to the other two, even though your point of view might make you think differently. The blue

▶ Pay attention

to the position of the 3 colored axes. Adjust your point of view so that you (and the program) can clearly see what you are doing.

Blue axis

Orbit changes the position of the camera. Hold down the scroll wheel on the mouse and drag to orbit.

Green axis

Red axis

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navigation

◀ It may look like the world spins around, but what you see onscreen is an image from the camera.

▲ When you Zoom, Pan or Orbit you change the position of the camera.

axis is up and down, and the red and green axes are directions on the ground. In real life we might call them right and left and forward and back. Or we could call them North/South and East/West. Because you can change your point of view in SketchUp, our real life names become confusing as we orbit, zoom and pan. Directions in SketchUp are referred to by the axis colors. If you draw or move parallel to the red axis, you are drawing in the red direction. In the three-dimensional real life world, our two eyes and brain perform without thinking to let us know what is near or far. In SketchUp, that isn’t always obvious and it takes some practice for our brain and eyes to get used to what we see on screen. If something doesn’t behave the way we think it should, the problem is almost always in the way we are looking at it. When we navigate in SketchUp it appears as if the world is spinning around. The view that appears on screen is like an image from a camera, and it is not the world, but the camera that moves around. In real life we switch our point of view without thinking. In SketchUp, there are three

ways to change what we see: Orbit, Zoom and Pan and there is a specific tool for each of these tasks. It takes time and practice to learn to use the tools, and that can be a challenge. Eventually you will come to a point where you can navigate around a model by instinct. When you know how to use the navigation tools (and some quick ways out if you get lost) you will be a better modeler. One of the good things about the navigation commands is that they are transparent; they can be used in the middle of other operations. If you need to zoom in or orbit around to click on a specific point while modeling, you can. Don’t be afraid to change your point of view to get something accomplished. As with nearly everything else in SketchUp, there are several ways to use the tools to get around. There are commands under the Camera menu and icons on the Toolbar, as well as keyboard shortcuts. These are the slow ways. The quick and easy way to navigate is with the scroll wheel of a three-button mouse and the Shift key. If you learn this method first, navigating in your model will soon become second nature.

22

navigation

▶ You can

Open the SketchUp model on the disc titled “NavigationPractice.skp” and follow along, or download it from the 3D Warehouse. The 3D Warehouse is an online repository of SketchUp models and you can access it from within SketchUp if your computer is connected to the Internet. We’ll explore more later on. For now, open a new SketchUp model, go to the File menu and select 3D Warehouse/Get Models. Type Bob Lang Navigation Practice in the Search Box. When the model is found, click on Download Model. A box will appear asking you if you want to load the model directly into your SketchUp Model. Select Yes and the model should appear on your screen. It’s automatically connected to the Move tool. Simply click near the intersection of the three colored axes and click to place it in view. After you click, you will see some blue lines surrounding the colored objects. Place the cursor over any of them, right-click with your mouse and select Explode from the menu. Now you will see

access the Navigation Practice model via the File menu.

▶ Download this model into a new SketchUp file.

click on image below to play video ▶ download a model from the 3d warehouse

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navigation

▶ Place the cursor on what you want to see and use the scroll wheel to zoom.

blue lines forming a box around each object. Click out in empty space and the blue lines will disappear. Now we can practice getting around objects in a SketchUp model. Follow along with this chapter, and when you’re through spend some time exploring each of the objects in the model. Make sure to look above, below and behind each of them – there are some surprises to discover.

▲ Keep the cursor over an object as you zoom, orbit and pan.

Use the Mouse to Get Around Zoom (as well as the other navigation commands) is centered on the cursor location. If you want to zoom in on a specific part of the model, place the cursor over the object you want a closer look at before you start. Zoom slows down or may not work at all if the cursor is over an empty space in the model. The easiest way to zoom is with the scroll wheel on the mouse. Rolling the wheel up (toward the screen) zooms in and rolling the wheel down zooms out. You can also use the Zoom tool

from the Toolbar, but that is slower than scroll wheel zooming. The Zoom tool gives you more options, and you can start the tool by tapping the "Z" key on the keyboard, or you can select the Magnifying Glass icon from the toolbar, or select the word Zoom from the list in the Camera menu. To zoom with the Zoom tool, hold down the left mouse button and drag the cursor to zoom. Dragging up moves in, dragging down moves out. Right-click

24

navigation

▶ Drag down with the orbit tool to see from above.

Keep the cursor centered on what you want to see.

to open the zoom pop-up menu with options to Orbit, Pan, Zoom Window or Zoom Extents. The Navigation Tools can also be found on the Camera toolbar, but this is a slow way to reach them. As you learn to get around in SketchUp, remember to use the scroll wheel on the mouse to Zoom and Orbit, and to keep the cursor over the object you want to see. Orbit changes your point of view, and lets you to look under, over, around or behind things. The easiest way to Orbit is to hold down the scroll wheel of the mouse, and drag the cursor either horizontally or vertically. Orbit is also centered on the cursor, if you want to see what is behind something, place the cursor on it, then push the scroll wheel down to orbit. If you need to orbit further, let go of the scroll wheel, and return the cursor to the object. Moving the cursor in different directions changes the camera position and your point of view. Orbit tries to maintain the vertical orientation of objects. Hold down the CTRL key while you orbit to disable “gravity”. Otherwise SketchUp will keep vertical lines in position. You can also engage the Orbit tool by clicking the icon on the toolbar, typing the letter O or selecting Orbit from the Camera menu. With this method you hold

down the left mouse button while you drag the cursor. A right-click when the Orbit tool is active opens the same pop up menu as the Zoom tool. Pan moves the point of view of the camera up and down or side to side. The easy way to Pan is to hold down the Shift key while in the Orbit command. This works whether you are orbiting with the scroll wheel held down, or with the Orbit tool. You can also Pan by typing the letter H, clicking the hand icon on the toolbar, or selecting the word Pan from the Camera Menu.

▶ Hold down the Shift key while you orbit to pan. 25

navigation

Other Ways to Change Your Point of View

pretty sure you didn’t delete it, try clicking Zoom Extents. Chances are good that it is way off in space somewhere. Another useful navigation tools on the Camera Toolbar and Camera Menu is Zoom Previous. Zoom Previous takes you back to recent points of view. You can quickly position the camera for standard views, such as front or side by clicking one of the icons on the View toolbar. These pictures of little houses show standard drawing views and an isometric view. Click on a house and the camera instantly adjusts to that point of view. This can be faster than orbiting, and it’s an easy method of navigation. If you get disoriented while modeling, hit zoom extents, then click on the roof of the house (top view) then the isometric house.

The three basic commands, Zoom, Orbit and Pan will almost always let you see what you want to see, but there are other Navigation tools you should know how to use. You can find these other tools on the Camera and View toolbars, on the menu that appears when you right-click with one of the navigation tools active, or from the Camera Menu. Zoom Window lets you draw a box around part of your model and fill the screen with what is inside the box. Zoom Window will quickly bring you in to examine a detail, or click on a specific point. Zoom Extents expands your view of the screen to see everything that is in your model. Both of these commands are accessible from the Camera Toolbar or the Camera menu. Zoom Extents will back the camera up until the entire model is visible, and this is a good way to get your bearings if you suddenly find yourself “Lost in Space.” It is also a good way to find geometry that may get away from you in moving or copying. If something seems to disappear and you’re

Practice, Practice, Practice You’ll likely be anxious to get started making something, and reluctant to practice navigating. This is understandable, but until you become adept at getting around a SketchUp model, you won’t be able to concentrate on learning the skills to model. People who don’t learn to navigate tend to avoid using the navigation tools unless they absolutely have to. Modeling is far more difficult if you’re trying to move an object to a point you can’t easily see. Eventually getting around within the model becomes automatic, but it takes time and practice to reach that point. Go ahead and play around with all the navigation tools, both with the mouse and on the Camera and View toolbars and see what happens. See if you can zoom in so far that you end up inside an object in the model. When you’re there, remember to use Zoom Previous or Zoom Extents to get back out. When you start to model on your own, when you find yourself having problems, take a moment and consider if a different point of view might make things easier. Reluctance to zoom and orbit will hold you back from learning how to do all of the typical tasks in SketchUp.

Watch the tags and experiment to find different points of view.

▲ These tools change your point of view in different ways. Watch the tags and experiment.

26

navigation

Most of the students in my classes struggle with learning to adjust their point of view to make things easier, and it was one of the issues I had when I learned. Most of them experience a “light bulb” moment with a little practice. To model effectively and efficiently, you need to constantly adjust the image on your screen. Half the work in SketchUp is to zoom, orbit and pan from one point to another in your model. You need to keep an eye on the big picture, but you need ▲ Pay attention to the background as you orbit. If you see the sky you are below the ground plane looking up. to keep a close watch on details. Navigating without much thought will come sooner rather than later if you practice and don’t give up. Look at one of the colored objects in the background. To get a closer look, you need to zoom in. Place the cursor over one of the objects and roll the scroll wheel. Roll it away from you to get closer, and roll it toward you to move back. Put the cursor in empty space and Reposition the cursor see what happens. Zoom is centered to keep your on the object under the cursor. That point of view centered. makes it easy to get what you want to see centered on your screen. When you have one object in view, push down on the scroll ▲ Drag sideways with the orbit tool to see the back of an object. wheel and drag the mouse to Orbit. If you drag vertically, you will be able to see the top or bottom of the object. Often when you orbit, you will need to Pan as If you drag from side to side, you can see the sides well. Pan moves the camera up and down or side or back. to side, where orbit moves the camera around an Remember that Orbit is also centered on the object. If you have the scroll wheel pressed down cursor location, so if you want to see the other side and hold down the Shift key, you can pan. Let go of something, it might take a couple of tries. When of the Shift key, and you’re back to Orbit. the cursor gets off the object or close to the edge of Check out all four of the cylinders and see your screen, release the scroll wheel and return the what the bottoms and tops look like. One of cursor to the object. them is a tube – see if you can find it. Check the

27

navigation

▶ Right-click on an object and select Zoom Extents from the menu to zoom in instantly.

rectangular boxes as well. They appear to be simple boxes from the front, but one is different on the bottom, and there are some surprises on the backs. Zoom out so you can see the four colored cylinders and the four colored boxes. Right-click with the cursor over one of the objects and select Zoom Extents from the menu. Your view will instantly zoom in on the selected object. There are two versions of the Zoom Extents command. You just tried the one on the context menu, now go to the Camera Toolbar and click on the Zoom Extents icon. That command zooms out until the entire model is visible. Hover the cursor over the other icons on the Camera Toolbar. Zoom Window allows you to draw a box around an object with the cursor and you will zoom in instantly for a close look and Zoom Previous will take you back to earlier views, making it easier to retrace your steps. When you hit Zoom Extents you should have noticed four more objects that weren’t visible

▲ It will take several steps to pan to the top of a tall object.

▲ Release the mouse button and reposition the cursor to pan further up.

28

navigation

when you first opened the file. Take some time to explore them. The tall red object is a more complicated shape than the others. Zoom in on it, then use the Pan tool to reach the top. It will probably take you a few tries. Remember that the navigation tools are all based on the cursor location. When you get close to the edge of your screen, release the tool and move the cursor. To reach the top of the red object, place the cursor near the top, press the scroll wheel and hold down the Shift key. Move the cursor down, and when you run out of room, release and move back up. When you get to the top, let go of the Shift key to return to Orbit. Explore the other objects, and try to find the one that is open on the bottom. The sides of that object are transparent on the inside. See if you can maneuver by orbiting and zooming to view the model from inside.

▲ Spend some time exploring all the objects to build your navigation skills.

click on image below to play video ▶ navigation using the mouse click on image below to play video ▶ title

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4 The Mouse The mouse does more things in SketchUp than it does in most computer programs. It’s worth getting the right one and paying attention to where your fingers are.

M

odeling in SketchUp is easy if you click the right thing the right way at the right time, but if you don’t understand the various ways the mouse works in SketchUp, it can be incredibly frustrating. With most programs there isn’t much to remember, and there aren’t any serious consequences if you don’t get it exactly right. A three button mouse with a scroll wheel is essential. It is almost impossible to work in SketchUp with the track pad on a laptop, or one of the single button mice on a Mac. You don’t need an expensive mouse, but you do need one. A fancy mouse, with a lot of built in functions and its own software can cause problems. The navigation functions in SketchUp, and the way the mouse works are all based on using a simple

mouse. Extra buttons and features can lead to unexpected behavior or an inability to get around the model. In SketchUp, beginners tend to get nervous and hold the mouse button down, click when they

Click

▲ Be deliberate when you click; make sure the cursor is on the object you intend to select.

Let go.

▲ Most commands in SketchUp work better if you let

go of the mouse button after you start. If you find yourself accidentally clicking when you don’t mean to, lift your finger off the button.

▲ A simple, three-button scroll wheel mouse is essential for efficient work in SketchUp.

30

the mouse

don’t mean to, or add an extra click or two. Any of these things leads to real confusion, because something strange happens, apparently without a cause. As you go through this book, pay attention to the instructions for when, how and where to click the mouse. Here are the important things to keep in mind about using the mouse in SketchUp. For most commands; such as drawing a line, moving or copying something, or extruding with Push/Pull, the command will work two ways. You can click and hold down the mouse button, or click and let go. Click and let go is almost always the better method. Try it and see. Open SketchUp with a new file and select the Pencil tool from the toolbar. In a blank space on screen, click once to start a line, take your finger off the mouse button and move the mouse in the direction you want to go. Then either type a number for the distance and hit Enter, or click a second time. That eliminates the risk of moving off axis as you shift your vision from the screen to the keyboard, and the risk of ending the command too soon by inadvertently letting go of the mouse button or clicking too soon.

What happens when you double-click on something depends on what that something is – loose geometry, or geometry that has been combined into a group or a component. If you have a single line, that isn’t connected to any faces, a doubleclick isn’t any different than a single click, the line is selected and turns blue to let you know. If you have a face that is defined by edges, double-clicking on the face will select both the face and the edges. If you have a number of faces and edges that define a three dimensional object, a third click will select the face the cursor is over, the edges surrounding it, and all the other loose geometry attached to those edges. When you have some experience, and you’re adding something in between two existing parts that are components, this is an amazing feature that you will appreciate. As a beginner, it doesn’t make much sense. If you’re a nervous beginner and not aware of how many times you click, it will drive you crazy. Double-clicking on a group or a component is different than double-clicking on loose geometry. Those two clicks open the group or component for editing. The image at right shows a component in this condition. The component is surrounded by

▲ Two clicks on the box on the left select the face

▲ Two clicks on the box on the right open the

and the edges around it. That lets you know the box is “loose geometry”.

component for editing and dim the rest of the model. What you see on screen when you click tells you what you’re working on.

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the mouse

Right-Click

▲ A right-click with the cursor over an object makes a context menu appear.

▲ The contents of the menu depend on the object below the cursor when you right-click.

a dashed line and the rest of the model is dimmed out. Once again, this is a valuable time-saver when you have some experience. Many beginners however, don’t realize what is going on and end up changing a component (as well as all the other components with the same name) when all they wanted to do was move it or make a copy of it. If all this talk of “loose geometry”, “faces and edge” and “Groups and Components” isn’t making sense, don’t worry. Those terms are all explained in upcoming chapters. Those are all ways that different types objects on your screen are referred to in SketchUp. When you right-click over an object a menu appears. These context menus display different contents when you click on different things in different circumstances. If you’re used to working on a Mac, the concept of a right-click may be new to you, and it is possible to bring up the menus with a “context click”, a click of the single mouse button on a Mac while holding down the Option key. Learning how and when to right-click will save time, and it’s one more reason to use a three-button, scroll wheel mouse.

The final advantage of the three-button mouse is the navigation functions built-in to SketchUp that are based on using the scroll wheel to zoom by rolling the wheel, orbit by holding down the scroll wheel and pan by holding down the scroll wheel and the Shift key. The previous chapter

Scroll wheel

▲ Use the scroll-wheel to navigate your way around a SketchUp model.

32

the mouse

on Navigation covered those functions and the importance of learning the skills of using the mouse. As you learn how to model with SketchUp, pay close attention to what your hand is doing and what happens on your screen with each and every click. In short order these motions will become instinctive. Until that happens, it doesn’t hurt to count clicks and lift your fingers off the mouse button entirely when you drag the mouse to move the cursor. That reinforces the concept of “click and let go” and it ensures that an accidental click won’t ruin your day. One of the best ways to get these things to sink in is to move as slowly and deliberately as you can when you are first learning SketchUp. Learn the proper sequence of things, what different operations should look like and be sure you’re doing

▲ Keep your fingers off the buttons when you move

the mouse to prevent clicking when you don’t mean to.

what you intend to do. Before you know it you’ll be modeling at a rapid pace, but the best way to become fast is to slow down.

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5 Basic Drawing Everything in a SketchUp model is made of lines and faces. Start with making simple lines on axis.

M

aking lines is the first step in making anything in SketchUp. Drawing lines in SketchUp is also known as creating edges. Everything in SketchUp, no matter how complicated it appears is made of edges and faces. Simply put, a line connects two points in space, a face is an area enclosed by lines, and the lines around a face are edges.

The obvious way to make a line is to select the Pencil tool on the Toolbar, but a better way to draw a line is to type the keyboard shortcut “L” to start the Pencil tool. You don’t have to hit enter after typing “L”, the cursor will change from the black arrow to the pencil icon and you’re ready to go. If you get in the habit of using the keyboard shortcut it won’t be long until using it becomes automatic, and you will be a speedier modeler.

▶ Look for colored inference lines to follow the cursor as you draw. If the line is black, you are not on an axis. 34

basic drawing

Click anywhere to start drawing a line and let go of the mouse button. As you move the mouse the line being drawn follows until you click again. As you move the mouse, look for colored lines following the cursor. These are called inferences and they help you to move parallel to one of the colored axes. Most of the time you want to make things with 90º angles, and the easiest way to keep everything oriented is to stay aligned with one of the three axes. If you have trouble staying on axis, hold down the Shift key after you start to draw when you see the red, green or blue axis inference. This will force the line to stay on axis. The Arrow keys on the keyboard will also lock the axis inferences; up or down for the blue axis, right for the red axis and left for green.

The crosshairs on the cursor, are a built-in guide to moving in the correct direction, and with practice you won’t need to lock in the direction. (If you don’t see the crosshairs on the cursor, turn them on in the Preferences window. See page 10.) It’s OK if you need to lock the inference, but if you train your hand and eye to look for the colored lines as you draw, you will be faster. If you’re seeing a black line trailing your cursor, it means the line you are drawing isn’t parallel to an axis. Draw some lines of any length in the direction of each axis to get the feel of drawing parallel to the directions in the model space, not the directions in the real world. In a two dimensional program, or on paper a horizontal line is horizontal in the real world too. In SketchUp, horizontal is red or green, and that will be at an angle to

▲ Hold down the “Shift” key to force a tool to stay on axis, or press one of the “Arrow” keys. 35

basic drawing

your screen. It takes a while for your hand and eye coordination to get used to this, and staying on axis becomes easier with practice. If you hit the Escape key while making a line, the pencil tool stops drawing but stays active. You can begin to draw another line right away. If you hit the spacebar, the pencil stops drawing and returns the cursor to the black selection Arrow. To draw some more you need to grab the pencil from the toolbar, or type the keyboard shortcut. Practice drawing some more lines, and use the colored inference lines to draw squares and boxes. As you draw, you will notice that the ends of existing lines light up in a colored dot as you get close to them with the cursor. These are snap inferences and they appear at the midpoints of lines as well as the ends. If you move too fast you can miss them, and you want to use them. The cursor is attracted to these points when they are visible. If you’re close to the end of an existing point and click the mouse when you see the colored dot, your next line will begin (or end) on that point. The inferences will also appear where an intersection would be, if existing lines were extended.

▶ A green dot indicates that the Line tool is ready to create a new line.

▲ A green dot at the end of a line indicates that the

space will be closed, and a new face will be created.

Existing point

▲ Hover the cursor over an existing point and drag

▲ As you draw, hover over the other end of the

along the axis. Click to start a new line that aligns with the existing point.

existing line then return to the axis. When the dot and tag appear, the lines will be the same length.

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basic drawing

You can line up to an existing object by hovering over it, then moving the mouse until you see the colored axis inference. Click when you see another inference appear. This sounds complicated, but using these aids will speed your work and make it more accurate. The video shows you how it works.

of the screen. If you are working with feet and inches, type an apostrophe (‘) after the first number. You can type a quote mark (“) after the inches, but you don’t need to. If you want to use fractions of an inch, you can type in decimals or fractions. If you want to enter a combination of a whole number and a fraction, use decimals or leave a space after the whole number and use the forward slash between numbers in the fraction. Typing “6.5” is the same as typing “6 1/2”. SketchUp will read improper fractions the way you type them, so typing “61/2” is interpreted as sixty-one halves, not six and one half. You don’t need to click in the Measurements window or highlight the number that is already there. Doing this won’t work and will only frustrate you. The number in the window will change as the cursor moves when you’re drawing. Type the number after you start the line in the right direction and hit enter. You can watch the line change length when you do this, but don’t try to

Get the Length You Want In SketchUp drawing a line a specific length is easy. Start with a mouse click, take your finger off the button and move the cursor in one of the axis directions. Type a number after the first mouse click then hit Enter before you do anything else. You can also click to start a line, move in the direction you want to go and click to end the line, then type a number and hit Enter. It is important to hit the Enter key immediately after you type the number, and not to move the mouse cursor or hit any other keys before you hit the Enter key. The number you type will appear in the Measurements window at the lower right corner

click on image below to play video ▶ drawing lines on axis

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basic drawing

▶ As you draw, the

length appears in the Measurements window. Specify a length by typing. Don’t try to click in the box, just type the number and hit the “Enter” key.

Measurements window

fiddle with the mouse to hit a specific number in the measurements window. This takes forever, and makes it harder to draw accurately. A tilde (~) displayed before the number in the measurements window means the distance is approximate. It will be close to what you want, but it won’t be exact. Little errors will add up, so get in the habit of typing in the exact length when you make a new line.

Selected edge

Remove unwanted lines There are several ways to get rid of lines you don’t want, and your intuition will be telling you to use the Eraser tool. The Eraser is handy, but its function is limited, and most of the time it is easier to eliminate extra lines with the Select Arrow, combined with the Delete key. Click the black arrow on the toolbar, or hit the spacebar on the keyboard to exit the Pencil (or any other tool) and invoke the Select tool. If something is already selected (it will be highlighted in blue) click in empty space to let it go. Move the cursor over the line and click. The line will turn blue when it is selected. If it doesn’t turn color, you missed so try again.

▲ When an edge is selected it is highlighted in blue.

When the line is selected, press the Delete key on the keyboard and it will disappear. You can remove a bunch of stuff in a hurry by dragging the Select Arrow and making a box to select multiple lines. There are two ways to make selection boxes, the difference is how you drag the cursor when you create them.

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basic drawing

Dragging from left to right creates a bounding box – everything entirely within the box is selected.

Dragging from right to left creates a crossing box – everything within or crossing the box is selected.

Drag from left to right to select only those objects entirely in the selection box.

◀ Draw a selection box from left to right and only those objects entirely within the box are selected.

Drag from right to left to select any objects crossed by the selection box.

◀ Draw a selection box from

right to left and any objects crossed by the box are selected.

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basic drawing

▲ The Eraser tool will remove edges by selecting them with the tool.

▲ When objects are selected, this tool will erase them from the model.

There will be times when one method is better to use than the other. It is easier to use most of the tools in SketchUp if you select objects before the tool, and knowing how to select things quickly will help later on. The method for getting rid of unwanted groups of objects is the same as disposing of one object. Select them, and when they turn blue hit the Delete key. There is also an icon of a circle with an X across it on the Standard toolbar labeled “Erase”. When no objects are selected this icon is gray and does not function. When objects are selected however, the icon is red and clicking on it performs the same action as hitting the Delete key.

▲ The pick box of the Eraser tool is the small circle on the corner of the cursor icon.

The Secret of the Eraser Tool

sor icon. You need to have what you want to erase inside the circle for the eraser to work. In earlier versions of SketchUp, the Eraser cursor had a tiny square pickbox instead of the circle that appeared in SketchUp 2013. There are two ways to use the eraser. With an unwanted line visible in the cursor selection box,

The eraser does have its place. Select the Eraser icon from the toolbar or hit “E” on the keyboard (you can also invoke the tool from the Tools menu but this is slowest way). Look closely at the cursor with the Eraser tool active, the selection box is a small circle at the lower left of the pink cur-

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click on the line and it will cease to exist. Or, hold down the left mouse button and drag the cursor across the unwanted line or lines. Each line will turn blue until the left mouse button is released. The lines disappear when you lift your finger off the button. Sometimes when modeling you make a mess, and leave behind several unwanted lines. This is the situation where the Eraser is the tool to reach for. While it is fast, you don’t want to move too fast. If you’re swiping the eraser with the left mouse button held down, move at a moderate speed. Lines can be missed if you go too fast. The other caveat of the Eraser tool is that it only works on lines, not on faces. If you erase one of the lines that defines a face, the face will disappear with it, but clicking on a face with the eraser tool won’t accomplish anything.

▲ The Undo tool will step back to the last save. The keyboard shortcut is “CTRL + Z”.

Undo is Your Friend If you decide that the line you just drew isn’t needed, you can remove it immediately using Undo. On the keyboard, Undo is CTRL + Z, meaning you hit the CTRL key followed by the Z key, (Apple + Z on a Mac). There is also an icon on the tool bar, a blue curved arrow on both PCs and Macs. If you like to do things the slow way, you can also select Undo from the Edit menu. You can undo multiple steps, back to the last time you saved your model, but undo does not work on the zoom or other navigation commands. You can undo things that are not visible if you changed your point of view after you originally created them. Spend some time and practice erasing lines with all of these methods. Redraw random lines if you need to. When you are comfortable making squares and rectangles on the ground plane practice making boxes by adding vertical lines. Look for inferences to appear when you are on the blue axis and when you are over existing points. When you’re comfortable drawing and erasing it’s time to move forward.

▲ Use existing objects for reference. Start a line with one click, hover over an existing point then move the cursor on axis.

▲ Click again to complete a line when you see the colored lines, point inference and tag. 41

basic drawing

▶ The Rectangle tool makes four lines and a face with two clicks. Enter dimensions separated by a comma.

Basic Drawing Beyond Lines

key. Also remember that you don’t need to click in the Measurements window to type. From some points of view, the program will prefer that a rectangle is drawn on the ground plane unless there are existing points to snap to. It can be difficult to start in empty space and draw a vertical rectangle unless the horizon is visible. Axis inferences and snap inferences also work the same way for the Rectangle tool as the Line tool. You can make a box quickly with the rectangle tool. Start by drawing the bottom, then click one corner of the rectangle you just made to start a vertical side. Before you head up, hover the cursor over the other end of the edge you started on. When a point inference appears, move the cursor vertically to complete the side of the box. Enter a dimension for the height of the first side. When you draw a rectangle that is connected to existing geometry, you don’t need to enter both dimensions. Type a number followed by a comma (X,) or a comma followed by a number (,X) to use the existing dimension before or after the comma in the new rectangle. The remaining sides can be drawn by starting from and using existing points for reference to start and stop the rectangles. Practice drawing some rectangles of different

Knowing how to draw lines is essential, but there is a faster method to create objects. With the Rectangle tool, we can make four lines and a face in one move. The icon for the Rectangle tool is the brown square with red dots in the lower left and upper right corners connected with a diagonal line on the toolbar. The diagonal line is a hint to how to use the tool. The keyboard shortcut is “R” and you can also select Rectangle from the draw menu. On screen the icon appears as the pencil with a small rectangle next to it. Click on one point to start, let go of the mouse button, then drag the cursor diagonally and click on an end point. To make a rectangle a specific size, type in the dimensions after the first click, and separate the length and width with a comma. This works the same way as the pencil tool; start the rectangle with one click of the mouse and let go of the mouse button. Drag the cursor in the direction you want to go, type in the numbers separated by a comma and hit the Enter key. You also have the option of entering the dimensions by typing immediately after the second click and hitting Enter. Make sure you don’t do anything in between typing the numbers and hitting the Enter

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sizes on the ground plane. Hover the mouse on the corner of an existing rectangle and a point inference will appear. Then drag the mouse without clicking in one of the axis directions, you will be able to line up the new rectangle with the existing one. Look for a tag that says “From Point” to appear next to the cursor. Spend a little more time connecting rectangles to form boxes. Use the Measurements window to enter dimensions when you draw a rectangle in empty space. Use the inferences to connect new rectangles to existing ones so you don’t have to take time to enter the dimensions by typing. The Rectangle tool is faster than using the Pencil tool to make rectangular faces, but to make a threedimensional object there is a faster method. As you become adept at using SketchUp, you will find that the best use of the Rectangle tool is to lay out the starting surface of a three-dimensional object.

▲ Snap across diagonal points with the Rectangle tool.

click on image below to play video ▶ precise lengths, erasing & rectangles

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3D Instantly With Push/Pull

You can control the length of the extrusion a couple of ways. You can type the length of the extrusion in the measurements window or you can snap to existing geometry. The rules for typing in a dimension with Push/Pull are the same as when drawing lines or rectangles. You can also snap to points on existing objects with Push/Pull. The extrusion is limited to 90 degrees to the face, so you can drag the cursor to another object in the drawing while you use Push/Pull. Click on the existing geometry and the extrusion will snap to that length and match the object. When you use Push/Pull on multiple faces in succession, double-clicking a face will extrude it to the same dimension and direction as the previous face. Push/Pull is equally effective at making things smaller, just move the cursor in the opposite direction to make an existing box smaller in any direction. You can also draw a face on an existing face and use Push/Pull to either add or subtract the new face from the old one. Want a groove across the top of a box that you just made? Draw the edges of the groove on the face of the box. That will create a new face, and you can sink that below the surface with Push/Pull. Or you can go in the other direction, and raise a new face from an existing one. Use Push/Pull on a circular face and you can create holes or columns. Practice drawing boxes with Push/Pull. Start with a rectangle, and pull it to make a three-dimensional box. When you have a few boxes, adjust the sizes by pushing or pulling on the sides. Add some lines to a face and make more complex shapes.

Push/Pull makes a parallel copy of a face, and while it’s doing that it stretches all the edges that are connected to the face. This is called extruding; it’s like what happens when you squeeze toothpaste out of the tube. Let’s take Push/Pull for a test drive and see some of the things it can do. On the toolbar, it is the box with the red arrow extending from the top. The keyboard shortcut is the letter “P” and you can also start it by selecting Push/ Pull from the Tools menu. When you hover the cursor over a face with the Push/Pull tool, blue dots will appear. You can also select a face first, then get the Push/Pull tool. Click the mouse and let go of the button, then drag the cursor at a right angle to the face. The face will move with the cursor and as you go the points at the corners of the face stretch and become the edges of sides.

▲ Push/Pull

extrudes faces into 3D shapes. The face is highlighted with blue dots.

▶ Click and let go to start the extrusion, drag the cursor and click again, of type a number and hit “Enter” to finish. 44

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▲ Snap to another object

to match the height of the extrusion.

▶ (Above Right) Push/Pull will extrude a face drawn on another face.

▶ Push/Pull works both

ways; it will also sink a face below another face.

click on image below to play video ▶ push/pull for 3D

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S ketchercise 1 ▶ draw on axis

Open a new file in SketchUp and follow along.

Draw lengths of 1", 2", 3", 2", 1", up and down in sequence until you have an enclosed shape. ●

● From somewhere near the origin (but not directly on it) draw a line along the red or green axis, 1" long. Select the Pencil tool from the toolbar, or better yet, type the keyboard shortcut “L”. ● Continue drawing a line on the other horizontal axis, 2" long. Draw a third line, on the original axis, 3" long. ● Continue drawing lines on the ground plane, switching between the red and green axis for each line. When you start a new line, you can go in either direction.

Relationship of Edges and Faces Select the black arrow from the toolbar, or hit the spacebar on the keyboard. Pick one of the lines with the Select Arrow and notice that it turns blue. Pick inside the enclosed shape with the Select Arrow and notice that the face is covered with little blue dots. Click out in space to “deselect” the face. Erase one of the lines on the perimeter by

▲ Type a number in the middle of drawing a line to

▲ When all the edges are on the same plane, and all

▲ A green dot on the second point of a line means

▲ Draw lines across a face to divide it into

make it a specific length.

the edges meet, a face is created.

completing the line will create a face.

sections. Look for point and end inferences.

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S ketchercise 1 ▶ draw on axis – cont'd two or more separate faces. If you remove a line between two adjacent faces, the faces will be combined in a single face.

Eraser Tool Vs. Select and Delete Take some time to practice the various methods for removing unwanted objects. ● Select any line with the arrow and hit the Delete key. What happens to the adjacent faces? Redraw the line, or step back by using Undo. ● Select the pink eraser icon from the toolbar, or better yet, type the keyboard shortcut “E”. Look for the circular pick-box on the end of the cursor icon, place it over a line and click. Try the same thing on a face within the lines. ● Redraw the lines, or step back by using Undo. Select the eraser tool and hold down the left mouse button. Drag the cursor across several lines.

▲ Selected faces are highlighted with blue dots.

Practice 3D Modeling With Push/Pull There is a big difference between drawing where you make two-dimensional, flat surfaces without any thickness and three-dimensional modeling in SketchUp. It takes a while for our brains, hands and eyes to get used to the idea that we can quickly create accurate models of things, and how to do that in SketchUp. You can speed up the process by changing your thinking. Instead of trying to make a drawing, pretend you’re making real objects that have thickness as well as length and width. You also need some practice to change your hand/eye coordination from drawing mode to modeling mode. You can draw on the vertical (blue) axis to make a three-dimensional object, but extrusion is faster so use Push/Pull whenever possible. Remember that the Push/Pull tool moves or copies an existing face and stretches all the edges attached to that face. Two clicks with Push/Pull

▲ Selected lines are highlighted in blue. selecting it with the arrow, then hit the Delete key. What happened to the face? It disappeared when the edge than defined it was deleted. Draw a line connecting the end points where the erased line was. What happens? The face reappears because the shape is now closed. If you select and delete a face, the edges surrounding it will remain. Draw lines across the original face, starting and ending on corners of the perimeter. Click on the lines and inside the lines and notice the highlighting. When a new line intersects an existing edge, it separates it into two parts. Lines drawn across an existing face will divide that face into

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S ketchercise 1 ▶ draw on axis – cont'd can create something that takes 16 clicks with the Pencil or 10 with the Rectangle tool. Return to the divided flat face you made, get the Push/Pull tool from the toolbar (or better yet type the keyboard shortcut “P”). Click on a face, let go of the mouse button and move the cursor up. Control the distance the same way you do with the line tool; click and let go, move the cursor, type the distance and hit Enter.

Extrude the faces up 1", 2", or 3". What happens to the lines at the corners of the faces? Push/ Pull will only work at a right angle to an existing face, you don’t need to keep the cursor directly on the face as you extrude it. If you move the cursor over to something already in the model and click on it, the extrusion will match the other object. Push/Pull will stop at the height of an adjacent object, you’ll see a tag appear that says Offset limited to … . Click when you see the tag and you can then continue extruding to the height you want. You can also use Push/Pull in the other direction to make an object smaller, and you can extrude faces horizontally. Push some of the faces back where they were, and pull some out in the red and green direction. Use Push/Pull to move faces back into position, flush with the central box and erase lines that divide faces. Make sure one face is flush with another by clicking on the face you want to match, or one of the lines around it. Remove lines that

▲ Use Push/Pull to extrude faces. Drag the cursor to other objects in the model to match the faces.

▲ Erase lines that cross divided faces to recombine

▲ Use Push/Pull to bring extended faces flush with

them into a single face.

other faces.

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S ketchercise 1 ▶ draw on axis – cont'd divide faces. Select and delete, or use the Eraser. Remember that “E” is the keyboard shortcut for the Eraser and that you can engage the Select Arrow by hitting the space bar. When your model is back to a single rectangular shape, use Push/Pull to make a box, 1" x 2" x 3". Use the Tape Measure tool to find out what size it is now. The keyboard shortcut for the Tape Measure is the letter “T”. Click on one point, then hover the cursor over another. The distance will appear on a tag next to the tool, and in the Measurements window in the lower right corner of the screen.

▲ Use Push/Pull to return the shape to a simple box. Check the size with the Tape Measure.

click on image below to play video ▶ practice with push/pull

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S ketchercise 2 ▶ use inferences

Start a new SketchUp file, and zoom in close to

the origin. Start near, but not on the origin and draw a line 3" long along the green axis. Zoom in if the line appears to be very small; if you can’t find the line at all, click Zoom Extents from the Camera toolbar, or from the Camera menu. From the end of the first line draw a line 3" long on the red axis. Look for the colored inferences to be sure you are on the axis. Continue drawing 3" long lines on each axis, forming a “step” pattern. Notice that cues appear as you draw saying On Green Axis 3. If these don’t appear, slow down and pause the cursor when it looks like you should be close.

Notice that a green dot appears on the end of one line when you start to draw the next line. Draw six pairs of lines, then draw toward you on the green axis, move slowly and look for a point inference to appear. It should say “from point” and a red line will appear from a nearby point on the red axis. Click and draw a line along the red axis making an enclosed square. A face should appear within the square. If it doesn’t, either the lines are not all on the ground plane, or the ends of the lines don’t meet. Hit the Escape key to stop drawing. This stops the Line tool from drawing, but leaves it active. Hover the cursor over the point that made the square face. A green dot appears when the cursor is over the point, indicating that you are about to start a line. Move slowly on the axis, and you should see two black dots appear when you reach the point where an intersection would be, if you completed the next square, and a tag by the cursor that says “from point”. ▲ Watch for tags and If the “from inferences to stay on axis and to repeat point” tag doesn’t length. appear as you draw the line, move the cursor over to the intersecting point ◀ Inferences also appear on the lines that are when the cursor is in line with existing points. already drawn. Don’t

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S ketchercise 2 ▶ use inferences – cont'd click, just hover and move the cursor back along the red axis. When you reach an imaginary intersection with the green axis, you will see two black dots on the corners you used for a reference, and the “from point” tag. Click when that is visible to start a line in empty space that is lined up with the other point. You don’t need to click on a precise point when these tags are visible. If you click, the line will end

or begin on the point indicated by the tag, not at the exact location of the cursor. Continue drawing, move slowly and look for the visual cues until you have a series of six connected squares. There should be a face entity within each of the squares. See if you can draw a square from a point in empty space by hovering your Pencil tool cursor over an existing point, the a second point and moving the cursor to where an intersection would

▶ Look for the point and axis

inferences (green and black dots and colored lines) as you draw. They indicate alignment with existing objects.

▶ Click when the green dot is visible to complete a line and create a face.

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S ketchercise 2 ▶ use inferences – cont'd be if lines were extended from existing points. Don’t click, just hover until you see visual inference lines on two axes and a green dot below the cursor. Make a second row of squares by drawing more lines, but start those lines from potential intersections in space, not existing points. Stop when you have made five new squares. As you draw, you will need to zoom, orbit and pan to have room on your screen and see specific points. Try to keep your point of view oriented so that the red and green axes are at angles to the screen, not vertical or horizontal. Start from an intersection on the row of five squares, and make a second set of six squares. These will be a mirror image of the first row of squares. You will have three rows of squares, flat shapes on the ground.

cursor over a face. Look for the appearance of the face to change. When you see the face covered with dots, click and let go, then move the cursor up. The face will come with it. Before you click again hit the “3” key, then Enter. The Push/Pull icon should still be visible with the cursor. If not, type the shortcut again or select the tool. Click and let go on the next face in the row, this time make it 2" high. Make the next face in line 1" high. For the next face, start the extrusion but instead of typing a number, begin to pull the face, then hover the cursor to any point on the top edge of an adjacent box. Click when you see a cue and the box you are extruding will match the first box’s height. Extrude the next two boxes, this time reaching over the 1" high box to the 2" high one. Because Push/Pull moves at a right angle to an existing face, you can use any other point in the model as a match point, and if you click when the cue is visible, the extrusion will match the existing face.

Push/Pull Inferences & Snaps Type the keyboard shortcut “P” or select the Push/Pull icon from the toolbar, then hover the

▶ Start a line from a

potential intersection by hovering the cursor over each point, then move on axis until the tag appears.

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S ketchercise 2 ▶ use inferences – cont'd Use the same technique to make all the boxes in that row the same height, matching the height of the tallest box. Extrude the next line of boxes, but this time look for “midpoint” references on the existing

boxes. When you hover the cursor over an existing line, a cyan dot will appear when you are over the middle of the line along with a tag that says “midpoint”. Click when the dot or tag is visible, and the extrusion will snap to match that point.

▶ Push/Pull only works

at a right angle to an existing face. You can reach over to any other visible point in the model as you drag and click to match heights.

▶ Extrude the center row

of squares to the midpoint of a vertical line.

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S ketchercise 2 ▶ use inferences – cont'd When all of the second row is 11 ∕ 2" high (half the height of the first row) extrude them with Push/Pull to match the height of the first row. Note that SketchUp will present a cue telling you the “Offset is Limited” to the height of the existing adjacent boxes. You can extrude beyond that point, but you will need to do it in 2 steps. There will be one row of un-extruded square faces. Extrude one of them to match the height of the others. With the Push/Pull tool still active, double-click on one of the squares. Push/Pull remembers the last extrusion, and you can quickly extrude the entire row by double-clicking on each square in turn. Push/Pull won’t work on multiple faces in a single extrusion, but the double

click will let you extrude several faces in quick succession. Some of the squares will be white and some will be blue. Orbit to look at the bottom of the model. The white squares will have a bottom, but the blue ones won’t. Push/Pull behaves differently when it is extruding a face that is connected to other objects in the drawing as compared to a face that doesn’t touch anything. When extruding an isolated face, Push/Pull actually makes a copy of the face in the new location. When the face is connected to other things, Push/Pull moves the face, leaving an empty space where the original was. The CTRL key can change this behavior. With Push/Pull active, hit

▲ After completing one extrusion, double-click on the next face and Push/Pull will repeat the distance. 54

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S ketchercise 2 ▶ use inferences – cont'd the CTRL key and a plus sign (+) appears next to the cursor. This will create a new starting face when you extrude. If you extrude the top of a box down to the other end, the entire box will disappear because it will no longer have any thickness. Draw a line between any two points on the perimeter of the bottom edge and a bottom will be created. Draw lines across the bottom to make individual faces. Orbit back to look at the top, and extrude one of the squares in the middle row of the top down to the bottom. You can control that by snapping to a bottom edge of anything else in the model with Push/Pull. Look at the bottom to be sure. Return to a view from above and extrude all but one of the faces in the middle row down to the bottom. Extrude the remaining squares half way.

Look again at the bottom. Select and delete the visible faces in the middle row. Return to a top view and select and delete the sunken face. Zoom in and look around the hole. Select the face on the bottom of the model from above and delete it. Orbit back to see what things look like from below. How can we get the bottom of the model to look like the top? Look for at least three ways to accomplish this. Different methods may introduce different complications such as faces appearing or disappearing. What can you do if you get the faces where you want them, but they aren’t the same color as their neighbors? Faces in SketchUp have a distinct front and back, each a different color. Right-click over a face, and one of the options on the menu is “Reverse Faces”. Select that to change the color of a face.

click on image below to play video ▶ using inferences

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Lines And Faces

suddenly goes poof! Don’t panic, use the Undo command (CTRL + Z) or redraw the line to make the face reappear. Play around some more with boxes, and as you practice see what happens when you erase one of the lines. Put the line back in, and the face will reappear. See what happens when you draw a line across a face, and what happens when you use Push/Pull to move the faces around. This may seem like mindless play, but it is essential to understand the relationship between faces and edges to become adept at 3D modeling. Edges and faces are simple objects that combine in relationships that become increasingly complicated with the addition of any new object. Make some odd-shaped faces (on screen, not at your family, friends or pets) and watch what happens to adjacent edges and faces as you use Push/Pull. Ten or fifteen minutes of this will make you a better modeler.

Remember that everything in Sketchup is either a line or a face, and that faces are defined by lines. When you draw new objects that connect to old ones, you change the conditions that define the objects. If you draw a line across the midpoints of a face, it doesn’t just sit there, it divides the face, and the other lines that make the face. One big difference between the SketchUp world and the real world is that everything in SketchUp is hollow. A board, a block or a brick is one solid object, but the model of that object in SketchUp consists of six faces and twelve lines. Faces have no thickness, even though they are right there on your screen and you can see them. Because faces depend on lines for their existence, erasing a line, even if you didn’t mean to, can cause a face to disappear. This is troubling at times, especially if you think you’re cleaning up an extra line and a major portion of your project

▶ When you

remove a line between two faces, both of the faces disappear. A selected edge shows as a blue line. A selected faces is covered with a pattern of blue dots.

Removing a line makes both faces disappear. Selected edge

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Selected face

6 Drawing Beyond the Box Almost any shape can be drawn in SketchUp and turned into a three-dimensional object.

B

oxes aren’t the only shapes you can make in SketchUp, there are tools for making circles and polygons with any number of sides. These can be combined with rectangles and with each other to form nearly any imaginable object. Let’s start with making circles. The Circle tool is on the toolbar, and the keyboard shortcut is the letter “C”. Sketchup draws circles from the center, much the same as if you drew a circle with a compass. Click and let go to set the center point, then drag the mouse in any direction and click a second time. Pay attention to the axis direction cues when you drag to make it easier to work with the circle later on. To make the circle a specific diameter, enter the radius (half the diameter) and hit Enter. Circles may look like circles in SketchUp, but if you zoom in for a close look at one, you will see that it is actually many short line segments. A circle with more lines won’t look as ragged as the default circle which has 24 sides. You can choose

how many line segments the circle has when you first pick up the tool; type the number of desired segments and hit Enter before you select the center point. More sides, however can slow your computer down. The default is a good compromise between appearance and performance.

▲ Start a circle with a single click to create the

▲ Circles in SketchUp are really 24-sided polygons

▲ Let go of the button and drag in an axis direction to set the radius. Click a second time, or type a number and hit “Enter”.

by default.

center point.

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drawing beyond the box

▲ Divide a circle by drawing lines across the face from the ends of the line segments.

▲ Hover the cursor over the edge, then drag in to locate the center.

The rules for faces and edges apply to circles. You can draw a line across a circle to divide it into segments. There are snap points at the top, bottom and sides of the circle that will let you divide it into halves or quarters. There are also snap points at the end and middle of each of the line segments. With so many possible points, finding the one you want can be tricky. Zoom in so you can see what you are doing, and approach the circle from the outside. There is also a snap point in the center of the circle that isn’t always obvious. Hover the cursor over the edge of the circle, then move in toward the center to make the snap point appear. The Polygon tool is shaped like a pentagon on the toolbar. There isn’t a default keyboard shortcut. Before you draw a polygon, you have to tell SketchUp how many sides it will have. Grab the tool from the toolbar, and before you click anywhere, type the number of sides you want and hit Enter. The tool works like the Circle tool, start with the center point and drag away from the center. You can enter the distance from the center to one of the points by typing and hitting the Enter key. You can extend the lines of a polygon to make other shapes. You can turn a pentagon or a

▲ SketchUp makes equilateral polygons with any

number of sides. Other types of triangles are made by drawing lines.

▲ Type a number and hit “Enter” before you click the center point to draw a polygon. Let go of the mouse button and drag away from the center.

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hexagon into a star by extending the lines. Get the Line tool and click on an end point, then let go of the mouse button. Drag the cursor back to trace over one of the existing lines, then move the cursor past the edge of the polygon. When SketchUp realizes your intentions, the line will turn

magenta. Hold down the Shift key to maintain the alignment. Go further than you need to; you can trim the excess off later with the Eraser tool, or with the Select Arrow and the Delete key. Repeat for all the lines and draw the rest of the points. Where the lines cross, the interior face of the polygon will be divided into several faces. Erase the lines inside the polygon to make one face. You can now use Push/Pull to extrude the flat star into a three-dimensional object. You can draw circles or polygons on existing faces to cut out portions of them with the Push/Pull tool. There is also a tool to make arcs or portions of circles. Arcs are made by making a start and an end point, then defining a third point called the “bulge”. The bulge is the distance from the center of an imaginary line drawn from the start and end point. You can enter this distance by typing, or you can snap to an existing point. You can also define

▲ Click a second time, type a number and hit “Enter” to set the distance from the center to a perimeter point.

▲ Click on an end point, let go of the mouse and trace over an existing line. This lets SketchUp know you want to match an off-axis angle.

▲ Erase the interior lines to create a single face.

▲ The magenta inference line lets you know that

▲ Use Push/Pull to extrude the face into a three-

SketchUp is continuing in the direction of the existing line.

dimensional object.

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Drawing beyond the box drawing

▶ Arcs are drawn

by specifying two end points then the “bulge” distance. “Bulge” is the distance from the center of a straight line across the end points and the highest point of the arc.

Bulge

▲ An arc won’t create a face unless the end points are connected with a line or other geometry.

an arc by naming the radius. After clicking on the start and end points, type the radius distance followed by the letter “R” and hit the Enter key. Arcs don’t enclose a space if you make them in empty space. You need to add a line across the two end points to create a face. Arcs are easier to

draw if you make them on top of an existing face. The three points that define the arc all must be on the same plane, so if you draw a rectangle first, then make the arc on top of it, the arc will stick to the rectangle. You can then erase the extra lines you don’t need.

click on image below to play video ▶ making circles, arcs & polygons

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▲ Draw lines to create a triangular face at the top of a rectangular box.

▶ Hover the cursor over inference points on existing lines, then move to the inside of the shape to place a circle in the center.

Combining Shapes Complex objects can be made by combining two or more shapes. The easiest way to do this is by working on a two dimensional face and adding or subtracting other shapes to it. This can be either a flat, two-dimensional face, or one face of a threedimensional object. If you are adding to an existing object, things will be more predictable and easier to manage if you can generate the overall shape you want on a flat surface. If you’re working on something that is three-dimensional, the sequence of drawing, extruding shapes and deleting extra lines is important. If things begin to disappear or behave in a strange way, try a different sequence. Start with a rectangular box, and add two lines at the top to form a triangle. Hover over the mid-point of a line on top of the box and move the cursor up on the blue axis without clicking. Then draw a line down to a corner, and a second line

from the opposite corner back to the end of the first line. When the space is enclosed, two new faces are created. Remove the vertical line and the remaining face can now be extruded with the Push/Pull tool. Removing the line between the rectangle leaves a single, five-sided face. There will also be an extra line on the back side, remember to orbit around to remove it. Shapes can also be subtracted from other shapes. Place a circle, rectangle or other shape on one face of a box. Hover the cursor over the midpoints of lines and look for inferences to center the new shape. Use Push/Pull to make a hole through an object. Click and let go of the mouse button to start the extrusion, move the cursor and click on any point on the opposite side of the object. You will see a tag appear when you reach the other side, and if you click while the tag is visible, the face will disappear, leaving a hole.

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▲ Arcs are easier to draw on an existing face than in empty space.

▶ When Push/Pull extrudes the entire thickness, the face will disappear.

In the example, an arc is drawn on one face of a rectangular box, creating two faces on either side of the arc. Push/Pull will remove the excess, and create a rounded top surface on the box. A single line divides the two halves from front to back, if the arc is made by snapping to the top edge of the box. If you define the high point of the arc below the top of the box, only one face will be created, without the line in the middle. If you have the line, but don’t want to see it, you can’t delete or erase it without leaving a hole. The curved surface you see is actually a series of flat surfaces, just as an arc or circle is really a series of short straight lines. The line defines the two adjacent faces. Hide the line by selecting it with a right-click and choosing Hide from the pop-up menu, or by picking the line with the Eraser tool while holding down the Shift key. On the View menu is an option called View Hidden Geometry. Selecting

that will make any lines you have hidden reappear, and it will show you the facets and dividing lines on curved surfaces. Unhide objects by rightclicking and selecting that option from the popup menu, but only after selecting View Hidden Geometry from the View menu.

Offset Tool The Offset tool creates a face with all edges parallel to the edges of an existing face, either to the inside or to the outside. Pick the Offset tool from the toolbar, then hover the cursor over a face. You need to be over a face to start the command, even if you want to offset outside of the face, or you can select the face, then pick up the tool. When the face is selected and the tool is active, a red square will appear. Click and let go when the square is visible, then move the cursor. You can click again, or you can set a precise distance by typing and hitting Enter. When you offset beyond

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Drawing beyond the box

▲ Offset creates a face with edges parallel to an

▲ Specify the offset distance. After the offset,

the midpoint of any of the edges of an irregular shaped face, the overall shape of the new face will change. When you offset beyond the center of a polygon, the face reverses and becomes a mirror image of the original face.

The offset face is a distinct entity from the original face, and Push/Pull can be used to extrude either face.

either face may be extruded.

existing face.

click on image below to play video ▶ combining shapes & the offset tool

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however you need to know how to measure an existing object in SketchUp. On the Toolbar is a Tape Measure tool, and the keyboard shortcut is the letter “T”. The Tape Measure tool does several things, and as you learn to use it you may start seeing dashed lines appear, or you may see a popup window that asks you if you want to re-size the model. The other functions will be explained later on, so for now if dashed lines appear, make them

Froebel Blocks & Tape Measure Open the file named Froebel Blocks.skp from the Models folder included in this book’s disc, or download it from the 3D Warehouse. Click on the File menu, then select 3D Warehouse/Get Models and enter Froebel Blocks in the Search window. Friedrich Froebel was a German educator who developed the concept of teaching young children with physical objects, including blocks similar to those seen in this model. These shapes are also a great way to learn methods for making objects, and manipulating them, in SketchUp. You can make all of these shapes with the tools presented so far in this book. In order to make them the same size as the ones in the model,

▼ Practice by making these basic shapes, and by combining shapes.

Tape Measure tool

▲ Click from one point to another with the Tape Measure tool. The measurement displays in the window and in a tag beside the cursor.

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▶ The Tape

Measure snaps to the same points as the other tools.

go away with Undo, or select the lines and delete them. If the box asking about Resizing the model appears, click No. To take a simple measurement, click on the point you want to measure from and let go of the mouse button. Move the cursor over another point, or an edge and wait for a second or two. A tag will appear displaying the dimension, and the number will also appear in the lower right corner of the screen in the Measurements window. You can click a second time, or hit the Escape key to end the command. If you click a second time, you’ll likely see the dashed line, so it’s a good idea to get in the habit of using Escape if you’re only looking for a measurement.

stick to objects the way edges do, but you can snap to them and draw real edges on top of them. Guidelines can help to locate starting and ending points in your model that would otherwise be hard to find. There are many ways to locate objects in SketchUp, and Guidelines aren’t always the best way. It takes time to create them, and if you don’t remove them when you’re done with them, they can quickly clutter up your model. When used appropriately, they are a great way to model precisely. Select the Tape Measure tool (or better yet, type the shortcut “T” as you did for a simple measurement. Look closely at the cursor and you should see a plus (+) sign next to it. This indicates that the tool is in the mode to create Guidelines. This is the default mode for the tool, and you can turn it off with the CTRL key. That doesn’t toggle it off and on, it turns it off for one use of the tool. After you click between two points, the plus sign will reappear.

Make Guidelines With the Tape Measure The dashed lines are called Guidelines and they do have a purpose. Guidelines are infinitely long and are parallel to another guideline, an edge in the model, or one of the model axes. They don’t

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▲ Click anywhere except the end of an existing line and move the cursor to create a parallel Guideline when the + sign is visible. Type the distance and hit “Enter”.

▶ The drawing tools snap

to Guidelines the same way they snap to other lines.

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To make a Guideline, click anywhere on an edge, except for an end point. Move the cursor after you click and let go, and look for a colored axis inference following the cursor. Click when you see an inference or type the distance you want for the Guideline and hit Enter, or click on another object to end the command. The dashed line will appear, parallel to the original edge. The drawing tools in SketchUp ▶ Push/Pull always moves parallel to a face; other points in the model will snap to the intersections can be used to specify the distance. of Guidelines and other lines, to the Guidelines and intersections of two Guidelines. Guidelines and hit the Delete key, or remove them After Guidelines have served their purpose, with the Eraser tool. Because these lines are infithey can be removed with the same methods nitely long, leaving them in your model can leave used to remove other geometry. Either select the it cluttered.

click on image below to play video ▶ measuring & creating guidelines

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If you click from the end point of a line, you create a Guidepoint instead of a Guideline. Guidepoints are similar to Guidelines, they line up with existing things, but the Guidepoint is a small cross shape connected to the original point with a dashed line. Guidepoints can be hard to see and difficult to get rid of, especially if the dashed line connecting it to the original point is on an existing edge. A common scenario among SketchUp beginners is this: A Guideline is desired, but an endpoint is selected instead of an edge. The steps to make a Guideline are made in order, but no guideline appears, and it isn’t obvious that a guidepoint was created instead. Later on in modeling, the guidepoint is discovered. Guidepoints can be hard to select and remove. The result is a model with several little plus signs scattered about for no apparent reason. Practice measuring and recreating the shaped blocks from the model. Think about when you need to create guidelines and when you can use the inferences of the drawing tools instead. To preserve the original

model, click Save a Copy As from the File menu. That will place a copy of the model in the same folder, with the same name, but with the number 1 at the end of the file name. This is a quick way to save a version of a file before you begin to experiment.

Beyond Cylinders More complicated circular shapes can be made with the Follow Me tool. Follow Me is similar to Push/Pull, but where Push/Pull can only extrude a face in one direction, Follow Me can extrude a face along any path, including circles. Use it to make a detailed column, bowl or a vase. Start by drawing a face that represents what you would see if you took a slice from a circular object, then divided that slice in half. Here is an example: Draw a circle of any diameter on the ground. Find the center of the circle and draw a vertical line. From the end of the line, draw horizontally until the end of the line matches the edge of the circle. Then draw down to the edge, and back to the center. All of these lines should be in an axis direction and create a rectangular face.

▶ Start with

a circle and a vertical rectangle drawn from the center.

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Follow Me tool

▲ Select the circle, then the Follow Me tool from the toolbar.

▶ Then click on the vertical face.

Draw some arcs across the face to make it interesting. To extrude the profile face into a round object, orbit until you have a clear view of both faces. Click on the circular face with the black arrow to select it, then click the Follow Me tool on the toolbar. Before you do anything else,

click the vertical face with the Follow Me tool. Selecting a face to create a path for the extrusion to follow is the quick and easy, hardly-ever-fail way to use Follow Me. You can also select the Follow Me tool, then the face and drag the mouse along the path. This is far more difficult to do.

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The bottom face of the extrusion may have disappeared when you made the circular extrusion. If that happens, don’t panic. Pick up the pencil tool and trace over one of the short line segments on the edge of the missing face and it will appear. SketchUp can’t tell what you’re thinking, it guessed that you really wanted something openended, not a solid looking object. Turned objects are rather complicated. Remember that in SketchUp, circles are made up of many short line segments. When you extrude something round with Push/Pull, a face is created for each segment even though it appears as one curved surface. When you extrude with Follow Me, even more faces are created, although you may not be able to see them. An easy way to select all of those faces is to click three times on any part of the turned object or draw a left-to-right selection box to select the entire round object.

▲ Follow Me extrudes the face around the edge of the circle.

click on image below to play video ▶ use follow me to create a turned object

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7 Edges, Faces & Groups Understand the nature of objects in SketchUp. The most complicated things are combinations of faces and edges.

S

ketchUp is a relatively easy program to learn, but in some ways it is too easy. If you move too far, too fast you’ll learn to create a mess of stuff on screen that you can’t do anything with. Most of the things people struggle with can be traced back to not understanding what is happening with the edges and faces they draw, and how the edges and faces work with each other when they make a model. Mastering the basic tools and moves makes it easy to model anything you want. One of the curious things about SketchUp is that after you master

a basic technique, you more or less abandon it for a more efficient method. But you can’t skip learning the basic technique. This book started by showing how to draw a line, the exact length you want in the direction you want. Then you learned how to combine lines into rectangles, and rectangles into objects. These are key skills to learn, but as soon as you get good at making lines, you should pick up the next tool on the toolbar, the Rectangle tool. With the Rectangle tool you can use two clicks of the mouse to make what would take eight clicks with the line tool. It makes sense to use the Rectangle tool instead of the Line tool. Making boxes with the rectangle tool is faster, but if you don’t have some practice with the Pencil tool first, you won’t understand how to use it.

▲ Mastery of the line tool is an important skill to develop, but there are faster methods …

▶ The Rectangle tool creates four edges and

a face with two clicks of the mouse, but that isn’t the most efficient way to make a box.

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edges, faces & groups

or faces. Edges can exist by themselves, you see them as lines, and you make them with the Line tool, the pencil icon on the toolbar. Edges connect two points in space, and your computer thinks of them as a connection between the points. If you recognize these as vector graphics, you pass the geek test. Some computer imaging programs use a different way of thinking of a line, known as raster graphics. In vector graphics, a line is a line, a connection between point A and point B. In raster graphics a line is a series of dots. It takes more computer power to remember all the dots between A and B. In vector graphics, the computer only needs to know the location of A and B, and the fact that they connect. When three or more edges intersect to enclose an area, a face is created. Without edges, a face can’t exist in SketchUp. Draw a triangle with the Pencil tool and see what happens when the last point of the third line intersects the beginning

▲ Push/Pull turns a two-dimensional face into a threedimensional object with two clicks. Then when you’re getting good at using the rectangle tool, it’s time to add Push/Pull to your tool kit. Combining Push/Pull with the Rectangle tool lets you make a box with four mouse clicks. It takes 16 clicks to use the Pencil and 10 clicks with the Rectangle tool to make the same thing. When you’re adept at drawing things, it’s time to learn how to copy so that you hardly need to draw at all. Don’t be tempted at this point to skip ahead to the chapter on making copies. When you make more complicated models, you’ll be able to get out of a jam if you know the basics. When something disappears you’ll be able to take a deep breath and figure out how to get it back. If you find yourself stuck, or struggling with a new technique, (or if you didn’t listen and skipped ahead anyway) this is a good chapter to review. The things that appear on your monitor in SketchUp are simple, and the behavior of these things is consistent and predictable.

Nothing But Edges and Faces Any model in SketchUp, from a simple box to a recreation of the Eiffel tower consists of only two types of objects, edges

▲ Faces can’t exist without the edges that surround them. 72


▲ A single edge can define two or more faces.

▲ Remove the edge and adjoining faces cease to exist.

Just a Hollow Shell

point of the first line. The area within the lines that changes color is known as a face in SketchUp. Erase one of the lines and the face disappears. It doesn’t just become invisible, it ceases to exist. Redraw the line you erased, and the face reappears. The time will come when you are working in SketchUp and a face will disappear without any apparent reason. Chances are good that you erased a line that defines the face without realizing it. Retrace your steps, undo the erase (or redraw the line) and the face will return. Edges can define more than one face. An edge between two faces at a right angle to each other, as in the edge between two sides of a box, defines both faces. Erase that line and both faces disappear. Drawing a line across an existing face will divide that face into two, and it will also split the intersecting lines. Draw a cube and see what happens when you erase lines between faces, or add lines across faces. Edges don’t need faces to exist. Delete a face and nothing happens to the edges surrounding it. Remember that the Eraser tool only works on edges, so if you want to remove a face, you must select it with the Arrow tool and then hit the Delete key.

Faces and edges don’t have any thickness. This isn’t possible in real life, but that is the way things work in SketchUp. When you combine faces and edges to make boxes, the boxes appear solid, but they are actually hollow shells. If you try to make complex objects by drawing and erasing lines, you make extra work for

▲ Objects may appear solid in SketchUp, but even the most complex shapes are a hollow combination of edges and faces. 73


yourself. Learn to divide and manipulate existing faces and lines. One of the secrets to SketchUp is to draw as little as possible, but only after you’ve mastered the skills for drawing accurately and efficiently. In addition to being hollow, objects in SketchUp are inherently sticky and stretchy. When edges and faces intersect each other they stick, moving one object will stretch or shrink every other object connected to it. In the next chapter, we spend some time playing around with simple box shapes, to see what happens when we move the lines. You can make some odd and interesting shapes. This is an advantage if you want an odd and interesting shape. If you want something else, it’s a problem. In addition to sticking to other objects, new objects prefer to stick to the ground plane when you first make them, especially when you are modeling in empty space. This helps to keep you from drawing an object way off in space or way up in the air when you don’t intend to.

you think of it as a box, not edges and faces. It’s easier for your brain that way, and if you tell your computer to think of it that way, it has less work to do. It’s similar to being a Cub Scout leader or a grade-school soccer coach. If you try to keep track of each individual, you’ll use up most of your brain power in no time. If you think of all those individuals as a group or a team, it is more manageable. In SketchUp, you can tell the computer to think of things the way that you do. Modeling will be easier if you think of what you are making on screen as objects. Make the computer think the same way, by combining edges and faces into groups, it will be easier to keep track of everything, and less demanding on the computer’s resources. In the chapters that follow, we’ll spend a lot of time with what happens when edges and faces are combined into single objects. It’s one of the features of SketchUp that makes it possible to make complex models quickly, and it makes it possible to change things without starting over. For now, let’s take a quick look at the highlights of combining loose geometry. Loose geometry is the term we use for things in a SketchUp model that are sticky edges and faces.

The Cure For Stickiness A simple box has six faces and twelve edges. That’s a lot to keep track of, and when you look at a box,

▶ A simple box consists of

6 faces and a dozen edges, 18 objects to keep track of. These can all be combined into one object, or Group.

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Start with a basic cube shape, and select all the edges and faces. You can do this several ways with the Selection arrow; either triple-click on one of the faces or click in empty space and drag to draw a bounding box around the cube with the arrow moving from left to right. The lines turn blue and the faces will be covered with dots. You can get the Selection arrow by clicking on the icon on the toolbar, but it is quicker to tap the space bar on your keyboard. Hover the cursor over the selected cube and right-click with the mouse. Select Make Group from the menu that appears, then click out in empty space. Now click anywhere on the cube, and all of it will be highlighted. Look at the Entity Info window (select it from the Window menu if it isn’t visible) and it will list a group as the object. The way the group is highlighted is also different than before; the boundaries of the group are now highlighted in blue. A group acts as one entity. One click selects the group and one action can move it. Inferences still appear at the ends and midpoints of the edges to make moving more precise. Best of all, the size and shape of a group won’t change because of an attachment to another object or group. Loose faces and edges are all “sticky” and “stretchy”. When combined as a group, stickiness and stretchiness are no longer an issue. Another option on the menu is Make Component. Once you get used to working with groups, you can give them up for components, but you should take the time to thoroughly understand groups and how they behave before moving on to using components. Stickiness does not apply to groups and components, except within the group or component. They are independent of the rest of the model so you can connect a group to other objects without sticking to them. All the edges and faces within a group behave as one object instead of many edges and faces. The decision to make a group or a component

doesn’t mean that you can’t change a group. You can, but it takes an extra step. Click anywhere on a group or component with the selection arrow, and the entire group is selected. Right-click with the cursor over a selected group and a menu appears. One of the options on the menu is Edit Group. After you right-click, the group is surrounded by a box made of dotted lines. Any other objects in the model will be dimmed. This indicates that the group is open for editing. You can also open a group for editing by double-clicking on it.

▲ One click selects a Group and it behaves as a single entity.

▲ Double-click over a Group to open it for editing.

When open, it is surrounded by a box of dashed lines.

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When a group is open for editing, the lines and faces within the group behave like normal lines and faces. Everything else in the model is locked, you can only change things within the open group, until you click outside the box. When you click outside, the group is now closed for editing and it behaves as a single object again. When you combine lines and faces in SketchUp into groups and learn how to change and connect groups, your modeling skills make a major leap forward. When children play with blocks, they learn many things about real-world building. If you spend an hour or two paying with blocks in SketchUp, you will build a good foundation for modeling anything. Almost anything you can do to an object in real life has an equivalent action in SketchUp. The next few chapters cover these actions in basic ways. If you take the time to learn to make basic

blocks to precise sizes, and to move them exactly where you want them, you’ll be well on your way to mastering the more advanced techniques of 3D modeling.

▲ After editing, a Group remains a single object.

click on image below to play video ▶ edges, faces & groups

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8 Move, Copy & Rotate The secret to efficiency in SketchUp is to avoid drawing whenever you can. Change what exists instead of starting from scratch.

D

rawing objects is only half the battle in learning SketchUp. In fact, it is less than half the battle. The real advantage to SketchUp is the ability to copy and change things that have already been drawn. If you know how to copy effectively, you will rarely need to draw more than half of anything. And, if you know how to change things, you can reduce your modeling time further and explore variations that would take forever with paper and pencil. The most often used tools for modifying existing geometry in SketchUp are Move and Copy. Actually they are one tool with two distinct functions. Making a copy in SketchUp starts with moving something that already exists. Essentially you move an object, and leave a copy of it behind. The Move tool icon is four red arrows, pointing in different directions and connected in the center. Move is used so often that you should learn the

keyboard shortcut, even if it is the only one you ever use. The shortcut is the letter “M”. You can also select Move from tool menu, but that’s the slow way. There are two ways the move tool functions; tool first and select first. If you select the Move tool and hover the cursor over an object, any object below the cursor will turn blue, and you can click once, let go of the mouse button and drag to move the object, then click again to finish the move. This only works on a single object and it can be difficult to select what you want to move if several objects are close to each other. The other option, and the one to use most often is select objects first, then pick up the Move tool. Use the black arrow to select one or more objects, then select the Move tool either by clicking on the icon or typing the shortcut “M”. Then

▲ If you select the tool first, you can only move one

▲ Add to the selection set by holding down the Shift key.

object at a time.

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move, copy & rotate

click and let go of the mouse button, move the mouse in the direction you want to go, then click again. This works on multiple objects as well as individuals. This is where the different ways to use the selection tool make the difference between making changes easily and frustration. To move selected objects, remember to work with the axis and point inferences. There is a difference in what the Move tool does if it is working on an entire object, or a part of an object and the direction of the move will affect other objects attached to the object being moved. If you move a face on a box at a right angle to the face, every line and face that is attached to it will stretch. Most of the box will stay the same size, but some parts will become longer. Move the face parallel to its orientation and the other objects connected to it will still stretch, but the adjoining faces and the lines that define them will be skewed. When you move a line, other lines and faces connected to it

▲ The Move tool will work on multiple objects if objects are selected before the tool.

a quick review of methods for selecting multiple objects ▶ Selected objects change color from black to blue; when an edge is a blue line or a face is covered with blue dots, you can modify it.

▲ When you move one object, everything attached will stretch.

▶ Use the Shift key to add objects to the selection set or to remove objects from the set. ▶ Bounding boxes select everything within their boundaries and are made by dragging from left to right. ▶ Crossing boxes select everything the box intersects and are made by dragging from right to left. ▶ A single click on an object selects the object. ▶ A double click selects the object and every thing connected to it. ▶ A triple click selects an object, every other object connected to it, and any other objects connected to those.

▲ Move a face and edges and faces adjacent to it will stretch and skew.

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move, copy & rotate

stretch. In some directions this allows you to change an object from a simple box to a more interesting shape. Other directions can leave you with a mess that doesn’t look like much of anything. Before you move anything, think about what direction you want to go, and orbit and zoom so that you can clearly see the object being moved and the axis inferences. SketchUp is a visually-oriented program, you need to see what you’re doing, and if your view isn’t clear, the program will have a hard time figuring out what it is you want to do. You can select a bunch of lines and faces and move them all at once without making them a formal Group. The geometry of what you have selected won’t change because all the faces and edges are moving the same distance and the same direction. Their relationship with each other doesn’t change. If you move a group the object won’t change at all, only the object’s location changes. Remember that one click with the selection arrow selects the entire group, and that the group will behave as one object. If you click more than one time on the group, the group is open for editing, and if you move something you modify the group instead of relocating it. It is important that you select a specific point to move from as well as a specific point to move to. You can grab objects anywhere you want to, even out in space and move them. If you want to move a box 6" in the green direction, it can be easier to click in space, move the cursor in the green direction and enter the distance. In SketchUp, the point selected to begin a move is also used to end the move. If you’re trying to move one object into position on another object, you won’t be

▶ Move a line and change the shape of attached faces.

▲ Move several selected objects and the only change is to their location in space.

▲ Select a group and it highlights as a single object.

Reference points for a move can be any visible point in the model.

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move, copy & rotate

able to end the move gracefully if you don’t start on a distinct point that will also work to park the object exactly where you want it. Most of the time a corner or other intersection is a good point to grab. Think ahead to where you want to place the object you are moving, and use the point you want to line up to something else to start the move. Try to make a move in one graceful step by zooming in and out during the move. Navigation commands such as Zoom, Orbit and Pan are transparent; you can use them in the middle of other commands. If you can’t see where you’re going, don’t be afraid to move in to get a closer look. You may also need to orbit so that it is clear to you, and to SketchUp which direction you want to go. Use the color inferences to move in the correct direction. It can be difficult to make moves that aren’t parallel to one of the colored axes. You may need to move in two steps, first the red direction, then the green direction to hit your landing point.

▲ Move from a specific point to a specific point. You let go with the same point used to begin the move.

click on image below to play video ▶ selection & the move tool

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move, copy & rotate

The Shift key will lock the direction for you after a move has started. You can also lock in the direction of a move with the arrow keys, up and down will lock on the blue axis, the right arrow will force the move in the red direction, and the left arrow will keep the move in the green direction. Remember to click once with the left mouse button to start a move, then let go of the mouse button and drag the cursor in the desired direction. Click a second time to end the move. If you click and hold down the mouse button, the object will still move but the Move command ends when you let go of the button. After a move is completed, the object remains selected and the Move tool is still active. If you click without meaning to in this state, the object will move again. Tap the spacebar to let go of the Move tool and click in empty space to deselect the object. The Measurements window functions the same way during moves as it does when you draw a line. Control the distance by typing a dimension after the move has started, or immediately after a move. The number will appear in the Measurements window, but you don’t need to click in the window

before you type. Just start moving and type the number. You can also type in a number immediately after making a move, as long as you hit the Enter key and before you do anything else.

The Power of Copying The Move tool does a lot more than shove stuff from here to there. The real power of the Move tool is to make copies of existing objects. Don’t confuse this with “copy and paste” found in most programs – “copy and paste” is rarely used in SketchUp. You can’t easily control where the copy is placed if you use the computer’s clipboard “copy and paste” feature. A copy starts the same way as a move. Make a selection and invoke the Move tool, then hit the CTRL key (Option on a Mac). A plus sign (+) will appear next to the cursor to let you know that the tool is in copy mode. Click on a point and let go, then move the mouse as you do when moving. A second click, or dimension entry completes the copy. The program makes an exact copy of the object or objects selected at the second click point, or at a specified distance.

▲ Tap the CTRL key (Option on a Mac) to start

the Copy function of the Move tool. Look for the + next to the cursor.

▶ Copy works the same as Move to specify direction and distance.

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move, copy & rotate

Make one copy spaced the way you want.

Number of copies you want, followed by "x"

▲ Make multiple copies by making one copy first, at the distance you want. Before you do anything else, type the number of copies desired, the letter “X”, then hit the Enter key.

In addition to making single copies, there are two ways to make multiple copies. You can make any number of copies an equal distance apart, and SketchUp will take as much room as it needs for all the copies and the spaces in between. Or you can place a number of copies in between the original object and the first copy. In this method, you tell SketchUp the number of spaces you want in between the two, and the program will figure out the spacing and make one less copy than the number of spaces. ● To make a row of objects a specific distance apart and evenly spaced, make one copy in the direction you want. Enter the desired distance to place the first copy. When it is located, and before you hit any other key, type the number of copies you want, followed by the letter "X" and hit Enter. The copies will then appear.

▶ SketchUp creates that number of copies, with the same spacing as the first copy.

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move, copy & rotate

Make one copy at a distance.

"/ " followed by number of spaces you want

▲ You can also make multiple copies equally spaced between the original object and the first copy. Make one copy and before you do anything else, type a forward slash (/) followed by the number of spaces. Then hit Enter.

● To make multiple copies that are

equally spaced between the original object and the first copy, make the first copy at the overall distance you want. After making that copy, but before doing anything else, type a forward slash (/) followed by the number of spaces desired between the first and last copy. SketchUp will create the copies in between. Typing /4 will make 3 copies and 4 equal spaces between the original object and the first copy. There is another function called AutoFold that adds geometry in some cases when faces are moved. Sometimes a move isn’t possible without adding some lines and faces – the parts won’t stretch in two

▲ SketchUp divides the space and makes one less copy than the number entered after the forward slash (/).

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directions. If you can’t move a face in the direction you want to go, use Auto-Fold. After you start moving, press the ALT key to toggle Auto-Fold on. You’ll see an indication next to the cursor, and as you move, lines connecting the corners and additional faces will be added to the model. This is an easy way to make a truncated pyramid shape, but you likely won’t use it often. You can also invoke the Auto-Fold function by holding down the appropriate arrow key after you start to move. Remember the rules of stickiness and stretchiness when you move loose geometry. You can place a box that is not yet a group on top of another box without any problems. If you try to move it again however, the pieces are now stuck together and you won’t be able to move one without stretching the other. This is one of the powerful features of using Groups (and Components) in your models. You don’t have to be perfect the first time you put

▲ AutoFold adds geometry needed to make moves in some directions possible.

something in position, and you have the freedom to change your mind later on. Groups (and Components) don’t stick to each other and they don’t stick to loose geometry in the model.

click on image below to play video ▶ copy with the move tool

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▲ Selected objects can be moved as a group on top of other loose geometry, but …

▶ … once loose geometry contacts other geometry, the objects stick to each other and will stretch when moved.

The Rotate Tool The Rotate tool has similar functions to the Move Tool, but instead of moving objects along a straight line, it rotates objects about a pivot point. The icon is two circular arrows on the Toolbar, and the keyboard shortcut is the letter “Q”. If you’re not in a hurry, you can also select Rotate from the Tools menu. To rotate an object, you need to define the point in the model that will be the center of the rotation. Think of it as the end of an axle the object will spin around. The second step is to select a second point, that defines the current orientation of the object. The line between these two points is used as a reference to measure how far around the axle you want to spin. Halfway around is 180°, a quarter of the way around is 90°. The

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final step is to move the cursor. The object will rotate in the direction the cursor moves. Click a second time to end the rotation. On screen, the cursor looks like a protractor, and setting the rotation axis can be tricky. The protractor that appears will change color and orientation to show which axis is the rotation axis; it can be any of the three colored axes. It is also possible to make a rotation that isn’t on an axis. The protractor will be black in this case. Rotating an object horizontally, around a line parallel to the blue axis is easy; the protractor likes to stick to the ground plane. You need a face in the model to set the rotation plane and if there isn’t one handy, or if you’re trying to use rotate near a corner, the protractor can bounce back and forth between red, green and blue. If you need to, draw a cube for reference and hold down the Shift key when the protractor is oriented along the axis you want. That will lock the inference direction as long as you hold the Shift key down. The different behaviors for selecting an object first, or selecting the tool first also apply to the Rotate tool. In most cases, it is better to select the object first, then the Rotate tool. After you make a selection and start the command, select the pivot point and one other point to establish the first leg of the rotation angle. Let go of the mouse button after selecting the points. The second step is to drag the mouse in the direction of rotation. The angle

▲ Click a second point to establish a base line and let go of the mouse button.

▲ Drag the cursor to start the rotation, type the degrees of rotation and hit Enter or click again to end the rotation.

▲ The color of the cursor indicates the direction of rotation. Hold down the shift key to lock the direction.

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of rotation appears in the measurement window as you move, and you can type in an exact number during or immediately after rotating. The Rotate tool has similar copy functions to the Move tool, including the ability to make multiple copies. Make multiple copies at the angular distance of the first rotation by typing the number of copies desired followed by X. You can also make arrayed copies between the original and the first copy by typing a forward slash (/) followed by the number of spaces in between.

▲ Establish the baseline, then move the cursor in either direction. The small icon follows the cursor, the larger protractor remains on the axis location.

click on image below to play video ▶ the rotate tool

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▶ Tap the CTRL key

(Option on a Mac) to make a rotated copy.

▼ After making one

copy, immediately type a number, then the letter “X” to make multiples.

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Practice Makes Perfect Practice moving, copying and rotating simple box shapes before trying to use these commands in a complex model. Playing with blocks was how you learned to manipulate objects in the real world when you were small, and it will help you develop your modeling skills in SketchUp. Remember to use the colored axis inferences to move in the desired direction, and to use available point inferences to move from one specific point to a second specific point. Practice moving exact distances by typing the distance during the move. If you find it difficult to stay on-axis you can lock the direction of a move or rotation with the Shift key or with the arrow keys.

▲ Rotate will also make equally spaced copies in between the original and the first copy.

▲ After making the first copy, immediately type a forward slash (/) followed by the number of spaces. Copies will appear when you hit Enter.

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Use Move to Stretch

Select a vertical line and see what happens when you move it. If you move on the red or green axis, the cube distorts because the faces and edges that are attached, or stuck to the line, move with it. Moving an edge sets off a chain reaction of sorts, anything stuck to it comes along for the ride, stretching or shrinking the connected objects. If you try to move the line vertically, you won’t be able to move it on the blue axis, unless you force the inference with the up or down arrow. And when you do that, the Auto-Fold option to the Move command starts automatically. If you don’t force the inference, it may appear that you’re moving the line up or down, but you can’t. The edge will move horizontally, in between the red and green directions.

As you practice, look for the different ways you can move objects, or parts of objects. In addition to moving and copying, you can also use the Move tool to stretch things. This can be a huge time saver when making a model, or when making changes to an existing model. What you can do depends on your understanding of how SketchUp defines faces and edges, and the relationship between them. If you move or copy a face, the edges that define the face come with it. They have to because in SketchUp a face can’t exist without edges to define it. Take some time to explore the possibilities, using a simple cube. Open a new SketchUp file, make a cube that is ten inches on each side and follow along.

▲ When you move an object, other objects connected to it will move and stretch. 90

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▲ The direction one object moves determines how connected objects will distort. Draw a horizontal line across the top of the cube dividing the top face in half. Move the line up or down, and the ends of the lines connected to it move with it, changing those horizontal lines to angled lines, and that changes the shape of connected faces. But you won’t be able to move the line in the direction it was drawn without using Auto-Fold after you start to move. The laws of physics in SketchUp can’t accommodate that type of behavior. Faces can’t be stretched to a curve, or any other distorted shape in a plane other than the one they are on. With Auto-Fold on, lines are drawn diagonally across the ends of the lines that are connected to the line you are moving. Similar things happen when you select a face and move it. This is because the edges stuck to the face move with it simultaneously. But the program

still prefers to keep everything that is horizontal on a horizontal plane. If you have trouble moving a face both up and sideways, move one direction at a time so you can control the distance and direction. See what directions you can move the face. Everything in SketchUp is sticky and stretchy. If you move one thing, any other thing attached to it will stick, and it will stretch as the selected object is moved. Click out in space to deselect, then click on the Move tool (or type M). Watch what happens when the cursor gets close to an edge or over a face, and what happens when the cursor is over the intersection of two edges. The move tool will select objects on its own if you don’t make a selection with the arrow before starting the tool. When you have completed a move, be careful. The object will still be selected (you can tell

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because it is highlighted in blue) and the Move tool will still be active. If you click again, you will start a second move command. There are two ways to end a move command. Hit the Escape key, and the object will be de-selected but the Move tool will still be active. You can also hit the space bar after making a move or copy. That will turn the cursor from the Move tool to the Selection Arrow. The objects will stay selected until you click on another object, or click in empty space with the selection arrow. If you make a mistake when you move something, use the Undo command to return to the way things were, if you haven’t saved your model. Press the CTRL key, then the letter Z (Command+Z on a Mac) as many times as you need to. You will probably use Undo as often as you use Move, so it pays to learn the keyboard shortcut.

▲ Moving a face also moves the edges that surround it, and other faces connected to those edges.

click on image below to play video ▶ stretch with the move tool

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S ketchercise 3 ▶ divide & conquer

Open a new SketchUp file and make a rectangle,

being created, move the cursor to one of the short lines and move along the line until the midpoint inference shows on the long line. Don’t click, but move the cursor along an axis back toward the starting point. Look for axis inferences to appear. When two axis inferences intersect, a black dot will appear. When it does, click to stop drawing the line. Instead of going all the way

2" x 3" then use Push/Pull to make it 1" high. Draw a line dividing the top of the box in half, in the long direction of the box. Look for the snap inference at the midpoint of each short edge and click with the line tool when the inference is visible. Select adjacent edges and faces and see what is highlighted. Notice that drawing new geometry divides existing geometry. Draw a line from the midpoint of the dividing line on top. To start the line, Click (when the midpoint inference is visible) and let go! As the line is

across the top of the box, the line is exactly half the distance from the other lines. Keep drawing to make little squares, picking up these midpoint inferences from the other lines.

▲ Hover the cursor over an inference point, and SketchUp will use that point as a reference to align edges as you draw.

▶ After hovering, move the cursor back along the axis and look for inferences to appear.

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S ketchercise 3 ▶ divide & conquer – cont'd You can use this method to draw a line from a midpoint to divide something in two, what if you want to divide it by any other number? ● Select one of the lines on the edge of the box, then right click with the cursor directly on top of the selected line.

● Click on the word Divide from the pop-up

menu, and one or more red squares will appear on the line. Move the cursor toward the end of the line and more squares appear.

▲ Practice looking for inferences and make sure you

▲ Click and let go to start a line, hover to display

zoom and orbit to see them clearly.

inferences and click again when they are visible.

◀ Right-click with the cursor over a line and select Divide from the menu.

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S ketchercise 3 ▶ divide & conquer – cont'd

▲ Move the cursor, or type a number to specify the

▲ The end points of divided lines won’t show, but

number of segments.

will highlight when the cursor is over one.

● The number of segments will appear in the

Measurements window. Click when you see the desired number of segments, or type the desired number of segments and hit Enter. ● When you click or hit Enter it looks like nothing happened, but if you select the line you originally selected, only one segment will highlight. Each segment will have end and midpoint inferences available. Divide the long outer edge of the box top into six segments, draw a second line parallel to the edge, then draw from the ends of the divided line to create six faces on half of the top face of the box. As you draw, look for the endpoint inferences on the segments of the divided line. This is accurate, but takes some time. There is a quick way to do this without drawing all the lines. You only need to draw one line, and make copies of that line for all the others. Use Undo – (CTRL + Z on the keyboard, Command + Z on a Mac) several times to remove the lines you drew. Zoom in, type “L” to start the Line tool and hover along the line you divided, looking for the first end point.

▲ Use the Move tool in Copy mode to duplicate one line.

When you find it, draw a short line from the outer edge to the center. Click on the short line that crosses the top face, then invoke the Move tool. Press the CTRL key (Option on a Mac) and look at the Move cursor. The little plus sign indicates that the Move tool is toggled into Copy mode.

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S ketchercise 3 ▶ divide & conquer – cont'd Click on the end point of the selected line. Click and let go! Move the mouse cursor, and a copy of the original line is created. As with a move, you need two definite points for a copy, an origin and a destination. The point you click to start a copy, will be the same point you have to use to let it go at the end. To be precise, select an endpoint to start and when you see the next end point inference hit Enter. When the first copy is in place, and before you do anything else, type the number 5, then the letter X and hit the Enter key.

That will make an entire row of short lines. Select that entire row by holding down the shift key (a +/- appears next to the cursor) and clicking the lines one by one. Type “M” to get the Move tool, CTRL to toggle on the Copy mode and copy the entire group of lines to divide the other half of the box. The points you use for a move or a copy do not have to be on the object being moved or copied. Sometimes you need specific points, and other times you only need to go a certain distance in a certain direction. Create a new box, then divide it into 15 squares. Try to make the divisions with as few clicks of the mouse as possible by making copies instead of drawing. Copy every other square away from the original on either the red or the green axis. Select the three central squares by drawing a box around them. Copy the three squares away from the original on the other colored axis.

▶ After the

first copy, type a number, then “X” and hit the Enter key to make multiples.

▲ Look for ways to divide faces with the fewest number of mouse clicks.

▶ Hold down the shift key to select several objects. When faces are copied the edges around them are copied too.

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S ketchercise 3 ▶ divide & conquer – cont'd

Quiz Time

Q. Wait a minute

, ho works differen w come it tly when I draw the box from the othe r direction? A. Remember, th ere difference be is a tw right Bounding een a left to selection box and a right to left Crossing selection box. See page 39.

a when you copy

Q. What happends of an edge?

face instea nding a face A. Edges surrou r the ride. come along fo copy more than Q. How would yoatu a time? one object elect First” A. You have toup“Sthe Move tool. then pick

Q. How do you select more tha

n one object at a time? A. While holding down the shi key (look for the +/- ne ft xt to the cursor), click on a selected object a secon d time to remove it from the selection group. or Drag a box around a bu nch of stuff.

click on image below to play video ▶ dividing lines

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S ketchercise 4 ▶ pyramid

Make a cube of any size in an empty (new)

There are several ways to make the selection. We can click and drag a box around the cube, or we can click three times on any part of the box. These methods are explained in Chapter 5 on page 39, and on pages 221-224 of the Basic Tool Guide section of this book. When all of the edges and faces of the cube are highlighted in blue, right click with the cursor over the selection and choose Make Group from the menu. After making the group the way the cube is highlighted changes. Click on a face of the group to see. Instead of a pattern of dots on the faces, all of the edges of the cube are blue. Click out in empty space with the Selection Arrow, then click once anywhere on the cube. Groups behave as one object, and the appearance of a selected group lets you know it is a group. You can also open the Entity Info window,

SketchUp file. Copy the cube so that one vertical face is touching a face on the original cube. While the copy is still highlighted, try to move it. The original cube stretches and distorts because the two boxes are stuck to each other. Because all the lines and faces are “loose geometry,” they stick to each other. If we want to make copies of the original box and stack them up in a certain way we have to do it exactly right the first time, and we won’t be able to change anything later on. If we make the original box a group, copies won’t stick to it (or each other, or anything else in the model). With groups, we can make a mistake without the need to start over to fix it, and we can change our minds later on. The first step to make a group is to select the loose geometry we want to combine.

Loose faces Group

▲ Loose faces are highlighted with a pattern of blue dots on the left box. One click on the right box selects a group. All of the edges are highlighted, but not the faces.

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S ketchercise 4 ▶ pyramid – cont'd and it will tell you whether the objects selected are a group, or lines and edges. Draw a new cube next to the grouped cube to compare the differences. You can’t always tell by looking at things if they have been grouped, but you can tell when you make a selection. Delete the loose geometry cube, and make a copy of the grouped cube. You can place the copy beside or on top of the original cube and if you move one, the other won’t change. Groups don’t stick to other things in the model, and it only takes one click to select a group because it is now considered one object, not a bunch of edges and faces. You can change a group, but you have to “open it for editing” first. When a group is open, the lines and faces behave as loose geometry, but only within the group. There are two ways to open a group for editing. The first is to select it with the

arrow, then right-click over the selection to make the menu appear, then choose Edit Group from the menu. You can also double-click on any part of the group to open it. If you’re not sure if the group is open or not, look for the dashed line box around the group. When a group is open, it is surrounded by a box made of dashed lines, and the rest of the model dims. That lets you know that the objects inside the group are the only things you can change. If you click with the selection arrow outside the dashed lines, the group closes. If, for some reason you want to return the group to a bunch of edges and faces, right-click with the cursor over the group and select Explode from the menu. Copy the cube group and place it touching the original. This will be easier if you begin the copy by clicking on a corner of the group that will touch

This group is open for editing.

▲ When a group is “open” for editing, it is surrounded by a box of dashed lines and the rest of the model is dimmed. Click in empty space to “close” the group after changes are made.

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S ketchercise 4 ▶ pyramid – cont'd the first group when you’re done. Prove to yourself that groups are cool by moving the copy on and off the original group. Make more copies until you have a row of six groups. The goal now is to make a square shape comprised of six rows of six cubes. How are you going to do that? You can copy one cube 36 times, or you can make multiple copies. Delete all but one cube from your model. Make one copy of that cube, and when the copy is in position and before you do anything else, type 5X and hit the Enter key. Select the row of six cubes, and make a copy of the entire row and put it in position. Remember to begin the copy by selecting a corner of the cube that will be touching at the end of the move. When the copies are in place, and before you do anything else, type 5X and hit Enter.

You now have a base for the pyramid, the next step is to add a second tier. The second layer will be five rows of five cubes, their corners aligned with the mid-points of the edges of the cubes on the first tier. Eventually, we will build a pyramid that is topped by one cube. Before you start, think about the different ways to make copies to find the fastest way to do this. Here is one method, and it makes use of the concept that materials in SketchUp are free for the asking. In real life, we don’t want to be wasteful, but in SketchUp it is an effective technique to make a copy and throw most of it away. Copy the entire base tier and move it off to the side in empty space, then select and delete one row and one column, leaving 5 rows of 5 cubes. Copy that and put it in place, and use the midpoint of one of the lines near a corner to start the move.

▲ Several objects can be selected and moved or copied at the same time. 100

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S ketchercise 4 ▶ pyramid – cont'd Put it in position on the bottom row, snapping it to the midpoint of one of the lines on the top of a corner cube. Return to the copied tier, remove one row and one column, leaving 4 rows of 4 cubes. Copy that

and put it in place, align the mid-point of an edge of one cube to the midpoint of an edge of the cube below it. Continue on until you have a complete pyramid.

▶ Think before you copy! Select a point to start that will also work to complete the action.

▶ Mid-points are used to align each tier, so use them to make copies.

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S ketchercise 4 ▶ pyramid – cont'd ▶ One final block completes the pyramid.

click on image below to play video ▶ make a pyramid

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S ketchercise 5 ▶ sketchy, the wonder dog

Open a new SketchUp file, and

draw the face as shown in the picture on the ground plane. When you have an enclosed shape, use Push/Pull to make the face 5 ∕ 8" thick. Then rotate the dog 90° so he is standing on his feet. Triple-click on any surface of the dog, right-click and select Make Group from the menu.

▶ Draw this face on the ground plane then use Push/Pull to make it 5∕8"

thick.

▲ Make it a group, then rotate to make it stand up. 103

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S ketchercise 5 ▶ sketchy, the wonder dog – cont'd

▲ Make copies and use the Move and Rotate tools to create a stack.

Make at least a dozen copies of the dog and use the Move tool and the Rotate tool to see what kind of stack you can make, as if the dogs were blocks in real life. The dogs will interlock in many different ways, so see how many ways you can find to put them together. Rotate them at 90° in any direction so that the legs of one fit over the back or legs of another. Put some upside down and some right side up. If you get inspired, make more copies and keep going. When you use the Rotate tool, select the pivot point for the rotation, and the base line to line up one surface to another. The dog’s face is at a 45° angle. Pick that line as the base line for rotating, and you can line up the angled surface to a horizontal or vertical surface.

▲ Establish the baseline for rotation on an existing edge … 104

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S ketchercise 5 ▶ sketchy, the wonder dog – cont'd ▶ … then snap to another edge to align the rotated object.

click on image below to play video ▶ practice move and rotate

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9 Components Components are the key to supercharge your models. With them you rarely need to draw anything more than once.

I

n Chapter 7, Groups were discussed as a way to control objects in a SketchUp model. Groups combine edges and faces into a single object that won’t stick to other objects. That makes modeling in SketchUp more like making things in real life; we can stack blocks and make things from them without spending the time to draw every line. If we want to change a block after we make it, we can open it for editing. Components are similar to groups, they are combinations of edges and faces that behave like a single entity. But components are far more useful than groups, and when you understand what components can do, you will use them more often than you use groups.

your mouse cursor over the selection and select Make Component from the menu. When you select Make Component, the Create Component pop-up window appears with some options. Starting at the top of the dialogue box, the first option is to name the new Component. The next box is for a Description. You can leave the box empty unless there is something important to remember about the Component. The Alignment options let you do a couple things. Glue To will make a Component stick to preselected planes when you place it in a model. You can make a chair that can only be put on a horizontal surface.

Better Than GroupsComponents What gives Components an advantage over Groups is this: ● When you make a group of lines and faces into a Component, a copy of it stays in your SketchUp file. It isn’t in the model, it is safely off to the side in the Components window. ● You can drag copies from the Components window into your model, and you can save Components to use in another model at some future time. ● You can edit one instance of a Component, and all instances of it in your model will automatically update. Make a Component the same way you make a Group. Select two or more objects, right click with

▲ Select objects, right-click over the selection and click “Make Component” from the menu.

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▶ Give the

component a name, make sure the box at the bottom is checked and click “Create”.

The box should stay checked, unless you make a component from objects that are connected to other loose geometry. When you’ve made all these settings, click the button at the bottom right corner of the window that says Create. This may sound like a complicated process, but in reality, it only takes a moment or two. In practice, making a Component is as simple as selecting some geometry and giving that selection an appropriate name. If you make a Component from an existing group, the Component will be named Group X – (X will be the number of the Group) and the dialog box won’t appear. You don’t have to give the new Component a name. Sketchup will number the Components for you, so if you’re in a hurry, your model will contain components named Component1, Component2, etc. You can access the options and change the name at any time from the Components window or the Entity Info window, but it is best to give new Components a meaningful name when you create them.

Don’t worry about this now, you can leave Glue to: set to None. Each Component also has its own set of blue, red and green axes that are part of the Component. If you don’t assign them in the Create Component window they will be the same as the model axes, when the Component was originally drawn. In large and complex models this may be an advantage. Don’t worry about this now. Don’t check Always Face Camera. If you do, the Component will turn to follow your point of view as you orbit around the model. There are some rare cases where you might want to do this, but most of the time you want a Component to stay oriented to the rest of the model, not the Camera. Do check Replace selection with component. This will transform the edges and faces you selected into one object, your new Component. If the box is unchecked you will have a copy of what you selected, stuck together as a single object, but it will be in the Components window, not in your model.

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The Components Window

With the window open, click on the first of the three tabs that says Select. Next click on the icon of the little house just below the three tabs. Those settings show the components in your model and let you move them from the window into the model. Components can be dragged from the Components window. Click on the thumbnail and let go of the mouse button. A copy of the component will be attached to the cursor when you move it into the model space, accompanied by the Move tool. Tap the spacebar in empty space after you place the component. It will still be selected and the move tool will still be active after you drag it in from the Components window. One click will select a component, another similarity to groups. When a component is selected, it is highlighted with a blue box, and the edges will also be seen as blue lines. In your

Unlike groups, Components are automatically copied, and the copies have a place to live within the drawing file, but outside the modeling window. The Components window lists each Component in the model, or other collections of Components on your computer or on the internet. If it isn’t visible, open the Window menu and check Components. The Components window keeps track of the components in your model, and it opens the door to access other components, either those you have created and stored on your computer or components created by others and stored on line. Collections of components will be discussed in detail in the next chapter. For now, let’s look at how to use the Components window for a single model.

▲ When you make a component, a copy of it lives in the Components window. Click on the thumbnail to bring a copy into your model.

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to collections online. There are thousands of components available online in SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse. You can search the 3D Warehouse through the search bar in the Components window, if your computer is connected to the internet. Using Components from a library is a fast and easy way to add things to your model. Chapter 10 goes into detail about working with collections and finding components in the 3D Warehouse. The Components window is a crowded and busy place, so let’s take a tour of the features. If you only see a blue bar with the name Components on it, click next to the name and the window will expand. If you don’t see it at all, go to the Windows menu and check Components from the list. When the window is expanded, you will see three tabs: Select, Edit and Statistics.

model, they behave like any other grouped objects. You can move a component, rotate it and copy it, but as with groups, if you want to change the geometry of the component, you need to select it, right click and pick Edit Component from the menu (or double-click on the component). When it’s open for editing the component is surrounded with black dashed lines and the rest of the model is dimmed. The component’s axes will show on one corner when a component is open for editing. Components can be saved in separate files called Collections for use in other models. Examples can be found by clicking on the arrow next to the little house icon and selecting from the menu. The components in Components Sampler are saved to your computer when you install SketchUp. The other menu choices link

▲ You can search online through the Components window and access thousands of models in the 3D Warehouse, or open collections stored on your computer.

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sometimes you will want to see another group of components. Up at the top right corner of the Components window is a small black and white box with a down pointing arrow and a plus or minus sign. If you click the plus sign, a secondary window opens. Each of these windows, called panes has the same display options, but the lower pane does not have the tabs for Edit and Statistics. You can see the Components in your model in one pane and another set of Components in the other. This is convenient, but it takes a lot of space on your screen. You can click the arrow to close the secondary pane, and you can adjust the size of each pane by clicking on the bar between panes and dragging.

Below those tabs are some buttons, and these buttons control the appearance of the Components window. The first button on the left opens a drop down list of options for how components appear in the window. You can select large or small thumbnail images of each component, or a list of names. You can also select Details and this option will give you a thumbnail view, the name, and any information that was entered in the Description window when the component was created. Next to that is a little house, and if you’re seeing folder icons or a bunch of thumbnail images instead of the component you made, click the arrow next to the little house and select In Model. The other options display components stored in a collection on your computer. Most of the time you want to show the components in your model, but

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▲ The button at top right toggles the display of the secondary plane. The size of the panes can be adjusted by clicking and dragging on the borders.

You can spend hours or even days exploring all the available Components. Type a name in the Search window and click on the magnifying glass and if your computer is connected to the internet, SketchUp will search the 3D Warehouse for components that match. The last button in this row lets you save the components in your model as a collection, or lets you open a collection that already exists on your computer. An important feature of components is that they are clones of every other component with the same name. If you change one by editing, all of them will change. You can prevent this by rightclicking on a component and selecting Make Unique from the menu. That makes a copy of the component, but the program adds a number to the

end of the name and you will see the alternate version in the Components window. Make Unique can save a lot of time if you model something complex and need a version that is similar but not quite identical. Instead of starting over to make a second version, make the first a component, make a copy and make the copy unique. Then you can change the copy without affecting the original component. Of the three big tabs, Select, Edit and Statistics, you will use Select most often. This is where you can view a Component and drag it into your model. In an open SketchUp file, make a cube and make it a component. If it doesn’t appear in the Components window, make sure that In Model is selected from the drop down list. You may also

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▶ After you drag

a component into your model, it will still be selected and the Move tool will be active.

to change the Alignment options or turn off the Always Face Camera option if it was selected when the Component was made. The Statistics tab tells you what the Component is made of; the number of faces, edges and other geometry that belong to it. You can use this to see information about complex components, but for now you can safely ignore it. SketchUp considers Components to be single entities with the same properties and behavior as Groups. As such they don’t stick to other objects, and parts of components don’t stretch if you move something else that is in contact with it. Components differ from groups in that each instance of a component is a clone of all the others with the same name. And these clones remain the same as long as they share a name. Change one, and they all change. To edit a Component’s geometry, select one and with the cursor hovering over the selection

need to click Refresh from the first button on the left below the Select tab. Click on the image in the selection pane, then move your mouse into the modeling window. A copy of the Component will come with it. Click anywhere in the model and the Component will stop, but the Move tool will be active and the component will still be selected. That’s convenient because you will likely want to place the Component at some precise location in your model, and when you first drag it in, the cursor is locked on the Component’s axis origin. It can also be annoying if you’ve located it using the insertion point, go to do something else and see your component scooting across the modeling window. Click the spacebar after pulling in a Component to stop the Move command and return the cursor to the Selection arrow. The Edit tab won’t let you change any of the edges or faces in a component, it only allows you

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▶ Right-click

on a component and select “Edit Component” from the menu, or double-click on a component to open it for editing.

When you finish making changes or adding details, you can delete the copy you worked on, but the component in position will automatically change to the updated version, as will the copy in the Components window. Bad things can happen when you only want to change one individual Component and you forget that all the ones with the same name will also change. To avoid this, right-click and select Make Unique from the menu before selecting Edit Component. This changes the name of the component you selected to Component#1 and creates another copy with that name in the Components window. When a component is open for editing, the component is highlighted inside a box of dashed lines and the rest of the model is dimmed. The

right click. Select Edit Component from the popup menu. You can also open a component for editing by double-clicking on any part of it. Before you edit a Component however, remember this:

Editing one instance of a component will automatically change every other instance of that component in your model! The good thing about this is that you can add a detail, or make a change in one part, and have all other parts like it also change. You can also change a copy of a Component in a different area of the model, where you have room to work and instances of it already in place will automatically change.

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▲ When a component is open for editing it is surrounded by dashed lines and the rest of the model is dimmed. When a Component is selected, you can make it Flip Along any of its axes. When you use Flip Along the selected component changes to a mirror image with the reflection based on the Component’s set of axes. You can copy a component, Flip Along the direction of the copy and have left-handed and right-handed versions. When a flipped component is open for editing, these axes become visible and the components will show the changes based on the original axis orientation. When you make a component, it picks up the model axis directions and applies them to the component. These stay with the component, so if you rotate or flip a component, its axis orientations will change. This can be confusing if you rotate a Component before you use Flip Along, or use Flip Along a second time.

open component is the only object in the model that can be edited, but if any other instances of the same component are visible, you can see the changes as they are made to the open instance. When you complete the changes, click outside the highlighted box to close the Component. You can also right click and select Close Component from the pop-up menu. This menu has other important options for Components. Explode sounds like fun, but clicking it doesn’t do anything dramatic or noisy. Explode returns a component back into edges and faces. Exploding a component only affects that particular instance of the component that was selected when you right clicked. A copy of the original component still lives in the Components window and the instance that was exploded is loose geometry.

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▲ The component on the right is a copy that has been “flipped along” the red axis. click on image below to play video ▶ creating and editing components

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Sketchercise 6 ▶ practice with components

Use the dog that was used in Chapter 8. If you

icon to see the components in your model. You may still have Derek in there, if he wasn’t deleted when you made your template. To the right of the search window is an icon, click on that to display a menu. Purge Unused is the last item on the menu, and a click on that will remove any components that exist in the Components window but aren’t present in the model space. Drag a dog from the Components window into the model space near the original. Hit the space bar when it is in position to end the automatic move command and return the cursor to the Select Arrow. Do that two more times so you have a total of four dogs visible on screen.

still have that file open or if you saved it, you can use one of the copies for this exercise. Or you can redraw it, using the instructions on page 103, “Sketchercise 5: Sketchy, the Wonder Dog.” You only need one and if you’re using an existing example, it should be exploded back to loose faces and edges, the same state you have if you draw it again. Triple-click on any surface of the dog, rightclick and select Make Component from the menu. Give the dog a name, then click Create to save the component. Open the Components window if you need to, click on the Select tab and the little house

▲ When a component is created, it gets its own set of red, green and blue axes. 116

components

Sketchercise 6 ▶ practice with components – cont'd

▲ You can drag unlimited numbers of components from the window into the model space.

Right-click over one of the dogs and select Explode from the menu. Right-click on another dog, and select Make Unique from the menu. Doubleclick on the last dog to open the component for editing. Notice that the other dogs in the model dim and the dog that is open is surrounded by a box. Use the Move tool to change the dog that is open for editing. When you select a line or face, notice that the same object on the other dog that is still a clone is also highlighted. Move a line and you will see the same change made in the other dog. Hit the spacebar to end the command and release the Move tool, then click out in space to close the component. Use the Undo command (CTRL + Z) several

times to undo the changes and return the dogs to the state of all being the same component. You will see the name of the unique component disappear from the Components window and the dogs will disappear one by one. Stop when there are two dogs left on screen. Make a copy along either the red or green direction and when the copy is in place, right-click over the copy and hover the cursor over Flip Along on the menu. A secondary menu will appear with options for each of the axis directions. Click the direction you used to make the copy. The component stays the same, but becomes a mirror image of the original. Open one of the components for editing and watch what happens to the other as you make changes.

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▲ When you edit a component every instance of that component in the model and the copy in the Components window also change.

▲ After you make a copy, right-click and select “Flip Along” from the menu. The options are based on the component’s axes.

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▲ Flip Along creates a three-dimensional mirror image. click on image below to play video ▶ unique and flipped components

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Practice Making and Using Components

the blocks one at a time, either by drawing a box around the geometry, or by triple-clicking on any part of a block. When a block is selected, rightclick and select Make Component from the menu. Give each one a meaningful name and continue until each block is a Component. Play with the blocks, and see what kind of structure you can make. Make sure you practice Moving and Rotating and if you need more, you can either copy blocks in the model space, or you drag more into your model from the Components window. If you need a reminder of the name of a component, select Entity Info from the Window menu. It will display information about any selected object in your model. Create some similar blocks, by making unique copies of what you have.

One way to make SketchUp easy is to pretend that the objects you model are the same as they would be in real life. As soon as you make something, turn it into a component by selecting the geometry, right-clicking over the selection and picking Make Component from the menu. This gives you control over the parts of your model. In real life things don’t stick to each other, and they don’t stretch if they are moved away from something else. Components will keep the parts of your SketchUp model from sticking and stretching. For practice, return to the model of the Froebel blocks that you made in Chapter 6. Select each of

▲ Making components of objects that can be used over and over will make modeling faster – you rarely need to draw anything more than once.

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▲ See what you can create in a short amount of time by using components.

Dynamic Components Some components can be “dynamic”, that is they have properties that can be changed either by specifying options, or with the Interact tool on the Tools menu. In the free version of SketchUp, SketchUp Make, you can only use dynamic components that have already been created. In SketchUp Pro, dynamic components can be created. There is a small green symbol in the lower right corner of the component thumbnail in the Components window. In the 3D Warehouse, the green symbol appears in front of the title. Open the Components window, and click on the arrow to the right of the little house icon, then select Components Sampler from the menu. The component at the top of the list is a dynamic component that will “interact.” Drag the 2D Girls Dog component from the window into the model

space, click to position it, then tap the spacebar and click in empty space. If you orbit around the girls and the dog, you will see that they change position as you orbit. This is an example of a component that is configured to “always face camera.”

▶ Click this arrow and

“Components Sampler” to display these components that come with SketchUp Make.

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▲ Dynamic components have properties that can be modified without editing the component. Right-click over the component and select Dynamic Components/ Component Options from the menu. In the window that pops up, you will find options to change the colors of each of the girls shirts as well as the color of the dog. The text at the top of the window mentions that the colors can also be changed with the Interact tool. The Interact tool can be found at the bottom of the Tools menu.

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▲ Some dynamic components will have an “Interact” feature. Select the tool from the menu … Hover the Interact tool over the component. When the tool is over part of the component that can be changed, a star will appear at the end of the cursor, along with a tag that explains what can be changed. Click when the star is visible to scroll through the optional colors. Experiment with the other dynamic components in the Components Sampler. The available options will display when you right-click and select Component Options from the menu. Some, like the bed can be made different sizes through the dialog box, and others, like the

▲ … and hover over the component. Look for the tag to let you know what the tool can do.

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bench will replicate parts when the size is altered with the Scale tool. Select the dynamic component, then the Scale tool from the toolbar. Small green squares, called grips will appear on the component. Click on one

and then drag the cursor to make the bench longer. As you drag, parts will stretch in width, but when you click to stop the scale additional parts will be added to the bench.

▲ Other dynamic components can be stretched with the Scale tool.

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▶ Parts are added

as needed to change the length without distorting the parts.

click on image below to play video ▶ dynamic components

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10 Component Collections Use Component collections and you rarely need to draw anything more than once.

O

ne of the best features of SketchUp is the fact that you rarely need to draw anything more than once. You can save complex shapes as a single Component and use copies of that Component over and over again. You can make something similar to an existing object by making a Component unique and changing that unique copy. You can also find thousands of existing models, download them to your computer and use them as parts of your model. If you’re modeling a house, for example, and want to fill it with furniture, you can likely find everything you need already made. If what you find isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, existing components will give you a head start. The people who created SketchUp also created the 3D Warehouse, a website where SketchUp users can store models they want to share, and find models created by other users. It’s an incredible resource, and you can access these models from within the SketchUp program. Before we go online, let’s look at how to organize and store our own collections of components.

▲ The drop-down menu

displays different groups of components.

◀ Click this arrow

for component display options.

individual Component in Chapter 9. If you don’t have it open already, go to the Window menu and select Components to display the Components window. This window is the key to managing and using collections of components. Although we made the Froebel Block components as part of a larger model, each component

Local Collections Open the model of the Froebel Blocks you made in Chapter 6. You made each of the blocks an

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could also be considered as a SketchUp model on its own. This is how SketchUp thinks of components when we save them as a collection, or when we go looking for what we need in a collection. The Components window lets us browse not only the components we have created in our model, but also other components that live either in a file folder on our computer or online. You tell the Components window what things you want to see and you can browse for components through the window. If you click on the icon of the little house in the upper left of the Components

window, it will display the components in the model in the pane below. To the right of the little house is a downpointing arrow, and when you click on it a menu appears. If you select Components (directly below In Model from the menu) two folders appear. These folders contain a small sampling of Components that were saved on your computer when you installed the SketchUp program. If you click on of the other selections, and your computer is connected to the internet, you will see a search box briefly appear, then a new group of Components will appear. You may need to click the menu to the left of the little house to display the thumbnail images and details. In line with the little house icon, all the way to the right is an arrow, and when you click that, another menu appears. This menu lets you quickly navigate to collections of components. Collections are simply groups of components, with each individual component saved as a distinct SketchUp model. Local collections are saved on your com▲ Local collections are groups of components saved as SketchUp models puter, and you can specify the in a folder on your computer. default location in the Preferences window. As you gain experience in SketchUp, you’ll probably want to have specific types of often used components available. One model may be a rich resource for components to be used in other models. The second item in the menu offers a quick method to save all of the Components from one model as separate SketchUp model files, via the “Save as a local collection” option. Start by ▲ Every component in a model can be saved as a separate .skp file from clicking on the menu. this selection.

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When you want to use any of those Components in a different SketchUp model, return to the menu in the Components window, and click on Open or create a local collection. The file browser will appear, and you can navigate to any folder on your computer. The browser won’t go beyond the folder level, so you won’t be able to locate individual SketchUp files.

A file browser will open and you can either select an existing folder or create a new one. Select the folder and click the OK button. Each component in the model will be saved as a discrete SketchUp model. The file name will be the same as the Component name.

▲ Click this option to open the file browser to open a collection.

▲ The file browser lets you choose a location to save your local collection.

▲ When you open the folder, its

▲ Choose a folder and click “OK”. Each

contents will be available through the Components window.

component will be saved as an individual file.

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At the top right of the Components window is an icon of a down-pointing arrow with a plus sign below it. Click on this icon to open a secondary pane in the Components window. The icon changes to a minus (-) sign with an arrow pointing up. Click on the icon again to close the secondary pane and return the Components window to its normal appearance. This extra pane, below the first allows you to see and use two collections of components at the same time. With the drop-down arrow to the right of the little house, you can choose to display the “In Model” Components in either pane, and an additional collection in the other.

When you click on a folder, the SketchUp files within it will appear in the Components window in the model you are working in. These components won’t appear in the In Model components list until you place them in the modeling space. The folder name will appear at the bottom of the menu that appears when you click the arrow next to the little house icon.

▲ The plus (+) sign

opens the secondary pane in the Components window.

▶ The secondary pane

gives you access to both the “In Model” components and a second collection of components.

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Placing components in your model from the Components window is the same whether they are In Model or located in another folder on your computer. Simply click on the thumbnail image in the window and when you move the cursor into the modeling space, the Component will appear with the Move tool active. You can also save a single Component as a separate SketchUp file, either from its location in the modeling space or from the In Model thumbnail in the Components window. Place the cursor above the Component you want to save and right-click. Select Save As from the menu and a typical file-saving dialogue box will appear. The Component’s name will be used as the file name unless you change it. Be careful if you are making your own collection that you don’t choose a file name that you have used before.

▲ After you click to place a component, it is selected and the Move tool is active. Hit the spacebar and click in empty space to let it go.

click on image below to play video ▶ local collections of components

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Visit the 3D Warehouse

3D Warehouse. The 3D Warehouse is a website where SketchUp models are shared. You can access the 3D Warehouse through your web browser, (the URL is http://sketchup. google.com/3dwarehouse/) but if your computer is connected to the internet while you have the SketchUp program open, you can get there from within SketchUp. Click once in the space that says 3D Warehouse and type in a search term for what you want to find. Results will appear shortly, depending on the speed of your internet connection, and relevant models will appear within the Components window. The names of the models are links to their online locations, and when you click on one, a dialogue box appears. From that box, you can download the model to the open SketchUp model you’re working in, or you can save ▲ If you are connected to the it to your computer.

To the right of the little house icon in the Components window is a search box that lets you explore models and collections of models that other SketchUp users have placed online in the

▲ The Search box connects to the online 3D Warehouse, a source for models of almost anything.

internet, relevant models will appear in the Components window.

▶ Click on the link in

the Components window and this box appears, with options to download the model or expand your search.

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▶ This option downloads the model and places it in your open model.

▼ The downloaded model

arrives as a single component, attached to the Move tool. Click "yes" to download the file into your open SketchUp model.

Click "no" to save the file.

To check the downloaded component, right-click on Explode.

Click on the Download Model button and a pop-up window appears, asking you if you want to load the model into your SketchUp model. Select No to save the file, or select Yes and it will appear in your model when the download is finished. The speed of the download will depend on both the complexity of the model and the speed of your internet connection. When the downloaded model arrives, it will appear in your modeling window as a single component, attached to the Move tool as any other component would be when placed in a model. Click once to position it and be aware that it will still be selected and the Move tool will still be active. If the model you downloaded is large and complex, and you want to use it as a single object, leave it as a single component. That will help keep your model to a manageable size. Not every SketchUp modeler uses components in the way I recommend, and you may find that the model you

▲ Right-click over the component and select Explode from the menu. brought in is a sticky mess. I like to place a downloaded model off in empty space somewhere in my model so I can check it out safely. The way to check is to right-click with the cursor above the component and select Explode from the menu. If the model consists of separate components (as the example here is) any object you click on will display as a component. If it contains loose geometry, when you click on something, it will show as individual faces or edges.

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There could be hundreds or thousands of models that fit your search term. There is a line of text at the bottom of the Components window that tells you how many 3D Warehouse models matched your search. You can click on the arrows on either side of the text to browse, but the larger search window makes it easier to refine and narrow your search, and to find similar models. 3D Warehouse consists of thousands of individual models, and many of them are located in collections. Collections in the 3D Warehouse work the same way as local collections on your computer. Many manufacturers place models of their products online, and individual SketchUp users (or groups of SketchUp users) create collections to make it easier to locate models. The search window for any model in the 3D Warehouse will show you what collections contain the model, other models created by the same SketchUp user and other models that are related in different ways. You can navigate from this window to explore, all without opening your web browser or leaving the model you are working on.

A “sticky” download doesn’t mean you can’t use it. If you decide you would rather have it as one component, use Undo as soon as you can to return it to a single component. If you want to change it, or adapt it for another use, it might be better to delete it from your model and look for a better one in the 3D Warehouse. If the model is made up of discrete components, those components will appear in the In Model group in the Components window after you explode the parent component. You can then use those individual components from the Components window, or save them individually. You might download an entire model, just to get a small part of it to use in your own model. One of the best things about SketchUp is that materials don’t cost anything.

Expand Your Search The pop-up window that appears when you search from the Components window offers several ways to look for other models if you didn’t find exactly what you were looking for with your initial search.

▶ There are

several ways to search for models or collections of models in the 3D Warehouse.

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◀ Type a general

search term and select “Collections” to find groups of similar models in the 3D Warehouse.

At the top of the search box, there is a drop-down arrow that lets you search by Model, or search by Collection. I have a collection of models in the 3D Warehouse called “Bob Lang’s SketchUp Class.” If you search for that term (without the quotes) with models visible next to the search box, you’ll get a couple of hits where models contain my name. Do the same search with Collections and you’ll find the group of models. It is often easier to find things by searching Collections instead of Models. The names of collections that appear in the search box are links, so if you click on the name you’ll arrive at a results page for the collection. From there, you can locate and download the individual models within the collection. In addition to the many options for searching, there is also an option to switch the preview of a model in the search

▲ Click on the collection name to see the models.

▲ After a collection is open, you can view and download individual models.

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they are created smaller than life size by a specific ratio. In SketchUp, most modelers work at the actual size of what they are modeling. It’s easy to forget that a bulldozer and blocks have a vast difference in size. If something disappears, go to the Camera toolbar, or to the Camera menu and select Zoom Extents. That will back the image on your screen up far enough to include every object in your model.

results box from a static image to a three-dimensional representation. Click on the 3D View button in the upper right corner of the model preview and you can use your mouse to spin the image around to see it from all sides. Sometimes when you download a model from the 3D Warehouse, you won’t be able to find it, or it may fill your screen. It’s all a matter of scale. In technical drawing, objects are scaled, that is

▲ This option lets you preview a model in three-dimensions before you download.

▶ SketchUp models are the

actual size of the object in the real world.

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to purge them before uploading. It’s a good idea to let SketchUp do this tidying up. Models can contain a lot of useless junk that uses your computer’s resources, and that can slow down the program. After purging a dialogue box opens where you can give your model a name and store other information along with your model. There are also settings to link to a web page, and if you choose you can keep your model private. Private models won’t show up in searches, but you (and anyone you invite) will be able to access them. This is a convenient way to store your SketchUp model if you regularly work on different computers from different locations.

You can also find models through the File menu. Select 3D Warehouse/Get Models from the menu. The search box that appears is the same as when you go through the Components window, but you start on the 3D Warehouse home page. You can also upload models to the 3D Warehouse from the file menu. When you click Share Model a pop-up will appear asking you to sign in to a Google Account. If you don’t have one, you can create one from this window. When you upload a file to the 3D Warehouse, a pop-up may appear that will inform you that there are unused Components, Layers or other objects in your model and asking if you would like

▲ You can also explore the 3D Warehouse from the file menu, or your web browser.

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you can store copies of components and use them as many times as you need to. You can also make components unique and alter them. When you get comfortable with changing the geometry in SketchUp, you’ll discover it is much faster to copy and change something than it is to create new a new object. You can also add to your model by downloading ready-made Components from the 3D Warehouse. If you model your house, or a room in your house, you can add furniture and other items without having to create them yourself. Exploring the 3D Warehouse can also give you inspiration to stretch your modeling skills, and see how your models compare to others. No matter what type of things you model, or what your interests are, chances are good that you will find many models online.

You can perform a do-it-yourself cleanup of a model on your local computer by removing unused Components from the menu in the Components window. Click the icon to the right of the search box, and select Purge Unused from the menu. If there are no unused components in the model, this selection will be grayed out. If there are components that exist in the Components window but aren’t in the model space, they will be deleted from that model file. If they exist in a collection somewhere else on your machine, the components will still be in their original location.

Keeping it Easy SketchUp is an efficient design tool because it is quick and easy to create realistic objects. The efficiency goes beyond the ease of drawing and creating three-dimensional objects, because you rarely need to create anything more than once;

click on image below to play video ▶ using the 3d warehouse

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11 Complex & Combined Shapes Anything is possible in SketchUp when you learn Follow Me and Intersect.

S

ketchUp is capable of making virtually any possible shape, and when you know how to create basic shapes you can combine and modify them. You need to understand the relationships between faces and edges, and when things will stick to each other, and how to combine objects into Groups or Components when you don’t want things to stick or stretch. Complex shapes are often combinations of other shapes. Think about what you want to create, and what simple shapes will work together. A house with a peaked roof is basically a box with holes in it (the doors and windows) and the roof can be an extruded triangle or perhaps a pyramid. Sometimes you will want to add one shape to another, or you might need to subtract one shape from another. And there will be times when you want to combine two shapes, find where they intersect with each other and then throw away all the extra bits and pieces.

▲ A rectangular face will make it easy to draw a complex shape in empty space.

As with many of the tools in SketchUp, Follow Me can be used in different ways. You can extrude a face with Follow Me by selecting the face first and then follow along the path with the cursor, or you can pre-select the path, pick up the Follow Me tool, then click on the face you want to extrude. Selecting the path first is almost always the better choice. Let’s take a simple box, and dress it up by running a molding around the top edges. The molding is called a cove, and it’s an arc shape with flat areas at each end of the arc. Start by drawing a rectangle coming off one of the corners of the box. The rectangle tool may be difficult to use. It will want to attach itself to one of the faces of the box. Use the pencil to draw a line from the corner out in space, then draw down on the blue axis, then back to the edge of the box. If the box is

Extrusions With Follow Me Faces in SketchUp can be extruded in a single direction with the Push/Pull tool. It doesn’t matter how complicated the face is, if it exists as a face it can be extruded. The limit is direction; Push/Pull only works at a right angle to the face and can’t turn corners or follow curves. There is another tool, called Follow Me that extrudes faces along a path. That path can be around the corners of a box shape, or around the perimeter of an arc or a circle. The path can be a combination of straight lines and curves.

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▲ Add guidelines to locate curves precisely.

▲ Make sure the arc is drawn on the face.

“loose geometry”, the third line should define a face. If the box is a group or a component, it will be necessary to draw a vertical line back to the original corner to create a face for the molding. When you have a rectangular face, use the Arc tool to define the shape of the mold▲ Select the top face of the box to use the perimeter as a path, then get the ing, then the Eraser tool Follow Me tool. to remove the corner. If you want to precisely define the arc, you can make some guidelines with the Tape Measure tool before you draw the arc and erase them when you are finished. If the box is not combined into a group or a component, click on the top face to select it. That will let Follow Me know that you want the extrusion to go all the way around the perimeter of the face. Now pick the Follow Me tool from the toolbar (it’s right next to Push/Pull). When you have the tool, click on the face that you want to ▲ Click the profiled face to extrude along the preselected path. extrude.

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Follow Me is pretty impressive. It turns the corners and trims each length with a perfect miter joint. Selecting the path first (in this case the perimeter of the top of the box) makes SketchUp do all the fussy work at the corners. After you’ve made the extrusion, use Undo to back up to where you had the face profile of the molding sticking out from the corner of the box. This time, select the Follow Me tool first, and look at the command line in the lower left corner of the screen. The first step is to select the face you want to extrude. This is the small face. Click once on this face and let go of the mouse button. Slowly and carefully drag the cursor along the edge of the box, without clicking until you have traced all the way around the box. You will see a red line extending along the edge to the corner and the face extrusion following the cursor with a red square at the cursor’s position. When you reach the corner, change direction and drag in the direction of the next edge of the box. Do not click the mouse button until you are sure you are on the point where you want to stop the extrusion. You can stop at the third corner, or you can continue all the way around the box.

▲ The extrusion runs all the way around the face.

▲ Follow Me turns the corners into neatly mitered extrusions.

◀ Follow Me also

works by selecting the tool first. Click once on the face to be extruded and carefully trace the path.

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If you go all the way around, click when you reach the end of the box top, don’t continue to the far edge of the molding. As long as you don’t click the mouse button, you can back up the path

you are following. If you do click the mouse, the Follow Me command will end. If you clicked where you didn’t mean to, use Undo to back up.

▶ When you use Follow

Me manually, don’t hold the mouse button down or click until you reach the end.

click on image below to play video ▶ EXTRUDING SHAPES WITH "FOLLOW ME"

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▲ Make the profiled face a component, then open it for editing and add lines to create a path.

Sticky Stuff & Follow Me Follow Me, like Push/Pull only works on loose geometry. If what you want to extrude is part of a group or a component, you need to first open the group or component for editing. In the example of placing the molding around the top of the box, everything was loose and sticky. We got the result we wanted, but now the molding is stuck to the box. It will be difficult or impossible to change either the box or the molding. If the box and the molding are each combined into a group or component before extruding the molding, we have control over all of the parts. If you haven’t saved the file you were working in, back up using Undo to where there was just a box, and just the face of the molding. Use a left to right selection box to select the face of the molding, right-click over the selection and make the face a component named “molding”. Triple-click to select all of the box and make it a component named “box”.

▲ Select the lines of the path, then the Follow Me tool and click on the face to extrude around the edges.

Open the molding component for editing. Because the box and the molding are now two distinct entities, you will need to add geometry for the path of the extrusion. Use the pencil tool and add three lines, up one side, across the long edge then back along the other side. You can trace the edges of the box, even though it is a separate component. The Pencil tool will snap to the corners of the box. Select the three lines, pick up the Follow Me tool and click on the face of the molding. After the extrusion is made, hit the space bar to return to the Selection Arrow and click out in space to close the molding component.

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Nested Components

profile along their length, and one or both corners cut at a 45° angle. If we were building several boxes, or running trim on a house, we could use these pieces in other places. Move the molding above the box, then open the component for editing, and use the pencil to draw a line at an angle on each corner. This will let us separate each leg. Orbit around to look at things from below and add lines to these corners as well. If the profile is more complicated than a single curve, draw a line across the corner on any horizontal surface. Make a bounding box to select all of one leg of the molding. After the selection is made, right-click with the cursor over the selection and pick Make Component from the menu. Name the new component, and check the box at the lower left of the window that says Replace selection with component. Because these pieces were previously part of a component, the box will be unchecked.

In real life, the molding would be three separate pieces. The molding we just made in SketchUp is one single piece. If we need to, we can open that component, separate each piece and make them individual components, within the molding component. This will give us pieces with the molding

▲ The molding is now a separate entity from the box.

▲ The molding component can be separated into three individual components; start by drawing across horizontal corners.

▶ Draw a box from left to right around one leg and make it a component.

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◀ Move the

Repeat the process with the other short leg, and make it a component with a different name than the first leg. When both short legs are components, you can select all of the geometry of the leg in between by tripleclicking anywhere on that leg. Make it a component after the selection and don’t forget to check the Replace Selection with Component box. Click out in empty space to close the molding component. If you want to change anything, you will first have to open the main “molding” component, and then the nested component. The leg of molding across the front won’t have faces on the mitered ends. Open the main component, then click on the front leg to select it. Move it up where you can see one end, and double-click on it to open it for editing or right-click and select Edit Component from the menu. Zoom in on one end, and trace over one of the short lines to make a face on the end. Repeat on the other open end. Click outside the front leg component, but within the boundary of the main component. That will close the “front leg” nested component, but leave the main component open. Move the front leg back into position, then close the main component.

center component and open it for editing.

▼ Trace over

any of the lines on the open edges to create the missing face.

Reuse With Caution We can reuse these pieces anywhere and anytime we want, and if we make the components Unique, we can stretch them or shrink them to any length. Because the components are nested, we need to be careful to avoid changing things we don’t want to in the original parts.

▲ Close the component after making the faces and move it back into position. 144


Make a new box, larger in size than the first one. You can draw it, but it will be faster to make a copy, then use Push/Pull or the Move tool to make it larger. If the box is a component, make a copy, right click with the cursor over the copy and select Make Unique from the menu. You can keep track of Unique components by looking at the Components window, or by clicking on a component and checking the Entity Info window. A Unique component will be assigned a name automatically; the name of the original component, followed by a number. You can change a component’s name either in the Entity Info window or the Components window by highlighting the name and typing in a new one.

You can also copy the molding component, the one that has three other components nested inside. When you make it unique, however, only the main component becomes unique, the nested components retain their original definitions. You could easily make the overall component unique, change the nested components and find out that you made a mess of things back in the original version. If you copied the complete molding component, explode it. When you explode a nested component it doesn’t revert back to edges and faces, it goes back one step to individual components. Grab all three of the nested components, rightclick and pick Make Unique from the menu. If that sounds confusing, try it and see what happens in the Components window. You will see that a unique version of each of the individual components is created. If you dragged each of the three molding components in from the Component window, select all three and make them unique.

▲ The molding components can

be used on another box. Begin by dragging them into the model space.

▶ Place the components in

position, select all three and click “Make Unique”.

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▶ Push/Pull won’t work on the angled faces, but they can be stretched with the Move tool.

▶ Make a left-to-right

selection box to grab the angled face. As the face is moved all the lines connected to it will stretch.

You can make the individual pieces longer in a couple of ways. The pieces with a square end can be made longer by opening the component for editing, then using Push/Pull on the end face. Place the inside edge of the angled end in position on the box, then snap to the edge of the box to end the Push/Pull command. That technique won’t work with the piece that has two angled ends. Push/Pull will only extrude at a right angle to the selected face. There is still a

way to make this piece longer by carefully selecting objects and using the Move tool. The left to right, bounding selection box can grab all of the geometry that makes the angled face. When it is selected, get the Move tool and click on an end point. As you move the selected face, all the lines connected to it will stretch. You can snap to the end of the other component to end the move exactly where you want it.

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A nested component can also be made by selection two or more other components. Hold down the Shift key and click with the Selection Arrow on all three legs of the molding. Right-click over

the selection and pick Make Component from the menu. The new component will contain the three individual components.

▶ Individual components can be selected and combined to form a nested component.

click on image below to play video ▶ making & using nested components

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Combine Shapes With Intersect When you draw a line across an existing face, the face and the lines that define it will be divided into pieces at the intersection. When things become more complicated, that division won’t always happen, especially if one or more of the parts contain curved surfaces. Start a new SketchUp file, and make a cylinder, then make it a group. The goal is to make a horizontal hole through the center of the vertical cylinder. It can be difficult to locate things precisely when working with curved shapes. Remember that circles in SketchUp aren’t really curves, they are 24-sided polygons. Zoom in on the edge of your cylinder closest to the red axis, and look at the intersections of the short line segments. When you make a circle, drag the radius in an axis direction. Circles created that way will have an intersection of two short lines on the edge where a line drawn through the center in either axis direction would be. These points will be the closest points on the perimeter of the circle to each axis. If you want to draw a line through the center on the top face, the cursor will want to snap to the end points of the short line segments. If you grab the Pencil tool and approach the circle from a random direction, it might snap anywhere. If you move slowly and carefully from outside the circle, the cursor will find the end point closest to the axis. We want the hole to go through the center of the cylinder, but there are so many surfaces on the edge that the Circle tool will jump from surface to surface. We need a surface in the correct orientation to draw on. In addition to there being so many surfaces, none of them are parallel to the horizontal axes, due to the location of the intersections on the edge that let us draw on axis through the center of the circle on the top of the cylinder. It will be easier to draw a rectangle on top of the cylinder, then make a second cylinder that will become the hole on the rectangle. In SketchUp,

▲ Draw a circle, extrude it to a cylinder and make it a group.

◀ Find an

endpoint on the circle closest to an exist and draw a rectangle from that point.

there are times when the quickest way to create one thing is to draw something else to make it easy to locate what we want, then get rid of that something else. The rectangle should extend from edge to edge across the cylinder, but it can be any height that is larger than the diameter of the hole we want to make.

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▲ Hover the Circle tool cursor over the mid-point of

▲ Click to start the circle when an inference appears from the mid-point of a vertical line. That will center the circle in the rectangle.

a line until an inference appears. Don’t click, but move the cursor toward the center of the rectangle.

After you have a rectangular face on top of the cylinder, type the keyboard shortcut “C”, or pick the Circle tool from the toolbar. Hover the cursor over the middle of the top line of the rectangle, but don’t click anywhere. You’ll see an inference point light up when you reach the mid-point of the line. When you see the inference, move the cursor down slowly and steadily. When you reach the center of the rectangle, you should see other inferences appear to let you know where you are. They may not show up if you are not zoomed in close on your work, or if your point of view doesn’t clearly show the rectangle and cylinder in all three axis directions. Orbit to make the point of view on your screen similar to the one in the image on this page and try again. You might need to slowly hover the cursor above the midpoint of one of the vertical lines after hovering over the midpoint of the top horizontal line. When you see inference lines in both directions, you can click to locate the circle in the center of the rectangle.

▲ Click again to finish the circle, then erase the lines to remove the rectangle. After the circle is drawn, you don’t need the rectangle any more, so go ahead and erase it. With the Eraser tool, you can hold down the left mouse button and drag over the lines. The lines will turn blue as they are selected with the Eraser tool. After the lines are selected, let go of the button and the lines will disappear, along with the faces that they define.

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Use Push/Pull to extrude the circle into a cylinder. It can be any length, as long as it is longer than the larger, vertical cylinder. After extruding, make it a group, and move it in the opposite direction, along the same axis that the extrusion was made. Place it so both ends are beyond the extents of the large cylinder. Then move the small horizontal cylinder down along the blue axis. When it is in position, Zoom in and look at where the small cylinder passes through the large one. Both objects occupy the same space, but SketchUp has not connected the surfaces of the small cylinder to the surfaces of the large one. That needs to happen so we can erase the parts of the small cylinder that stick out beyond the large cylinder, and leave a hole.

▲ Extrude the circle to

a cylinder, make it a group and move the group horizontally.

▶ Move the cylinder down to protrude from the first cylinder, select both groups, right-click then select “Explode” from the menu.

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If both are groups, click on one, hold the Shift key down and click on the other. When both are highlighted, right-click with the cursor over them and select Explode from the menu. Don’t click on anything with the left mouse button, rightclick again. When you explode the groups, all of the loose geometry is selected at the end of the command. The second right-click brings up the menu. This time pick Intersect Faces/With Selection. Click out in space to deselect the objects, and zoom in to examine the edge of the large cylinder where the small one passes through. You will now

see black lines where one surface meets another. Erase (or select and delete) the geometry of the small cylinder that is outside the large one. The quickest way is to draw a box from right to left to enclose the circle on the end, then hit the Delete key. That will remove the edges that define the walls of the tube. A small circular surface will remain on each side of the large cylinder. The eraser doesn’t work on faces, so select the face within the circle and press the Delete key. Repeat on the other side, and you now have a horizontal hole passing through the vertical cylinder.

▲ While both cylinders are selected, right-click and select “Intersect Faces/With Selection” from the menu. 151


▲ A surface remains where the small cylinder passed

▲ Delete the small face from both sides to leave a

through the large one. Select the face and delete it.

hole.

click on image below to play video ▶ combining shapes with intersect

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▲ Draw a vertical line from the center, then an angled line to make a triangular face.

▲ Make a circle, then draw a line on-axis from the center to the edge.

Follow Me Around a Circle Earlier in this chapter, we used Follow Me to extrude around the corners of a rectangular box. Follow Me can be used to extrude along any continuous path. You can make a cone shape by first drawing a circle. The perimeter of the circle will be the path, now you need a face to extrude. Draw a line from the center of the circle out to the edge, along one of the horizontal axes. If you have trouble locating the center of the circle with the Line (Pencil) tool, first hover the cursor over the edge of the circle, then slowly move toward the center. An inference point will appear when the cursor is close. Click once with the left mouse button when the inference is visible to begin the line. Draw a vertical line, also from the center and from the end of that line, continue with a line at an angle to the end of the horizontal line. This will create a triangular face. Follow Me will work with a face of any shape. As long as a face exists it can be extruded. Select the circle, then the Follow Me tool from the tool bar. Click on the triangle, and it will flow around the circle, creating a cone.

▲ Select the circle, then the Follow Me tool.

▲ Click on the triangle and Follow Me will create a cone. 153


▶ Make two circles

You can also use Follow Me to extrude a circle around a circle, creating a sphere. Begin by drawing a vertically oriented circle. If the Circle tool wants to stick to the ground, use Orbit to adjust your point of view so that the sky is visible. You will see the cursor change color to indicate which axis the face of the circle will be in line with. Hold down the Shift key when the cursor turns red or green. The second step is to draw another circle, this one parallel to the ground plane. Put the cursor below the first circle, and when the color of the cursor is blue, hold down the Shift key. Slowly bring the cursor up to the edge of the first circle, then in to the center. Keep the Shift key held down, and look for the center inference on the vertical circle. When it is visible, click once to start the second circle at the center point of the first. Let go of the mouse button and move to the outer edge. When the edge inference appears, click the left mouse button to set the diameter of the second circle. Select the face of one of the circles, then get the Follow Me tool from the toolbar. When you have the tool, click on the face of the other circle to create a sphere.

at a 90° angle with the same center and radius.

▶ Select one face

for the path, get the Follow Me tool and click on the other face.

▶ Follow Me turns the two circles into a sphere.

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Paths for Follow Me don’t need to be closed, and they can be any combination of lines or arcs that you can draw. Draw a few arcs on the ground, start each new arc from the end of the previous one. Then make a rectangular, vertical face and use the arc tool to make it into a more complicated face. Erase the unneeded lines at the corners and

between the points of the arcs. Select the path, then Follow Me and lastly click on the face to extrude it. Orbit around to take a good look at the extrusion and experiment using follow me on different paths. As long as the path is continuous you can use it with a face and Follow Me.

▲ Follow Me can use any

continuous path. Draw a series of arcs or lines.

▶ Create a face on one end of the path. 155


▶ Select the

path, then the Follow Me tool.

▼ One click extrudes the face along the curved path.

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▲ Orbit around to get a better look at the curved extrusion. click on image below to play video ▶ making round objects with follow me

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Curved Shapes in Two Directions

SketchUp, you can make just about anything you can imagine. Sometimes you need to make two straight objects and combine them to develop a complex curve. Start with a rectangle and draw some arcs across the surface to make a curved face. When you have a shape you like, use Push/Pull to give it thickness. The exact thickness isn’t important, as long as it is thicker than the original face is wide. Make a copy of the object off to one side, leaving plenty of room between the copy and the original object, then use the Rotate tool to turn it 90°.

Curved surfaces in SketchUp are really combinations of flat surfaces surrounded by straight edges. If you select Hidden Geometry from the View menu and look at any of the objects made in this chapter, you can better see this. Despite the apparent complexity, it takes less of your computer’s resources to make curved surfaces from smaller flat faces. This doesn’t limit what you can model, and if you are aware of how curved surfaces work in

▶ Create a vertical rectangle, draw arcs on the face and erase the corners.

▶ Use

Push/Pull to give the face thickness.

▲ Triple-click to select all the geometry, then CTRL + Move to make a copy. 158


After it is rotated, select the entire copy and then the Move tool. Click on one of the lower corners to begin the move and let go of the mouse button. Move it into position on a corner of the original object. The two objects occupy the same space, but SketchUp still considers them to be two distinct

things. Zoom in and look close at where one curve meets another. The lack of a distinct line indicates what is going on. To make one object out of the two, we need to tell the program to draw lines everywhere one curved surface crosses another. That’s a lot of lines, but we don’t have to track down all the points and make them. SketchUp will do that for us if we ask it to. Select all of the geometry of both objects by drawing a box around them with the selection arrow. When they are all highlighted, right-click with the cursor over the selected geometry. That right-click brings up a menu. Select Intersect Faces/With Selection from the menu. It might not look like anything happened, but SketchUp did a lot of work in the blink of an eye. Zoom in again to look at where the curves meet, and you will now see lines at the intersections. Now you can begin to erase the edges you don’t want in your combined object. There are several ways you can remove the excess, and you will get different results by erasing different things. There will be a lot of extra geometry to remove, but it won’t take long if you use the right strategy.

▲ Rotate the copy, then move it to the corner of the original object.

Visible line means faces are connected.

No line means faces are not connected.

Use the Eraser tool to remove extra lines.

▲ No lines in between the two shapes means the faces

▲ Lines are now visible at the intersection. Erase the lines outside the combined objects.

are not connected. Select all of the geometry, rightclick and select “Intersect Faces/With Selection” from the menu.

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▲ The curved surfaces are actually many flat faces. Not all of the lines that define the faces are visible. Remember that edges define faces. If you remove the correct edges, you can quickly remove things either with the Eraser tool or by selecting objects, then hitting the Delete key. Start by removing curved edges at the outer edges. Some of the edges that define curves may be hidden, but the eraser will still work if you realize they are there. To speed the process, go to the View menu and click Hidden Geometry. That will display all the facets of the curved surfaces and you can remove them in one step with the Eraser tool. Hold down the left mouse button and drag the eraser across the surface. The hidden edges will be highlighted in blue and when you release the button they will cease to exist. If you erase an edge that defines a face you want to keep, you can retrace your steps by using

Curved surfaces are made of many flat faces.

▲ Turn on “Hidden Geometry” from the view menu and

the lines can be removed by dragging the Eraser over them.

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Undo. There is an Undo tool on the toolbar, but it pays to learn the keyboard shortcut; “CTRL+Z.” You can also locate the end points and retrace the line to restore the faces. You will likely be left with a few lines that you don’t want to see that can’t be erased without removing necessary faces. You can hide these lines in a couple of ways. Hidden geometry still exists, but it is no longer visible in the model. You can select objects with the arrow, then right-click over the object or select an object, click on the Edit menu and select Hide.

A faster method to hide lines is with the Eraser tool. The command line at the lower left corner of the screen gives options for tools when they are active. Hold down the Shift key when using the Eraser and edges will be removed from view instead of deleted. You can also hold down the CTRL key to “soften” edges. Soften will make the intersections between the flat faces that make up curved surface appear less chunky. Hiding things can be useful for making your model look better, and you can also use it if you want to work on an object that is obscured or made hard to reach by another object. As in real life, the problem with hiding things is that you often need to remember where they are. The View menu controls the display of Hidden Geometry. The program default is not to show it, so the box will be unchecked when you first open the menu. Click Hidden Geometry and all the little lines on curved surfaces will be displayed as dashed lines. It’s worth taking a look just to better understand how curved surfaces are really constructed in SketchUp.

▲ Objects can be hidden by right-clicking and selecting “Hide” from the menu.

▶ The View menu controls the visibility of hidden geometry.

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If you hide a group or component it becomes invisible, unless you select Hidden Geometry from the View menu. When you do that, the hidden group or component will be displayed with a mesh surface instead of the normal solid color. Right-click over an object displayed this way and you can select Unhide from the menu to display it normally.

▲ Hidden groups or components will appear as a mesh when “Hidden Geometry"

is checked on the view menu. Right-click and select “Unhide” from the menu to return their normal appearance.

click on image below to play video ▶ hidden geometry

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12 Materials & Styles After a model is complete there are many ways to manage the way it looks, and to share it.

T

here are two parts to making a SketchUp model; problem-solving and presentation. In the first part, we figure out the size and shape of three-dimensional objects and how objects relate to each other and the space they occupy. In the second part, our concern shifts to the way these objects look, to better communicate the information about the objects in the model. Our goals for how the finished model appears can fall anywhere along a wide spectrum. We may be happy with the simple edges and faces of the default style, or we may want something to look more realistic. We may even want our model to appear more as a photograph or a pencil drawing. SketchUp provides options for rendering the way we choose.

window, colors of faces and the width of lines can be changed, and those changes will be seen in all the objects in the model. There are many pre-configured styles that come with the program, and if none of those meet your needs you can edit an existing style, or create a new style. Like the Components window, the Styles window can display two groups of styles by clicking on the “plus” (+) sign at the upper right of the window. The name and description of the style that is current appears at the top of the window. To

Say it With Style The simplest way to change the appearance of a SketchUp model is through the Styles window. Before exploring the Styles window, let’s review the nature of things in SketchUp. Everything in the model is either a face or an edge, and we can control the appearance of either type of entity. In SketchUp, a “style” is a collection of settings for the appearance of faces, edges and the background. In the Styles

▲ The Styles window controls the appearance of your model as a whole.

Styles are collections of settings for edges, faces and the background of the model space.

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materials & styles

change the style of your model, simply click on one of the thumbnails in the Styles window. Below the description are three tabs, labeled Select, Edit and Mix. Below the tabs are arrows that let you navigate between groups, or collections of styles. When you click on one of the thumbnails, that style is applied to your model, changing the appearance of everything it it. To the right of ▲ Selecting a new style changes the appearance of the entire model. the arrows is a little house icon that will display the styles that are in your particular model. The drop-down arrow to the right lets you choose a collection of styles to display. There is also a secondary pane in the Styles window so you can see both your In Model styles as well as other groups of styles that are stored in the window when you install SketchUp.

Change a Style With the Edit Tab The Edit tab in the Styles window makes it possible to change the settings for the current style. At the top of the Edit pane are five icons, and each of them gives access to various properties you can change. At the left is the icon to access the edge settings. When you check a box, the specific settings are applied to objects in the model, so you can see what effect your changes will have. These changes affect only the appearance of objects in the model. Edges are still edges and faces are still faces, but if you get carried away with changing the appearance of objects in your model, you can slow down the performance of your computer and make it difficult to see precise points. Best practice is to use a simple style to

▲ Choose “In Model” from the “Select” tab to see the

styles you have used – and to return to the style you started with.

create the model, then apply a new style when you are finished to change the way the model looks. The second icon controls the way faces appear. Faces in SketchUp have both a front and a back. By default the fronts are white and the backs are a grayish blue. Click on one of the colored squares, and a color-picker pop-up displays, allowing you to select any color you want. Below the colored

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materials & styles

▶ The five

boxes is a line of icons labeled Style and each displays the faces in the model a different way. The X-ray mode changes the visible faces from opaque to translucent, so you can see the edges behind the faces. This can be helpful, but if you leave X-ray on, what you see on screen can become confusing. I set up a shortcut to toggle the X-ray view on and off as I work on a model. Shortcuts can be set through the Preferences window. (See page 9.) The settings for changing the appearance of faces and edges are also available from the View menu. Changes to the background can only be made through the Styles window, by selecting the third icon under the Edit tab. The three colored boxes function the same way as the face colors – click on one of the boxes, then select the color using any of the available methods.

icons in the “Edit” tab control different aspects of the model.

▲ The appearance of faces and edges can also be changed from the View menu. “X-ray” makes faces transparent. 165

materials & styles

▶ When the sky

you change your point of view as you model in 3D space. The fourth icon allows you to import an image file to use as a watermark, or background in the model. The last tab has controls for the way edges, guidelines and section cuts appear, both for when they are selected and when they are not. Changes to a style can be used to create a new style. If you want to save changes you have made, navigate back to the In Model styles display, right-click over the icon of the style you have been working with and select Save As. There is also an icon with a “plus” (+) sign to the right of the style description that creates a new style. There are a lot of options for changing appearance with styles, but the biggest limitation is that changing a style changes the appearance of everything in your model. The more complex you make the style, the harder your computer will have to work. If you find your display bogging down after making style changes, those changes are likely the reason why.

is visible it is easier to keep track of your position in 3D space.

Checking the box labeled Sky creates a horizon line at the edge of the ground plane, and Ground displays the ground plane in a distinct color. Both of those boxes will override the overall background color. In addition, you can make the ground color transparent, and choose to see it or not when you orbit below the ground. Displaying the sky and ground can help keep you oriented as

click on image below to play video ▶ changing the model's appearance with styles

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materials & styles

Materials If you want different objects in your model to appear different ways, you will need to work with them individually, using the Paint Bucket tool and the Materials window. Materials can be applied to either individual faces, or to groups or components. When you click on the Paint Bucket icon from the toolbar, the Materials window opens, allowing you to choose a color. Click on the color, then an object in your model to apply the color. You can also access this by selecting Materials

from the Window menu or by typing the keyboard shortcut “B”. That is only the beginning of what can be accomplished with materials. Not only can you select solid colors, you can also apply images to faces in your model. These images are called “textures” in SketchUp and a number of them come with the program, organized into collections. You can also import images to SketchUp and save them to use as materials.

▶ Type the shortcut “B”, click the Paint

Bucket icon or select Materials from the Window menu.

▼ One click with the Paint Bucket on a

component applies color to the entire component.

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◀ The secondary pane displays two

collections of materials at the same time.

▼ The drop-down list allows you to choose available materials and texture images.

All of this action works through the Materials window, so let’s take some time to explore it. Materials is one of the few areas where there is a significant difference in using SketchUp on a PC or on a Mac. The following description and images apply to using the Materials window on a PC. If you’re on a Mac, skip ahead to page 179. You can access the Materials window either by selecting Materials from the Window menu, or by clicking on the Paint Bucket icon from the toolbar. The keyboard shortcut “B” will also open the Materials window and engage the Paint Bucket tool. Click on one of the color swatches in the Materials window to select a color, then click on a face in your model. If the object you click on is a group or a component, all of the faces of that group or component will have that material applied. If you click on a face that is “loose geometry” (not a part of a group or component) then only the face you select will have the material applied. If you want different materials on different faces within a group or component, you first need to open that group or component for editing.

The Materials window is similar to other windows in SketchUp, such as the Components or Styles windows. At the very top is the title bar, and you can expand and collapse the window by clicking in the title bar. Below the title is a thumbnail image and the name of the current material. To the right is a down-pointing arrow with a plus (+) sign that will open a secondary pane. Under that is another icon that will open a pop-up window to create a new material. Below that is an icon that will switch back to the default materials. There are two tabs, labeled Select and Edit and below them are arrows to navigate through available collections of materials, and the little house icon to display the materials currently in the model. The small text block has a drop-down arrow, another way to explore available groups of materials. The icon to the right of the text opens a menu with options to open or save collections of materials and to change the appearance of the Materials window.

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▲ Adjust the color settings then click OK to save the new color to the “In Model” materials.

▲ Click this icon to create your own material with one of several methods. ▶ To use a custom

Materials are organized in groups of files called “collections”. The most basic materials are solid colors, but image files can also be used to paint the faces of a SketchUp model. Image files are called “textures” in SketchUp. Before we look at textures, let’s take a look at using the colors that come with the program and creating our own.

color in another model, rightclick on the icon and select “Save As”.

Make Your Own Color Click on the middle icon in the upper part of the window to open the Create Material pane. There are three headings in this window, labeled Color, Texture and Opacity. Below the Color heading is a text box labeled Picker. The drop-down arrow to the right of the text box offers four methods of creating a new color. The slider at the bottom controls the opacity of the color. When you click OK after creating your new color, a swatch will appear in the In Model materials. You can save a custom color by right-clicking

on the swatch in the Materials window and selecting Save As from the menu. The location of the file is specified in the Preferences window. You can also delete a color from the group with the right-click menu.

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The default location for custom materials is My Documents, so you will likely want to create a folder to store them in. You can also save the In Model colors at one time by selecting Save

Collection As … from the menu that appears when you click on the icon to the right of the text box in the Select tab of the Materials window. The top item in that menu, Open or Create a Collection opens a file browser that will allow you to retrieve your custom materials later on. If you want to apply an existing color from one object to another object, click on the Eye Dropper icon above and to the right of the text box in the Select tab of the Materials window. Click on the color you would like to sample, then click on the other face to apply it.

▲ Create a folder to

store your custom colors for later use. Each color is saved as a .skm file.

▶ The eye-dropper

allows you to sample the color from one object and apply it to another.

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▲ This slider controls colors to appear transparent or opaque.

Edit Colors Existing colors can be changed by selecting a color, then clicking on the Edit tab. This tab looks like the pane than opens to create a new material; you can control the color in various ways, and you can make a color transparent or opaque. There are two additional icons to the right of the text box. The first functions the same way as the eyedropper in the Select tab, it samples the color of an existing object in the model. The second icon is also a color sampler, but it lets you match a color from any visible area of your computer’s screen. Adjust the size of your SketchUp window so that another window, such as a photo is visible. Click the sample icon, then click on the desired color in the other window. The sampled color will appear in the Materials window in SketchUp and can be used in the current model and saved for use in other models.

▲ This eye-dropper, in the “Edit” tab lets you

pick a color from your computer’s screen to use in SketchUp.

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▲ Adjust the SketchUp window so another image is visible and click on the desired color. click on image below to play video ▶ applying colors to objects

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▲ The imported image can be adjusted in size, color and transparency.

Images for Textures The lower portion of the edit tab allows you to import a photo (or other image file) to use as a material in SketchUp. You can accomplish the same thing from the Create Material icon, or by selecting “Import” from the file menu and clicking the button that says Use as texture. When you check the box that says Use texture image, or import an image file with one of the other methods, a file browser will open and you can locate the file that you want to import. You will need to experiment with a photo editing program to get an image that will work well in SketchUp. After the import, the image appears in the In Model colors. You can make some changes in the Edit tab and you can also open your photo editing program from the Edit tab. Remember that if you apply a material to a component, it colors all the faces of that component. That makes for quick work, but when you use texture images, coloring the entire component

▲ Photos or other image files may also be used to

create materials. Check the box then browse for an image file to use.

keeps you from scaling the size of the texture image or aiming it in a different direction. To have better control over the appearance of textures, open components for editing and apply the texture to one face at a time.

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▲ After import an image texture can be applied to all faces of a component with one click.

▲ A component must be open for editing to apply color to individual faces. That’s more work, but it gives you more control.

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Image files for textures can slow down your computer, so you’ll want to find a balance between the level of detail you want and the image size. Do some experimenting first with an empty model and a simple rectangle. When you import an image, you may only see a portion of it when you apply it to a face, or you may see the image repeated across the surface. SketchUp will assign a size to the image when you import it, and that size will appear below the name of the image file in the Materials window. You can alter the size by typing in either of the two text boxes below the file name. To the right of the text boxes is an icon that locks or unlocks the ratio between the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the image. Leave the aspect ratio locked if you don’t want to distort the image. After a texture is applied, its position and scale can be edited. The scale can be modified through

the edit tab in the Materials window. You can alter the height and width of the image by changing the numbers that appear next to the horizontal and vertical arrows. You only need to change one number if the link symbol is unbroken; the aspect ratio will be locked. Click on the icon to unlock the ratio and you can then distort the texture image by stretching it in one direction or the other. You can also alter the color of the image, make it more or less transparent with the Opacity slider and open the image for editing with an external image editing program. You can choose that program and the location of texture images through the Preferences window. For more control over the texture image appearance, apply the texture to a single face either on loose geometry or by opening a group or component for editing before applying the texture. After the texture is applied, right-click over it

Right-click on a texture.

… then Position. Select Texture …

▲ Right-click over an applied texture and select “Texture/Position” from the menu. 175

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and select Texture/Position from the menu. Four colored squares appear, each with a pushpin icon next to it. Each pin has a different function that is explained on a tag that shows when the cursor is hovered over the pin. If the photograph is much

larger or smaller than the face it was applied to, zoom to see all four pins. The texture image can be moved by clicking on it and dragging the cursor. The best way to learn the different functions of the pins is to import an

▶ If the image is larger

than the face, the control pins may not be visible. Scale down by dragging a pin.

▼ Image scale can also be modified through the “Edit” tab in the Materials window.

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image and experiment. Right-click a second time and a different menu appears offering the ability to flip or rotate the image with a single click. If you altered the position manually, click Done from this menu or click out it empty space. If you make a lot of adjustments to get a texture to look

“just right” you can preserve those changes with a right-click over the face and select Make Unique Texture from the pop-up menu. The altered texture will now appear in the In Model section of the Materials window.

▲ The four pins modify the image in numerous ways.

▶ A second right-click brings

up this menu. It applies the changes and offers methods to flip or rotate the image.

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▶ After changes are applied, a

right-click brings up this menu. “Make Unique Texture” saves the modifications for use on other faces.

click on image below to play video ▶ importing images for textures

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Materials on a Mac

Below that is an icon that looks similar to a magnifying glass and a rectangle. The rectangle displays the color that will be used by the paint bucket. If you don’t click on a thumbnail, it will display as a white box. The “little house” icon displays the colors used in the model and the arrows to the left of the icon toggle through the list of available colors and textures. The drop-down list to the right of the In Model icon displays the available sets of colors. Select a name from the list to display the contents of each set in the pane below the In Model icon. To apply a color to an object in the model, click on one of

The functions of the Paint Bucket and the Materials window are the same on Macs and PCs, but the appearance of the window itself is decidedly different, and the interface isn’t as intuitive. Select Materials from the Window menu, click on the Paint Bucket icon or type the keyboard shortcut “B” to make the window appear on screen. The window is labeled Colors and there is a row of five icons across the top. The icon farthest to the right, the image of a brick gives you access to the numerous color sets and texture collections available within SketchUp.

▲ Select Materials from the Window Menu, type the keyboard shortcut “B” or click the Paint Bucket icon to open the window. Click on a color in the window, then on a face in the model to apply a color.

▲ Select the Brick icon on the right of the window to access all of the available color collections.

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▲ Select from the list to see thumbnails of available textures in the Materials window.

materials & styles

the thumbnails then click on a face in the model. If you apply a color to a group or a component, all the faces will change color. When you apply a color to a face that is loose geometry, or to a face that is in a group or component that is open for editing, only that face will change color. Below that pane are two more drop-down lists, one labeled Color and the other labeled List. Only when a color is selected will all of the options be available in the Color drop down. From that list, you can do several things to an existing color, or you can create a new one. If no color is currently selected, New Texture… is the only option available.

The New Texture option will open a file browser and you can then import an image file into SketchUp to use in your model. You can also import an image by clicking on the icon to the right of the text box in the lower portion of the Edit Material window. The Width and Height text boxes allow you to scale the size of an imported image. The icon to the right of those boxes maintains the proportions of the original image, and a click on the icon will unlink the dimensions. The List button lets you create a new collection of textures. The default name is My Textures and after you name it and click OK it will appear

▲ Select “Edit …” from the Color drop-down

▲ Select “New …” from the List drop-down to

list to alter a texture or create a new one.

create a new collection of textures.

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among the other collections that are available from the Materials window. The source for the textures that are included in that list is the small row of squares at the bottom of the Materials window. Before you create a new list, click on any of the texture icons in the pane above and drag down to an empty square. The colors in the small squares are then included in the new collection. To remove any of the colors from a collection, select the thumbnail, the choose Remove from the

drop-down list under the Color button. You can also import a folder through the new list selection. The default location for the texture folders on a Mac is Library/Application Support/SketchUp. Most of the action in the Materials window on a Mac takes place when the Brick icon, at far right is selected. The other four icons allow you to create custom colors in different ways. The first icon invokes a color wheel; click on the desired color within the wheel and use the sliders to adjust the shade and opacity. A newly created color must be applied to an object in the model to appear in the In Model colors, or you can save it for later use by dragging the color from the bar at the top of the window to one of the little squares at the bottom.

▲ A new collection will be comprised of the

▲ The first four icons provide different ways

colors in the small squares at the bottom of the Materials window.

to create custom colors. Click within the wheel and adjust with the sliders.

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Color picker

▲ In this panel, several types of

sliders are available for creating colors.

The second tab creates custom colors through the use of sliders, and there are options available from the drop-down list located below the active color bar. The small icon to the left of that bar is actually a color-picker. Click on the icon, then click on any visible color to reuse that color. It will work on anything visible, you can grab a color from any visible location on your computer’s screen. The third icon also allows you to create a custom color. You can click anywhere in the default image, called Spectrum, to select a color. You can also click on New from File in the dropdown menu and import an image file from elsewhere on you computer. A file browser opens and after the image is selected it will appear where the Spectrum image was. You can’t apply the entire image as a texture, but you can click anywhere in the displayed image to use a color from the image. The pick-box is a tiny white dot. As with the other custom colors, apply it to a face in the model, or drag it down to one of the small white squares for later use.

▶ With the

Spectrum panel, you can pick a color from the default image (left), or import an image and pick a color anywhere within the image (right).

Pick-box Pick-box

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◀ This group

The last selection icon is a box of crayons and any color from the image that appears can be used on a face in the model. The slider can be used to decrease the opacity of a selected color to make it more transparent. After textures are applied to objects in the model with a Mac, they can be scaled and rotated in the same as on a PC. See the instructions on page 175 for making those adjustments.

offers a selection of basic color tones.

▲ The application and adjustment of applied textures is the same on a Mac as it is on a PC. 183

13 Share, Export & Print Your Model SketchUp models are a fantastic way to communicate ideas. You can share your model with other SketchUp users, or use your model in other programs.

A

SketchUp model might look like a drawing, or even a photograph when rendered a certain way, but there is much more to it than lines on paper. Like all computer graphics a SketchUp model is in essence an artfully arranged collection of zeros and ones. Unlike a two-dimensional graphics file, one three-dimensional model can generate as many two-dimensional images as you can imagine. There are several different ways you can share a model; you can share the model itself, use the information you see on your screen as a static image, or stitch together several images from your model to create an animated tour of your creation. One of the big differences between SketchUp Pro and SketchUp Make (the free version of

SketchUp) is the types of files that can be imported in and exported out of SketchUp. In SketchUp Pro, vector graphics files can be imported and exported. AutoCAD and Adobe Illustrator are both vector graphics programs used by many professionals. In those programs (and similar programs) the individual lines of a SketchUp model retain the ability to be modified. In SketchUp Make, only raster graphics can be imported or exported. Most photo-editing programs deal with raster graphics. You can do a lot with raster graphics, but the pixels in the image don’t have relationships with each other. That difference alone can be a good reason to but the license for SketchUp Pro. One of my “real jobs” is preparing technical illustations for printed

▶ Scenes let you save

specific views of your model for printing or for easier navigation.

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magazines and books. I can make a SketchUp model in far less time than I can make a drawing by hand or in a 2D program, and I can show the people I work with 3D views so it’s easier to decide what a published drawing will look like. The model is then exported to another program that is used for the printed page layout. One other aspect of SketchUp Pro is a ridealong program called Layout. Layout takes different views from a SketchUp model, and lets you arrange them on a page and add text and dimensions. You can still print from SketchUp Make, but the output process isn’t as easy and the printed output isn’t as elegant. Once again, the ability to prepare good-looking presentation drawings of a 3D model makes SketchUp Pro a bargain compared to other CAD programs. In this chapter, we’ll look at what can be done with SketchUp Make. It may not have all the capabilities of SketchUp Pro, but it still does some pretty remarkable things. Before we get to sharing

a model however, let's look at how we can organize a model by saving specific points of view and display settings. The method for this in SketchUp is known as Scenes.

Creating A Scene Think back to the way SketchUp displays objects in the model on your computer screen. ’Way back in Chapter Three we talked about the onscreen view in SketchUp being what we would see if there were a camera taking pictures of the model as we work on it. In SketchUp there is a Camera Menu and a Camera Toolbar. The Standard Views that also have a toolbar and appear on the Camera menu are images with the camera in a specific position. Scenes are also saved static views of the model, but those views can be saved and created from any position you can navigate to. In addition to saving the point of view, there are several other properties that can be saved with a Scene to hide or display objects or to change the background.

▲ Find the Scenes window in the Window menu and use it to add and manage scenes in your SketchUp model. 185


▶ Scene tabs

let you quickly switch from one scene to another. If they aren’t visible, check this item in the View menu.

▶ When a scene is

Like Components and Materials, Scenes are created, properties to save with the Scene selected, and the Scene itself saved through a window. Go to the Window menu and select Scenes. The window has a lot in common with the other windows we’ve worked with. Just below the name in the title bar of the Scenes window are three icons: Two arrows chasing each other in a circle that updates a scene, a plus (+) sign that adds a scene and a minus sign (-) that deletes a scene. When you open the Scene window for the first time in a model, it will be empty. When you click on the plus sign, a thumbnail showing the current point of view of the model will appear in the Scenes window and a tab will appear at the top of the screen below the toolbars. If the tabs don’t show at the top of the screen, open the View menu and select Scene Tabs. Scenes are numbered by default. The first scene added will be called Scene 1. The order of the scenes can be rearranged by clicking the icons to the right of the Update, Add and Delete Scene

updated, several properties will be saved in that particular scene.

icons. The curved arrows move any scene up or down in sequence. To the right of the two arrows is another icon that offers options for how the thumbnail views of each scene will appear. To the right of that is another icon that will open or close a secondary pane below the thumbnails. In the details pane is a checkbox that will include any scene in an animation, and a list of properties that can be saved with each scene. Below the checkbox is a text box that shows the name of the scene. You can replace the text and

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thus change the name of the scene by highlighting the default name and typing in a new one. The new name will appear on the tab and next to the thumbnail image. You can also add a written description of the scene in the secondary pane, and it will also appear near the thumbnails. If you open the Styles window along with the Scenes window, you can set a different style for each scene. Scene settings won’t be saved until you update the scene. The obvious way to do that is with the icon in the Scenes window, but you can also update a scene from the menu that appears when you right-click over a tab or a thumbnail. Update saves the settings and point of view that exist when you update. If you change a scene and navigate to another scene by clicking on its tab or double-clicking on a thumbnail in the Scenes window, the scene you left will revert back to its last updated state.

Updating a scene is independent of saving the model, and if you make changes to the model itself, those changes will appear in all scenes. If you need to show two different versions of the model, or just a portion of it, remember that you can make a copy with a couple of mouse clicks and unique components that won’t affect other components with the same definition. Scenes are also handy when you have a complicated model. If you find yourself zooming back and forth between a view of the entire model and a close up view, you can create a scene for each camera position and navigate between them with a single mouse click. To navigate from Scene to Scene, either click on the tab at the top of the screen or double-click on the Scene thumbnail in the Scenes window.

click on image below to play video ▶ creating scenes

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◀ You can export the image on screen in a number of formats to use outside of SketchUp.

Exporting From SketchUp SketchUp files have their own format, so if you want to use an image from your model somewhere else, in a written report or as part of an art project you need to export it. When you export, you need to choose a format that the person you’re sharing with, or the computer program you are using can understand. The options available are found in the file menu. There is a secondary menu under File/ Export that lists 3D Model and 2D Graphic. If you click on either of these a file browser opens and you can select both the location of the exported file and the image file format. There is also a mention of Get Pro 3D Exporters that will take you to the SketchUp website. You must upgrade the license from SketchUp Make to SketchUp Pro to export any files in formats other than what is available through the menus in SketchUp Make.

▲ This is an example of an exported image. It shows the model and background but not the three axis lines.

The image export is a snapshot of what is visible in the modeling window, but the axis lines won’t appear in the image. When you click Export from the file browser an image file is saved in the location specified in the window. The default location can be named in the Files tab of the Preference window on PCs. After the export the image file can be used as any other image file would be.

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There is another option under File/Export that is labeled Animation. An animation in SketchUp is a tour through the scenes in your model. The animation can be played in SketchUp, or it can be saved as a video file. To watch the animation within SketchUp, go to the View menu and select Animation/Play at the bottom of the list. A small

control panel will appear that will let you pause or resume playing the animation. If you click on the button labeled Stop, the animation ends and the control buttons will disappear. If you select Settings instead of Play, the Model Info window opens and you can select how long each scene will be displayed and if the

▲ The scenes in the model can be turned into an animation.

Control box

▶ This control box lets you pause, restart or stop an animation.

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animation will jump from scene to scene or pan the camera for a designated length of time in between each scene. These settings will be used if you choose to export the animation from the file menu. When you select Export/Animation from the file menu, there is an option for Video or Image Set. Either selection opens a file browser, Video will save the file in a video format. Image Set will save every frame from the animation as a separate image file. Either export takes a while as SketchUp goes through the animation and saves every frame. If the settings display each scene for several seconds and transitions are on, there will be hundreds if not thousands of frames in the animation.

▲ Settings for the time each scene remains in view and transitions between scenes are made in the Model Info window.

▲ The animation can be exported as a video file in one of several formats. 190


More frames in the animation will take longer to render in a video export, and will also generate a great many identical image files of each scene if you opt to export an Image Set. The video below is an example of an animation exported from the SketchUp file used to create the images in this chapter.

▲ Rendering the video export may take a few minutes as each frame of the animation is saved.

click on image below to play video ▶ animation

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▲ This warning box will appear

as SketchUp connects to the 3D Warehouse.

▲ A model can be uploaded to the 3D Warehouse from the File menu.

Share the Model on 3D Warehouse In other chapters of this book, we’ve gone online to the 3D Warehouse to download a model that someone else placed there. It’s almost as easy to upload a model, and the path to the 3D Warehouse is the same. From the File menu select 3D Warehouse/Share Model. You need to have a Google account and you may need to sign in to that account. You may also receive a message letting you know that SketchUp wants to share information from your computer on the internet. Click Accept to continue. If a pop-up window appears that asks you if you want to purge your model of unused items, you should select Yes most of the time. The window is letting you know that there is some extra stuff in your model file – things like extra component, materials or styles that at one time were present but are no longer in the model space. The purge will delete all of these in order to make the

▲ This box will clean your model of unused items before it is uploaded.

uploaded file as small as possible. Be aware however, that if you click Yes and then save the model file to your machine, those items won’t be available from the model. You may want to save a distinct version of the file to Upload, while keeping the original version on your computer. There is an easy way to do that from the File menu. In addition to the familiar Save and Save As options, SketchUp has Save a Copy As … command available. Save a Copy As … goes to the same folder your model is in and automatically adds a number at the end of the file name. My Model becomes My Model1 with the next sequential number added each time you use this function.

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This saves you time and when you have a model that you spent a lot of time working on, it’s a good idea to finish all of your modeling work then save a copy before you create a lot of scenes or add materials and textures. SketchUp is a very stable program, but once in a while things can go wrong. If SketchUp crashes, a Bug Splat window will appear. This offers you the opportunity to let the folks who make the SketchUp program know that something went wrong.

The good news is that this is a rare occurrence and if you make the settings suggested in Chapter Two in the Preferences window, SketchUp has automatically saved a backup copy of your file. That back up copy means that you will only lose a few minutes of work, not hours or days. If you need to open the backup copy to recover, look in the same folder where you saved the original model. On a PC, the backup copy will have the same file name as your original, but the file extension will be .skb instead of the normal .skp. On a Mac, the backup copy will have a tilde (~) between the file name and the .skp extension. When 3D Warehouse is ready for your model a window appears asking you to give your model a name. That name is what the 3D Warehouse search engine will look for. You can also add a written description of your model, add a link so 3D Warehouse users can find more information about the model, or choose to keep the model out of public view. Fill in the information and hit the Upload button. When you visit 3D Warehouse, you can find models you have uploaded under

▶ Don’t panic

if things go wrong and SketchUp crashes. A backup copy is saved every few minutes as you work on your model.

▶ Before

uploading you need to provide some information about the model, and you can provide extra information as well.

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the My Warehouse arrow at the upper right of the screen. When the upload is complete, a window will appear letting you know that it was successful. If you have a collection of models on 3D Warehouse you can add your model to it through

the Organize button. The Share button gives you a number of options. You can get the HTML code to create a link to your model, or to embed a 3D image of the model online that also links back to the model itself.

▶ You can create

your own collection of models in the 3D Warehouse and add your models to it.

▶ You can keep the

uploaded model private, or share it with the world in a number of ways.

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◀ Before you print, make the settings available in the “Print Preview …” window.

▼ There are numerous

settings here, and checking or unchecking some buttons will disable or enable other options.

Print From Your Model It isn’t a requirement to use scenes for printing your SketchUp model, but if you want to print more than one point of view, or want the appearance of the print to be different from the appearance on screen, scenes can make things much easier. In SketchUp Make (the free version of SketchUp) you can print, but there are limits to what you can do. When you upgrade to the SketchUp Pro license, you also get a ride-along program called Layout. Layout gives you far more control over the appearance of a printed version of your model. SketchUp Pro also allows you to export vector graphics to programs like AutoCAD or Adobe Illustrator, so you can do the modeling in SketchUp, export the file and do more attractive print layouts than are possible with SketchUp Make. The file menu in SketchUp has three options related to printing. You might think that Print

SetUp … is where you choose how the model will be sent to the printer, but that only allows you to select a printer and orient the image as portrait or landscape. The real settings can be made in the window that appears when you click on Print Preview … or Print … The same window appears with either selection, but there is a big difference in what happens when you click the button that says OK. If you selected Print Preview … a click on OK shows you a preview image. If you selected Print … your printer makes noises and starts spitting out as many pieces of paper as it needs.

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SketchUp can print full-sized or scaled images from the model, and it will tile the print on as many pages as it needs. It’s quite possible to send something to the printer that requires dozens of pages. The safest thing to do is to use Print Preview … to set up the print. There are quite a few buttons and check boxes in the Print Preview window, and checking some of them disable the options available in others.

The first option is labeled Tabbed Scene Print Range. If you select Scenes instead of Current View all the other options will be grayed out and each scene specified in the boxes will print as they appear on screen. There is also a setting in the Camera menu that affects the output of a print. If Parallel Projection is selected instead of Perspective, you can set the size of the print through the Print Preview window. When Perspective is selected from the Camera menu, prints will always be limited to a single page. In this example, Parallel Projection has been chosen and the two boxes labeled Fit to page and Use model extents have been unchecked. SketchUp will now split the image onto two pieces of paper. This shows up in the lower left corner of the window under Tiled Sheet Print Range. When you click OK the preview will appear and you can see how the image will be divided. If you have the camera in Parallel Projection and select one of the Standard Views more

▲ To print to a specific scale, including full size, the camera must be set to “Parallel Projection”.

▶ When certain settings are made SketchUp will spread the printed image over as many pages as it needs.

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options are available, but the risk of accidentally printing numerous pages also increases. When the scene is in a Standard View it is possible to print the SketchUp model at a designated scale. The model itself is life size, so if you have an object that would fit within the bounds of a single sheet of paper it’s not an issue to print it full size. Even if the object will cover a few pages, this is a great way to create a pattern so you can make

something in real life based on a SketchUp model. If however, you have a model of a house or other large object, a full-size print will be tiled to as many pages as it needs. The scale factor is set in the text boxes to the right of the preview window. If the two numbers and their units match, the print will be at the actual size of the object. Whenever you print at full size or to a specific scale, make sure to double-check the number of sheets at the lower left of the window. The size and shape of the modeling window also affects the image that will be printed. You can fit more on a single sheet if you zoom in on what you want to print and resize the window so that the object fills most of the screen. The object in this model is actually about six inches wide and a bit more than ten inches tall. With the window sized as seen in this screen shot, it will take 8 sheets of paper to print a full-sized image. That is because SketchUp will print the screen image, not just the model. The Use Model Extents box doesn’t mean the print will be limited to the objects in the model, it means it will be limited to

▲ Before you hit “OK”

check the lower left to see how many pages will print.

▶ SketchUp prints what

is visible on your screen. When the model only takes a small portion of the screen, extra pages will print.

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what is visible in the model screen. If you adjust the size of the onscreen window to about the proportions of a piece of paper, and zoom to fill the screen with the model, the number of pages needed to print can be reduced dramatically. With the screen sized like this: the object can be printed at full size on a single sheet of paper. One of the other limitations of printing from ▲ To print an image on fewer sheets, ▲ This version will print on a single SketchUp Make is there adjust the size of the model window page, instead of the 8 pages in the isn’t a way to save the print to fill the screen with the object. previous view. settings with the scenes. Print Preview and Print windows display the same To print multiple scenes with different settings, options, but when you select OK in the print winyou need to repeat or redo the settings made in dow the image is sent directly to the printer. the Print Preview window. Remember that the

click on image below to play video ▶ printing from SketchUp Make

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14 Extra Features and Extra Information This book is a good start; here are more things you can do and where to go to reach the next level of modeling.

T

Plug-ins and the Extension Warehouse

his book is a good start in learning how to use SketchUp for any purpose, but it barely scratches the surface of what can be accomplished. My intention for this book is to provide a solid foundation in the basics of the program so that the reader can move forward in his or her own direction. A lot of features of SketchUp haven’t been covered, but when you know the basics, learning more advanced operations and making more complex models is far easier to pick up. This final chapter will take a look at one important feature of SketchUp and then point the reader to available resources to carry their modeling to the next level.

The folks who created SketchUp believe in “3D for everyone” and one of the ways the program is so versatile is that they have kept it simple and flexible. That way users with different things in mind can go in different directions without getting bogged down using a program with many features they might never use. Along with that philosophy, the SketchUp team supports outsiders who have adapted the program for specific uses and created additional software for certain tasks. The background programming of SketchUp allows many things to be automated or tailored for specific uses. In the SketchUp world, these extra features are known as extensions or plug-ins. Until the release of SketchUp 2013, finding useful plug-ins required an online search, and a less than elegant download and installation process. With the latest versions of SketchUp, those extras can now be found in the Extension Warehouse, and the key is in the Windows menu. If your computer is connected to the internet, one click on Extension Warehouse in the Windows menu will take you to this online repository that is similar in many ways to the 3D Warehouse. Instead of models, ▲ You can find an abundance of add-ons to SketchUp in the Extension Warehouse.

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extra features and extra information

◀ Like the 3D Warehouse, the Extension Warehouse is an online collection, arranged in several ways.

Click on a Categories or Industries heading to browse the collection.

▼ This plug-in makes it easier to create 3D objects in geometric shapes.

the Extension Warehouse is loaded with addons to the SketchUp program. Some of these were created by the SketchUp team and others were created by other parties. A visit to the Extension Warehouse can be overwhelming because of the number of add-ons available. You don’t have to use plug-ins, but when tasks in SketchUp start to seem tedious and repetitious, chances are good that someone else thought so too, and wrote some code to automate that process. Add-ons in the warehouse are organized several ways, and you can search for something specific or you can browse to see what might be useful. Some of these will only function with SketchUp Pro and some can get into the more esoteric areas of SketchUp. If you don’t know that the functions in the descriptions refer to, the chances are good that you don’t need that plug-in. On the other hand, you might come across an add-on that

Shapes collection

will open your world to a task you had in mind when you decided to learn to 3D model. Shapes is a basic plug-in and we’ll us it as an example of how to download and use a new tool from the Extension Warehouse. When you click on the icon in the list, you are taken to a window that tells you what the extension does, how many other SketchUp users have downloaded it,

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◀ Click on an extension name to

go to the extension’s information and download page. Scroll down to see what it does and how to use it.

▼ Click on the red bar to install; this pop-up lets you know when the installation is complete.

and user-written reviews and comments. At the upper-right corner of this window is a red button labeled Install. When you click Install, a couple of pop-up windows will appear. The first is a reminder that the plug-in will have access to your computer’s file system and the second will let you know that the installation was successful and the plug-in is ready to use. The descriptive window will let you know how it works and it will remain visible after the installation until you close it. Shapes adds items to the Draw menu. If you click on the name of any of the shapes, a window appears with the appropriate dimensions. You can change the dimensions in any of the text blocks and when you click OK the object

▲ Installing the “Shapes” plug-in adds options to the Draw menu. Each of these shapes can be created by entering a few dimensions.

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▲ Highlight the text and type in new dimensions to create a box of any size, then click “OK”.

▶ The box appears at the

specified size, faces and edges combined into a group.

appears in your model. It will be at the specified size and it will be combined into a group. If you know the name of the plug-in, or have a specific need, type in the Search box in the Extension Warehouse window. In this case, the process can be much faster than browsing through the categories. The Bezier Curve tool adds an option to the draw menu, and with it more complex and elegant curves can be created that can be made with the circle or arc tools in SketchUp.

Be careful about downloading plug-ins that you might not really need. Some will add additional toolbars as well as menu items and it’s easy to load up so many tools that you don’t have room to model. If you decide that an extension isn’t a good fit for your work, it can be uninstalled from the Extension Warehouse. Open the Extension Warehouse from the Window menu, find the extension you want to remove by typing its name in the Search

▶ You can also find extensions through the search function of the Extensions Warehouse. Click on the name when search results appear to learn more and install a plug-in.

Type the name of the plug-in you're looking for.

To learn more about the plug-in, click on the name when it appears.

You can also browse the categories.

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window or by hovering over your user name and clicking on My Extensions. Extension Warehouse remembers what you have downloaded and if you click on an already installed plug-in, the window that appears now has an Uninstall button in the upperright corner of the window.

Click on the "Uninstall" button to remove an extension.

▶ If you decide to remove an extension, return to the Extension

Warehouse and click on the “Uninstall” button at the upper right.

click on image below to play video ▶ the extension warehouse

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Help Beyond This Book The digital format of this book makes it easy to go back and find information if you need to refresh what you learned the first time through. The items listed in the Table of Contents are actually links, so if you can find the topic there, click on the name and you’ll be taken to the page. The list of videos are also linked to the pages where the video files are located. The author’s website http://readwatchdo.com contains much information about SketchUp. There is a section about this book, and you’ll be able to find updates and answers to frequently asked questions online. You can also send an e-mail to the author through the web site. One of the best places to look for assistance when working in SketchUp is within the program itself. Don’t forget about the Instructor window when you pick up a tool you haven’t used before, or may not have used recently. The command line at the lower left of the screen is also a valuable resource if you can’t recall what to do next.

▲ Remember that the Instructor window will tell you how to use the tools.

▲ Online help is available in the Knowledge Center in the Help menu.

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The Knowledge Center found in the Help menu opens your web browser to the Help page on the SketchUp website where you can search for an answer or browse common issues. An independent website, http://sketchucation.com, has numerous resources as well, in the form of tutorials and forums where you can find answers to specific questions on anything SketchUp.

▲ The Knowledge Center is part of the official SketchUp web site.

▲ SketchUcation is an independent website, full of helpful information about SketchUp.

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Appendix 1 SketchUp Basic Tool Guide

T

his chapter is a quick reference to the most often used tools in SketchUp and a few often-overlooked features. It supplements the more in-depth explanations in the other parts of the book with a brief look at the main points of each tool. This tool-centric approach makes it easy to find an answer when you get stuck, or need a quick refresher on the exact steps of making something. Before we get to the tools, let’s look at the ways the SketchUp program and interface try to help you as you model.

Aids Within the Program; Information and Inferences There are many visual cues within SketchUp to help you draw with efficiency and accuracy. They are easy to miss if you don’t know what they are for, what they look like or what they are trying to communicate. Some of them also need a second or two to appear on screen, so one of the best ways to speed up your modeling is by slowing down. Here is a list of important but often overlooked aspects of SketchUp:

▲ SketchUp will keep you on track with a number

of visual cues. These pages explain what to look for.

olored Inferences & Tags C As You Draw or Move: ● Colors for each axis direction ● Tags and dots for specific points

Remember to: ● Slow down so you can see them ● Hover the cursor over a point to see Inference

points ● Hover the cursor over a toolbar icon to display the tool names and functions Colors are the main method of expressing direction in SketchUp. In the modeling space is a point called the origin, where three lines intersect. The blue line represents height, and the red and green lines

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▲ Watch for colored lines and dots that appear

when you move the cursor – they let you know when you’re parallel to an axis or over a point.

appendix 1: basic tool guide

represent directions on the ground. In SketchUp speak, each of these lines is called an axis. Because SketchUp includes perspective, these lines don’t always look like they are at right angles to each other, but they are. It will take a while for your hand and eye coordination to recognize that the direction you want to move is based on color, not on the orientation you see on your screen. When you draw or move parallel to one of the axes, a red, green or blue line will follow the cursor. If you see a black line instead, you’re moving off axis and likely to become “lost in space”. SketchUp works by snapping to specific points. When the cursor is close to the end or middle of a line, an intersection or potential intersection, the point will display a colored dot and a small block

of text will appear. Click the mouse when those are visible and the cursor will snap to that exact point.

Text Tags SketchUp also provides a lot of information via text tags, small yellow boxes with written information that appear next to the cursor. Hover over an icon on the toolbar, and a box appears that gives you the name of the tool and a brief description of what it does. As you draw and move objects around, tags will also appear that tell you when you are over a certain point. Move slowly and deliberately to give the tags a chance to appear and click the mouse when the tags are visible to snap to the location described.

Text tag

▲ Hover the cursor over a tool icon and the name and function appear on a tag.

▶ SketchUp lets you know when you’re in the

Text tag

right place with a colored dot and a tag.

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Measurements window

▲ The Measurements window tells you how far you

have drawn or moved. Type a number and hit Enter to change.

Command line

▲ The command line tells you what to do next and what

You don’t need to click in the window to enter a number. Click once to start a command, let go of the left mouse button, start to move the cursor, type and hit the Enter key. You can also execute a command by clicking once to start, moving the cursor in the direction you want to go, clicking a second time, then hit the Enter key before you do anything else.

your options are.

Command Line at Lower Left It’s easy to miss this line of text at the lower left corner of the screen, but it displays options available for each tool as you select it and as you use it. Most commands in SketchUp require you to take two or three specific steps, in the correct order. The Command line takes you through these steps. When you select a tool, the display gives you the steps in order, and changes as you work through the action. If you get confused about what to do next, look down and to the left. Optional functions that are available when you use a tool with the Shift, CTRL and ALT keys also appear on the Command line.

You can enter dimensions in the middle of a command. Remember to click once to start the command, then let go and type. Objects will jump to the precise position when you hit the Enter key. Enter numbers either as decimals or fractions. Put a space after a whole number before a fraction.The title will change depending on what you are doing; lengths and angles are both entered in the Measurements window. If you don’t see the Measurements Window, or the Command line, right-click on the bar at the bottom of the model space and make the approprate selection from the pop-up menu.

Measurements Window At the lower right corner of the screen is the key to precise modeling; this window displays the changing size of objects, or distances as you work. Enter dimensions in this window by typing to control the length of objects you draw, or the distance objects move. This is so easy, almost no one can figure out how to use it at first.

Instructor Window Check next to Instructor in the Window menu or click on the question mark icon in the lower left corner of the screen to make it available.

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● Help for each tool will appear in the window when you select the tool. ● The information displayed changes when you change tools. The first line gives the tool’s name and basic function. ● Basic information for tool use is displayed in the window, under the heading that says Tool Operation.

Modifier keys give optional functions using additional keys, usually CTRL, ALT or the Shift key. The last heading, Advanced Operations, are links to information that is online but accessible through the Instructor window. You don’t need to open your browser, but you do need to be connected to the internet. If the Instructor window gets in your way or becomes distracting, click next to the window’s name in the title bar and it will collapse. Click again in the title bar and it will expand.

▲ The Instructor window gives you directions and options for any tool you select.

click on image below to play video ▶ visual aids in SketchUp

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – PENCIL/LINE

T

he Pencil tool creates lines, also Pencil/Line Tool known as edges in SketchUp. Create a line with one click on ▶ Pencil Icon on Toolbar a start point, let go of the mouse ▶ Keyboard Shortcut “L” button, and drag the cursor the ▶ Creates Lines (aka Edges) desired direction and distance, then click again to end the line. Settings for changing the pencil tool’s behavior can be found in the The program will show point inferences at the Preferences window. When you create a line, you ends and midpoints of existing objects. These colwill see colored inference lines following the curored dots will appear as you move the cursor over sor when you are drawing parallel to an axis. If specific points. Click your mouse when they are you see a black line, your line is off-axis. As you visible, and the cursor will snap to the highlighted move the mouse, pay attention to colored inferpoint. ences to draw lines parallel to an axis. ● Press the Shift key to keep a line on axis after you start to draw. ● The Arrow keys will also lock axis inferences. ▶ Up or down for the blue axis, right for the red, and left for the green

To draw a line to a precise length, enter a number in the Measurements window. You can enter the number in between clicking on a start and a stop point, or immediately after clicking on an end point. Tap the Enter key after typing the number.

▲ Hold down the Shift key or an Arrow key after starting a line to keep it parallel to an axis.

▲ Point and line inferences appear when the cursor

▲ Click when you see a dot appear to snap to or from

is in line with existing geometry. Click when you see them to snap to that point.

that exact point.

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – PENCIL/LINE

Point inferences will also appear where on-axis intersections would be if existing geometry were extended. Draw the first two lines of a rectangle by entering dimensions, then hover the cursor over the start of the first line after you start to draw

the third line. Move Pencil/ the cursor on axis and Line Tool when the third line is the correct length, and in the correct position you will see two colored axis inferences and a point indicating the potential intersection. When you draw enough lines to enclose a shape, a face will appear within the lines. A face is defined by the edges around it, so if you delete a line that defines a face, the face will disappear. If a face disappears unexpectedly, don’t panic. You can bring it back into existence by drawing a new line. You may need to trace over an edge that is already present in a complex model. This isn’t your fault, it is one of the things that can happen in SketchUp as the program tries to keep track of numerous edges and their positions in the Model space.

▲ When lines enclose an area, a face appears if all the lines are on the same plane.

click on image below to play video ▶ the pencil tool

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – RECTANGLE

T

he Rectangle tool makes four edges and a face in one step, allowing you to model with fewer clicks than if you drew every line with the Pencil tool. Rectangles drawn in empty space will stick to the ground plane. If you want to draw a vertical rectangle, adjust your point of view so that the horizon is visible.

Rectangle Tool ▶ Rectangular Icon on Toolbar ▶ Keyboard Shortcut “R” ▶ Makes 4 Lines and 1 Face

will use the existing dimension before or after the comma if you hover over existing geometry while drawing. The Rectangle tool uses point and axis inferences similar to those seen with the Pencil tool. Slow down and wait for these aids to appear and your speed in modeling will increase. The accuracy of your model will improve as well. Draw rectangles to precise sizes by entering numbers in the Measurements window, separated by a comma. It can be confusing as to which number should be entered first. For horizontal rectangles, the red axis dimension will be first. For vertical rectangles, the horizontal dimension will display first. The Measurements window will give you a cue if you compare the longest side of the rectangle you are drawing with the largest number in the window.

● Click on a starting point, let go of the

mouse button, then drag the cursor diagonally and click on an end point to create a rectangle. ● Type dimensions either after the first click and a diagonal mouse movement, or immediately after the second click. ● Separate the length and the width of the rectangle with a comma. ● Hit the Enter key after typing the dimensions to complete a rectangle. When you draw a rectangle connected to existing geometry, you don’t need to enter both dimensions. Type “X,” or “,X” and SketchUp

▲ The rectangle tool creates four lines and a face

▲ Dimensions for rectangles are separated by a

with two clicks of the mouse.

comma.

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – RECTANGLE

You don’t have to Rectangle enter both numbers Tool if you are drawing a rectangle that touches or aligns with existing geometry. Click on a point to start drawing, then hover over a point that is at the distance you want to reproduce. Move slowly and carefully away from that point to complete the rectangle. Look at the Measurements window, and if the existing dimension is listed first, type a comma, then the second dimension and hit Enter. If the existing dimension is second, type the new dimension, then a comma and hit the Enter key. A rectangle can be drawn on top of an existing face, and it will divide the existing face. Use this method to add details such as door or window openings in a wall.

▲ A rectangle drawn on an existing face divides it.

click on image below to play video ▶ the rectangle tool

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – CIRCLE & POLYGON

Circle & Polygon Tools ▶ Circle or Pentagon Icon on Toolbar ▶ Keyboard Shortcut for Circle is “C” ▶ No Default Shortcut for Polygon ▶ Both Draw from Center to a Radius

T

he Circle tool behaves much like a compass. Use inferences to locate the center and click to establish the center point. Let go of the mouse button and drag the cursor away from the center. Locating points later on will be easier if you drag in one of the axis directions. Click a second time to finish the circle. You can click on an existing point or type a number and hit Enter after the

second click. Remember that the Circle tool uses a radius, so the number you type will be one-half the desired diameter.

To Draw a Circle: ● Click once to locate the center. ● Drag cursor away from center. ● Click again or enter a dimension and hit

the Enter key. Circles in SketchUp are actually many-sided polygons. The default number of sides is 24, but that may be changed by typing a different number after you pick up the tool and before you click on the center point. Making circles with more sides will make circular objects appear more like real circles, but that adds extra geometry that may slow down the performance of your computer.

▶ Click on the

center point to start a circle. Let go of the mouse button.

▲ Drag in an axis direction to set the radius. Click

▲ Circles in SketchUp are actually made of short line

again, then type a number and hit Enter.

segments, not curves.

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Circle & Polygon Tools

To Draw a Polygon: ● Select the number of sides after you pick up the tool and before you click on the center point. ▶ Hit the Enter key after typing, the number of sides will appear in the Measurements window. ● Drag the cursor away from the center and enter a radius. ▶ The radius is the distance from the center to one of the points on the polygon.

▲ Polygons are drawn with the same method as

circles. Click on the center then drag to the radius.

Drag to expand polygon.

Specify number of sides here.

▲ Specify the number of sides for a

polygon after selecting the tool and before clicking on a center point.

▶ Drag away from the center, then enter the radius and hit the Enter key.

Specify radius here.

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Both circles and polygons are faces surrounded by edges. As such, they behave like any other faces; Push/Pull will extrude a circle into a cylinder and a polygon into a three-dimensional object.

Circle & Polygon Tools

▶ The Circle and Polygon tools

both create faces that can be extruded with Push/Pull into threedimensional objects.

click on image below to play video ▶ the circle & polygon tools

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – ARC

A

rcs in SketchUp are defined by two end points and a bulge. Bulge is the length of a perpendicular line drawn from the center of a line connecting the two end points. The cursor symbol changes as you draw, showing one, two or three points. This may seem odd, but when you get used to it, it’s an easy way to add arcs to your model. Arcs only create a single edge, a face won’t be created unless the two end points are connected by a line or the arc is made on an existing face. As with circles, arcs are actually a series of short line segments.

Arc Tool ▶ Arc with Three Dots Icon on Toolbar

▶ Keyboard Shortcut “A” ▶ Creates a Segment of a Circle ▶ Cursor for Arc Tool Changes with each Step of Making an Arc

To make an arc a specific radius, type the dimension of the radius followed by the letter “R” after the last click and tap the Enter key. The arc trailing the cursor will turn to a magenta or cyan color when the arc is tangent to existing geometry.

To Draw an Arc: ● Click one point to establish the beginning

of the arc. ● Click a second point to establish the end of the arc. ● Drag the cursor to set the bulge distance.

End point

End point

▲ Arcs are easier to draw on an existing face. Click

▲ … then click again for the second end point. Let go of the mouse button and …

to establish one end point …

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – ARC

Arcs are easier to draw on an existing face rather than in empty space. Without a face for reference, the last click may drift off-axis, leaving the arc oddly positioned. Guidelines are also

helpful to position an arc exactly where you want it. Arc Tool

Bulge

▲ The arc being drawn changes color when it is

▲ Drag the cursor away from the line to establish the

tangent to existing geometry.

“bulge” distance.

click on image below to play video ▶ the arc tool

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – push/pull

P

ush/Pull works by extruding an existing face, at a right angle to Push/Pull Tool the face. In essence it moves a copy ▶ Box with Arrow Icon on Toolbar of the face and stretches any lines ▶ Keyboard Shortcut “P” or other faces that are attached to ▶ Extrudes Geometry from an it. Push/Pull will only work on Existing Face one face at a time and will only extrude at a right angle to the face. Because its direction is fixed, you can begin the extrusion, then click on a point on ● Select a face, then the Push/Pull tool, or something nearby. The extrusion will match the hover the Push/Pull cursor over a face and dimension of the object that you click on. Extrude blue dots will appear. to a precise length by entering a number in the ● Click and let go, then drag the cursor at a Measurements window, or snapping to existing right angle to face. geometry. Point and axis inferences work with ▶ Type the length of the extrusion in the Push/Pull to end the extrusion at a specific point measurements window or … or to match the location of an existing face. ▶ Snap to and click on any nearby existing geometry to match the length. ● When using Push/ Pull on multiple faces in succession, double-clicking a face will extrude it to the same dimension and direction as the previous face.

▲ Push/Pull extrudes a flat face into a three-dimensional object.

▲ Click and let go, them move the cursor at a right-angle to the face.

▲ After the extrusion starts you can use any other object as a reference to match the length.

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – push/pull

You can also use Push/Pull to make cutouts or holes in objects. As the name implies, you can extrude in two directions from any face. Look for pop-up tags that let you know when you have reached the other side of an object to create a through hole. Make a hole a precise depth by typing a number in the Measurements

window. Extruding is a fast method for creating three-dimensional objects from two dimensional faces, or for making a recess or hole parallel to the face of an object.

Push/ Pull Tool

▲ Snap to the far side to make the hole go completely

▲ Push a circle to create a hole.

through the object.

click on image below to play video ▶ the push/pull tool

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – SELECT ARROW

T

he Select tool is one of the most often used tools in SketchUp; you need to let the program know what you want to work on before you begin working. For many commands you need to select specific objects before choosing a tool to work with the objects.

Select Arrow ▶ Black Arrow on Toolbar ▶ Keyboard Shortcut is Space Bar ▶ Select One or More Objects to Modify Them

▶ Use the Select Arrow then the Delete Key to Remove Objects

● Select objects one at a time by

placing the cursor on an object and clicking. ● When an object is selected, it will turn blue. ▶ Lines turn solid blue ▶ Faces are covered with a pattern of blue dots. ● Hit the spacebar to exit any other tool and return to the Select tool. ● Click the arrow in empty space with the arrow to deselect an object or objects.

to remove an object from a selection set. When any object is highlighted to show that it is selected, press the Delete key to remove it.

One, Two, Three Clicks One click with the mouse will select an edge or a face. When you click twice, any other object that touches the first object will also be selected. This is most often used by clicking twice on a face to also select the edges that surround it. Be deliberate in how and where you click however, or you can select more than you meant to. Click three times and you will select the object, what’s connected to it, and anything else adjacent.

Hold down the Shift key to add objects to the selection set. A small plus sign will appear next to the cursor to let you know this option is turned on. You can deselect all highlighted objects by clicking in space, or you can hold down the Shift key

▲ Selected objects are highlighted in blue. Hold

▲ One click selects a face. A selected face is highlighted with blue dots.

down the Shift key to add or remove objects.

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● A Bounding box Select is made by dragging Arrow the cursor from left to right. It selects every object entirely within the box, but not objects that are crossed by the extents of the box, as the box is drawn. A solid black line follows the cursor as you drag to indicate a Bounding box.

▲ Click twice to select a face and the edges around it.

▲ Hold down the left mouse button and drag a box

from left to right to make a bounding selection box.

▲ Click three times to select all connected loose geometry.

Selection Boxes In addition to selecting multiple objects by clicking them one at a time, you can also drag the cursor to create a selection box. This is a feature of many graphics programs, but SketchUp offers two distinct types of selection boxes; Bounding boxes and Crossing boxes. Each type is used in different situations to select several objects at once, or to select specific objects without clicking on each one individually.

▲ Only those objects that are entirely within the bounding box are selected. 222


● A Crossing box is made by dragging the mouse in the opposite direction, from right to left. The Crossing box selects everything that the lines of the box cross, as well as everything within the box. The cursor is followed by a dashed line when you make a crossing box. In situations where you want to select several objects at once, dragging a box is quick, and having two types of boxes gives you control over what is selected, or what is not. When you modify models you will make extensive use of both types of boxes.

In a three-dimenSelect sional model, you can Arrow select objects with a selection box that are out of sight – behind or below other objects. Selection boxes work more like nets than two-dimensional corrals. If you find an odd line tagging along when you move or copy something, it is likely that it was within the box, but out of sight.

▲ Drag a box from right to left to create a crossing selection box.

▶ A crossing box selects both objects within the box and objects crossed by the dashed boundary.

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Highlights Tell the Story

When you hold Select the Shift key, you can Arrow also remove objects by clicking on them a second time. This holds true even if you made the original selection with a box. If you want all but a few objects that are close together, draw a box, hold down the Shift key and de-select the few that you don’t want.

Many of the tools ins SketchUp are easier to use if you select an object first, then the tool to modify the object. Ending a command, like Move or Rotate doesn’t automatically de-select the object. Keep your eyes on the screen and pay attention to what is highlighted in blue. When you finish a command, hit the ESC key to put the tool down, and click in empty space to remove the object from the selection. When you want to work on several objects in close proximity, take a minute to consider the various ways available to select them. If you find yourself losing patience with holding the Shift key to select a number of objects, consider drawing a box with the arrow instead.

click on image below to play video ▶ the select arrow

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – Eraser

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he Eraser tool, as you might Eraser Tool expect is used to remove unwanted objects from a SketchUp ▶ Pink Eraser Icon on Toolbar model. The Eraser doesn’t work ▶ Keyboard Shortcut “E” on everything however; you can’t ▶ Erases Lines (aka Edges) remove a face by clicking on it with the Eraser. Look closely at the cursor with the Eraser tool active. The pick box is a small circle at the lower left of the icon. It can be hard to see, and ● With an unwanted line visible in the curwhat you want to erase must be within the pick sor selection box, click on the unwanted line box. or … ● Hold down the left mouse button and drag the cursor across the line or several lines. ▶ When you release the mouse button, the edges disappear. The Eraser tool works only on lines, not faces. But if you erase the lines that define faces, the faces will disappear too. You can also remove unwanted geometry by selecting it with the Select Arrow and pressing the Delete key when the objects are highlighted. Using the Select Arrow and the Delete key is often faster than using the Eraser tool.

Pick box

▲ Unwanted lines must be within the small circle at the end of the Eraser tool to be removed.

▶ The Eraser tool only removes lines, but faces disappear when the edges that define them are erased.

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – eraser

There is also an icon on the tool bar, a red circle with an “X” across it. It is named Erase and when one or more objects are selected, one click of the Erase tool will remove them. There is also an Erase command on the menu that appears when you right-click over an object that does the same thing.

Eraser tool

When you erase Eraser by dragging the curTool sor, move slowly and pay attention to what objects get selected. Selected lines will turn blue and be visible until you release the mouse button. You may need to make a second pass to remove everything you want to remove. This is a good way to remove unwanted guidelines outside the model, in empty space.

Erase tool

▲ Hold down the left mouse button and drag across multiple lines with the Eraser. Selected lines turn blue.

▶ The highlighted lines disappear when the mouse button is released.

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – eraser

Eraser Tool Options

These options work Eraser when you hold down Tool the modifier key and use the Eraser tool. As with erasing, these only work on lines, and not on faces. Soften/Smooth makes lines appear rounded. Hide makes objects disappear from view, but hidden lines still exist in the model. If you hide an edge, faces defined by that edge are still visible. You can hide a face by right-clicking over it with the Selection Arrow and selecting Hide from the pop-up menu. If you want hidden objects to be visible, click on the View menu and select Hidden Geometry. Hidden lines appear as dotted lines and hidden faces appear as a mesh surface. You can “unhide” objects from the right-click menu, or from the Edit menu. Unhide returns hidden lines and faces to their normal appearance.

When the Eraser tool is active, the Command line in the lower left corner of the screen displays two options; Shift=Hide, CTRL=Soften/Smooth.

▲ Hold down the Shift key while using the Eraser to hide lines.

click on image below to play video ▶ the eraser

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – move

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he Move tool changes the locaMove Tool tion in 3D space of selected ▶ Four Red Arrows Icon on geometry. Be careful about what Toolbar point you select to move an object, ▶ Keyboard Shortcut “M” you have to use that same point ▶ Moves Objects and to let the object go and complete Makes Copies the move. If you move a group or a component, it moves as a single object. If you move loose geometry, lines and faces that touch the object will Select first: stretch or distort as you move. ● Select one or more objects, then the Move There are two ways the Move tool works: tool. ● Click and let go, then drag to move the Tool first: selection. ● Select the move tool and hover the cursor ● Click again or type a dimension and hit over an object. Enter to complete the move. ● The object selected will turn blue. ● This will work on multiple objects. ● Click and let go and drag the cursor to ● After a Move is complete, any selected move the object. objects remain selected and the Move tool ● Click again or enter a distance and hit is still active. Hit the space bar to close the Enter to end the move. move tool and click in space to deselect. ● This method only works on one object at a time. ● Selecting what you want to move can be difficult if several objects are close to each other.

▲ You can select and move one object at a time with

▲ When you move an object, other objects connected

the Move tool.

to it will stretch or shrink.

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Pay attention to the axial and point inferences when you move. Look for a line in one of the three axis colors to appear trailing the cursor as you move. You may need to orbit, pan or zoom to complete a move. These navigation functions, Zoom, Orbit and Pan all work in the middle of the Move command. Click and let go of the mouse button to start the move. Letting go allows you to navigate without clicking accidentally to end the move. Think before you move so that the point you use to select the object at the start is also a useful point to let go of the object. When a move is complete, the object will still be selected, and the Move tool will still be active. If you click at this point and move the mouse, the object will move a second time.

● Hit the ESC

Move Tool

key to deselect moved objects and leave the Move tool active. ● Hit the spacebar to return the cursor to the Selection Arrow and click in empty space to let go of the object. The Move tool is one of the most often used commands in SketchUp, so be sure to practice the selection of objects and moving to and from specific points. Watch for the visual cues, or use the Shift or Arrow keys to stay on axis when you move.

Auto-Fold Auto-Fold adds geometry in some situations when faces are moved. If the attached geometry can’t be stretched of distorted in more than one direction at a time, SketchUp will refuse to move an object in directions that would do so. Auto-Fold will add lines at corners to make this possible. Begin the Move command, start to move, then press the ALT key to turn Auto-Fold on. You will then be able to move in the previously impossible direction and SketchUp will add lines where it needs to.

▲ To move multiple objects, select them first, the use the Move to to prevent distortion.

▶ If you’re careful with the

selection, you can use the Move tool to stretch complex objects.

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Move Tool

▲ The selected face can’t move

vertically without adding lines at the corners of the outer face. Begin to move in any direction, then press the ALT key to engage Auto-fold.

▲ The symbol next to the cursor indicates that Auto-fold is active. The face can now move up and lines are automatically added to the corners.

click on image below to play video ▶ the move tool

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Rotate with the Move tool

after the rotation has Move started. This rotation Tool will be centered on the face. This is a fast way to rotate a group or component, but you can’t control the location of the center of rotation. To precisely set that, use the Rotate tool. (See page 244.)

When the Move tool is hovered over a face in a Group or Component, four small red crosses will appear, meaning the object can be rotated. Click on a cross and let go, then drag the cursor in the desired direction. The object will rotate about the centerpoint of the face. You can control the degree of rotation by typing the number of degrees and hitting Enter

▶ The small red

crosses allow the Move tool to be used to rotate objects.

▶ Click on one of the crosses, then drag the cursor and the selected object will rotate around the center of the face.

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – move/copy

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he Move tool has two modes; Move/Copy Tool you can move an object, or you can make a copy by tapping ▶ Tap CTRL (pc) or Option (Mac) the CTRL key (Option on a Mac) to Make a Copy either before you start or during a Move. A plus sign (+) will appear next to the cursor to indicate the tool is in Copy mode. The Copy tool functions like the Move tool, and you can make multiple copof something instead of drawing it from scratch, ies immediately after making the first copy. Don’t even if you need to make some modifications after confuse this with “copy and paste”, where an copying. object is copied to your computer’s memory. The Make Copies Of Existing Geometry: Copy command is one of the most used, and most ● Make a selection, then invoke the Move useful tools in SketchUp. One of the secrets to effitool. cient modeling is to draw as little as possible. In ● Press the CTRL key (ALT on a Mac) and most cases, it is faster and easier to make a copy a plus sign (+) will appear next to the cursor. ● Click and let go, then drag as when moving. ● The program will create an exact copy of selected objects at the second click point, or at a typed dimension.

▲ Tap the CTRL key

(Option on a Mac) to turn on the Copy function of the Move tool. Look for the plus (+) sign next to the cursor.

▶ Specify the

distance from the original selection point to the same point on the copy by typing the dimension.

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Two Ways To Make Multiple Copies

Multiple objects can be copied at the same time. Select what you want to copy first, then pick up the Move tool and press the CTRL key. The Copy function can be toggled on at any time during a Move, so you don’t need to start over if you forget to toggle the CTRL key. Look for the plus sign (+) next to the cursor to let you know the copy function is active. As with the Move tool, take care to choose a specific point to click on to start the Copy command. That same point will be used when you click to end the command. If you specify a distance by typing, that distance will be from the point you click to begin the Copy command.

Move/ Copy Tool

Multiple copies an equal distance apart: ● Make one copy, but

before doing anything else … ● Type the number of copies you want, then the letter X, then hit the Enter key. SketchUp will create that number of copies, spaced by the first move distance in the direction of the original copy.

▶ Make one copy,

then type the total number of copies desired and the letter “X”.

▶ Hit the Enter

key and the additional copies appear. The spacing is the same as it is between the original object and the first copy.

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SketchUp will creMove/ ate copies in between Copy Tool with equal spaces in between each copy. Typing “/4” will make 3 copies in between the original object and the first copy with 4 equal spaces.

Multiple copies equally spaced between the original object and the first copy: ● Make a copy, but before doing anything

else … ● Type a forward slash (/) followed by the number of spaces desired between the first and last object.

▶ Make one copy, then

type a forward slash (/) followed by the desired number of spaces.

▼ Equally spaced copies appear when you hit the Enter key.

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Flip Along Copies of objects can be turned into mirror images of the original. At the end of the Copy command, the objects will still be highlighted, indicating an active selection. With the cursor over the objects, right-click and select Flip Along from the menu. A sub-menu will appear with options for the axis directions, Red, Green and Blue. Select the direction that was used to make the copy. SketchUp will re-orient the geometry, making an exact copy that is the reverse of the original. This feature makes it simple to create symmetrical objects by drawing half of the image from a center line. Copy that half face, use Flip Along, then Move the two halves together. Align the center lines, then erase the center line to create a single, symmetric face.

Move/ Copy Tool

▲ Create mirror image copies by selecting “Flip Along” from the right-click menu.

click on image below to play video ▶ make copies with the move tool

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – tape measure

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he Tape Measure tool has three distinct functions in SketchUp: ● Measure existing geometry. ● Create guidelines and guidepoints to aid in creating new geometry. ● Rescale the entire model.

Tape Measure Tool ▶ Tape Measure Icon on Toolbar ▶ Keyboard Shortcut “T” ▶ Measures, Makes Guidelines, Scales

To Measure Existing Geometry:

● Click on a second point to end the mea-

● Click on one point, let go of the mouse but-

surement and the dimension will remain in the Measurements window until the next command is started. ● Hit Escape to end a measurement without closing Tape Measure tool. ● Hit the spacebar to close the Tape Measure tool and invoke the Select tool.

ton, then hover the cursor over a second point. ▶ Remember to use snap point inferences. ▶ The dimension will appear in both a pop-up text box and in the measurements window.

Distance Distance

▲ Click from one point and drag to another point with the Tape Measure tool. The distance appears in a tag by the cursor when you hover and in the Measurements window when you click a second time.

▲ Make a parallel guideline by clicking

then dragging from any point (except the end point) of an existing line, guideline or axis line.

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Guidelines are an Tape Measure aid to placing geomeTool try in precise locations. Creating guidelines is the default setting for the Tape Measure tool and hitting enter will return it to the active state. The CTRL (Option on a Mac) key toggles these functions, and a plus (+) sign will appear next to the cursor when guideline creation is active. Guidelines are infinitely long, and parallel to existing lines. Type a number and

To Create Guidelines: ● Click, let go and drag from any point

except the end of an existing line. ● You can also make guidelines by dragging from any of the colored axes or from other guidelines. ● The distance from the starting point to the guideline is controlled by typing in the measurements window, or by clicking on point inferences, including intersections of guidelines.

◀ Type the distance then hit Enter to control the distance from the existing line to the guideline.

▼ The Tape Measure can

also create guidelines parallel to any of the colored axis lines.

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hit the Enter key to place a guideline at a precise distance from an existing line. You can create guidelines at angles that are not parallel to an axis, if there is an existing line to drag from. If no line exists, use the Protractor tool to create a guideline at any angle to an existing

line. When you create Tape Measure a guideline by typing Tool a number and hitting the Enter key, the program will display the last measurement used in a tag on the cursor the next time you create a guideline. Remember to hit Enter to end the command and don’t move too fast when you drag to make subsequent guidelines.

To Create Guidepoints: ● Click once on the endpoint of a line,

or an intersection of lines and drag the cursor. ● Type the desired distance for the endpoint from the first point and hit Enter. Guidepoints are drawn in any direction that isn’t parallel to an existing line, usually at a right angle. A guidepoint is a small cross at the end of a fixed length guideline. Distances are controlled the same way as all other geometry. It’s easy to get confused and create a

▲ Click, then drag from the end of a line or an

intersection with the Tape Measure tool to create a Guidepoint.

Guidepoint

Guidepoint

▲ Tap the CTRL key to turn off guide creation and

enable the scale function of the Tape Measure tool.

▲ A Guidepoint is a small cross at the end of a fixedlength guideline.

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guidepoint when you intended to create a guideline. If you start from the end of a line you create a guidepoint. To make a guideline, remember to click any where on an existing line except the endpoint. Guidepoints never get any bigger no matter how close you zoom in on them and sometimes they can be difficult to find and remove from a SketchUp model. Remember to use Undo if you make a guidepoint by mistake. Guidelines and the short guidelines leading to guidepoints can be removed with the Eraser tool, or by selection and the Delete key. To keep your model from getting cluttered, remove guidelines and guidepoints as soon as possible.

▶ The measure-

Tape Measure Tool

ment will appear in the window at the lower right corner of the screen. ● Before you do anything else, type in a new number, the size you want the reference distance to be after re-sizing. ● Hit Enter and a dialogue box will appear. ● Click the Yes button to change all parts of the model in proportion to the ratio of the reference measurement and the number entered in the Measurements window. The Tape Measure can also be used to change the size of everything within a model, or a group or component that is open for editing. The default state of the Tape Measure is to create guides, with the plus (+) sign visible next to the cursor

To Resize the Model or a Component: ● Click on two points within the model to

establish a reference distance.

click on image below to play video ▶ creating guidelines with the tape measure

239


onscreen. The command line at the lower left of the window tells you that the CTRL toggles the Create Guides function. What it doesn’t tell you is that you can change the size of everything with a couple of mouse clicks and a little typing. If the dialogue box appears while measuring of creating guidelines, you have tapped the CTRL key accidentally while trying to create a guideline. Click No to return to the normal tape measure functions. You can also use this feature to change the size of an open group or component. Open the object for editing and use the method outlined above. This will resize only the open component or group. Be aware that resizing the model or parts of it with this method makes those changes in all three directions. You can’t make something longer without making it wider and taller at the same time. To do that, you need to use the Scale tool (See page 254).

Tape Measure Tool

Clicking Yes will resize the model after you type in a new dimension.

▲ Type a new dimension and select Yes from the pop-up

window to resize the model with the Tape Measure tool.

click on image below to play video ▶ resizing the model with the tape measure

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – protractor

T

he Protractor tool is similar to the Tape Measure – it is used both to measure angles between existing objects, and to create guidelines at any angle other than ninety degrees. Like the Tape Measure, the CTRL key toggles guideline creation on and off. Unlike the Tape Measure the Protractor can’t change the size of any geometry in your model. When the Create Guideline function is toggled off, the Protractor can only measure the angle between two edges.

Protractor Tool ▶ Yellow Protractor Icon on Toolbar

▶ No Keyboard Shortcut ▶ Measures Angles & Creates Angled Guidelines

Angle vertex

▶ The first step in

using the Protractor is to click on the vertex of the angle.

◀ Then click on one of the lines to establish where the angle is measured from.

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Protractor Tool

Angle measurement

▲ Then click anywhere on the second line. The angle displays in the Measurements window.

Locating the tool can be troublesome. As you move the cursor on screen, the Protractor tool cursor icon changes colors to indicate the axis of rotation. The Protractor seeks a face to land on. If you’re near a corner, the tool can bounce between directions as it tries to decipher your intentions. Press the Shift key to lock the direction of rotation when the appropriate color is displayed and hold it down until you make the first click. In directions other than horizontal, a face in the plane of rotation needs to exist for the tool to align. You may have to create a temporary box to use to locate the tool to make an angled guideline above the ground plane. On screen, the Protractor tool looks quite similar to the Rotate tool. If you are unsure which tool has been selected, check the Command line at the lower left or open the Instructor window.

To Measure an Angle or Create an Angled Guideline: ● Click on the center point of the angle

and one other point to establish a baseline – where the angle is measured from. ● Drag the cursor to the desired angle. ▶ To measure an existing angle, click on any point on the other line. ▶ When measuring angled lines, the angle value will appear in the Measurements window. ● When making guidelines, numerical measurements can be entered in the Measurements window, or you can click after dragging the cursor. ● Angle snap increments and angle precision are set in the Model Info window.

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Protractor Tool

▲ The CTRL key toggles guide creation on and off.

click on image below to play video ▶ using the protractor

243

appendix 1: basic tool guide – rotate

T

he Rotate tool is used to spin Rotate Tool existing objects around a single point. To establish the direction ▶ Two Circular Arrows Icon of rotation, you need to select the on Toolbar point, then one other point to make ▶ Keyboard Shortcut "Q" a baseline. Then drag the cursor to ▶ Rotates Existing Objects make the rotation and click to finish, or type the number of degrees and hit the Enter key. Think of the first point as the end of an axle – the object will ● The angle of rotation appears in the revolve around that axle. The baseline determines Measurement window. how far in degrees an object spins, usually in the ▶ Type a number and hit Enter for a predirection of one of the three colored axes. cise angle or click a second time to end To Rotate an Object: the command. ● Establish the first leg of the rotation Setting the rotation axis can be tricky, the proangle. tractor that appears will change color and orien▶ Click on the point you want the object tation to show the rotation axis, especially if you to spin around and one other point. are close to the corner of an object. The Shift key ● Let go of the mouse button and drag the will lock the inference to one of the axis direcmouse in the direction of rotation. tions. Hold it down when the cursor is the desired

Center of rotation

▲ Select objects first, then the Rotate tool. Click on a point to establish the center of rotation. 244


Rotate Tool

▶ Click a second

Baseline for rotation

point to establish a baseline for the rotation.

▼ Move the cursor to

Center of rotation

rotate, specify the angle by typing.

Angle of rotation

color and release after establishing the center of rotation. Like the Move tool, the Rotate tool is easier to use if you select the object first, then type the keyboard shortcut or select the icon from the toolbar. The Rotate tool needs a face in model to set the

rotation plane, or it will spin on the ground plane, parallel to the blue axis. Draw a cube for reference if you need to. Put the cursor on a face of the cube, and lock the axis direction with the Shift key. Erase the cube when it is no longer needed.

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▼ Like the Move tool, Rotate makes copies with the CTRL key. Look for a plus (+) sign next to the cursor.

The Rotate tool has similar copy functions to the Move tool, including the ability to make multiple and arrayed copies. Tap the CTRL key to toggle the copy function on and off; a plus (+) sign will appear next to the cursor when the copy function is active. As with the Move tool, you can turn the Copy function on or off during the Rotate command. Check the Command line or the Instructor window for available options for copying with the rotate tool. Another similarity to the Move tool is the ability to make multiple copies, either based on the degree of rotation of the first copy, or equally spaced in between the original object and the first rotated copy.

Plus sign appears when copying.

click on image below to play video ▶ using the rotate tool

246

Rotate Tool


Rotate Tool

To make multiple copies spaced at the same angle as the first copy: ● Make the first copy and before you do anything else; ● Type any number, then “X”. ▶ “X” is the total number of copies desired. ● Hit the Enter key to create the additional copies.

▶ Make one copy, then type a number followed by the letter “X” to make multiple copies.

▼ Copies are spaced by the same degree as the original copy.

Total number of copies you want

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Rotate Tool

To make equally spaced copies in between the original and the first copy: ● Make the first copy and before you do anything else; ● Type a forward slash (/), ● Then the number of spaces desired between the original and the first copy. ● Hit the Enter key.

▶ Equally spaced copies can also be

made between the original and the first copy. Make the first copy, the type a forward slash (/) followed by the number of spaces.

▼ The copies are placed evenly

Total number of copies you want

between the original and the first copy.

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appendix 1: basic tool guide – offset

S

elect the Offset tool, then hover the cursor over one edge of an existing face. Look for a red inference point and the face to be covered with blue dots. Click and drag the cursor in or out from the existing edge and enter the precise distance in the Measurements window. Offset works on all faces; circles, polygons and irregular-shapes. Offset only works on faces or two or more coplanar edges that intersect at their end points. To offset a line, make a copy of the existing line with the Move/Copy tool.

Offset Tool ▶ Two Semicircles with Red Arrow Icon on Toolbar

▶ No Keyboard Shortcut ▶ Creates a Face Parallel to an Existing Face

▲ Get the offset tool and click on the edge of a face.

▲ Drag the cursor in or out, or specify a distance

to create a new face with all edges parallel to the original.

click on image below to play video ▶ using the offset tool

249

appendix 1: basic tool guide – follow me

L

ike Push/Pull, Follow Me Follow Me Tool moves a face and stretches the points on the perimeter into lines ▶ Similar Function to Push/Pull and edges into faces. Where Push/ ▶ Extrudes a Face Along a Path Pull only works on straight lines, ▶ Path can Turn Corners or Follow Me can turn corners and be a Curve even go around circles. It’s an ▶ No Keyboard Shortcut incredibly fast way to take a twodimensional shape and turn it into a three-dimensional object. There are a few different ways to make the tool work, some are easier to use than others. Follow Me needs two things, a face to extrude and a path for the extrusion. The path can be the perimeter of a face or a combination of edges.

The Easy way to use Follow Me: ● First select a path for the extrusion. ● Then select Follow Me from the toolbar. ● Click on the face you want to extrude.

When you click on the face, SketchUp works it magic in an instant, extruding the face along the path. As long as the path is continuous, Follow Me will turn sharp corners or curves.

▲ Next click on the face to be extruded along the path.

▲ The extrusion turns sharp corners and follows curved edges.

▲ The easy way to use Follow Me is to select a path first, then the tool.

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Follow Me won’t work on a group or component, unless you open it for editing and both the face to be extruded and the path are within the group or component.

Two Ways to Select the Face First: ● Hard Way # 1

▶ Select the face to extrude, ▶ Hold down the ALT key and click on

a face. ▶ The extrusion will follow the perimeter

of the face. ● Hard Way #2 ▶ Click on the face to be extruded with the Follow Me tool. ▶ Let go of the mouse button. ▶ Trace over the path with the cursor. ▶ Red lines will appear to indicate the path. ▶ Click to end the extrusion when the desired point is reached.

▶ The alternate method is to select the Follow Me tool first, the click once on the face and trace along the path with the cursor.

▼ Do not click the mouse button until you reach to end of the path, then click again to end the extrusion.

251

Follow Me Tool


Follow Me can Follow Me also be used to make Tool round objects by using it on a circular path. Once again, it’s easier to select the path first, then the face to be extruded. To draw the face, think of what the finished object would look like if you sliced it in half, then divided that slice in two equal pieces. Follow Me can follow complex paths with multiple lines or arcs as well as around the perimeter of a face. The path should touch the face to be extruded, and it must be continuous.

Select circle first, then Follow Me tool.

▲ To make a round object with Follow Me, select a circle for the path, then select the tool.

Select face to be extruded.

▲ Then click on the face to be extruded.

▲ The extruded face forms a round vessel. 252


Follow Me Tool

▲ Any continuous path can be used for a Follow Me extrusion.

▶ To avoid

tracing, select the path first, then the Follow me tool. Click on the face to make the extrusion.

click on image below to play video ▶ using the follow me tool

253

appendix 1: basic tool guide – scale

T

he Scale tool is used to change Scale Tool the size of objects in one or more directions. Two-dimensional ▶ Two Squares with Arrow Icon objects can be stretched in either on Toolbar dimension, and three-dimensional ▶ Changes the Size of Objects objects can be scaled in one direcProportionally Along One or More Axes tion, all three directions or in combinations of two directions. ▶ No Keyboard Shortcut Scaling is based on a scale factor, not a measurement. If you have an object six inches long and you want to make To Scale an Object: it 12 inches long, you need to determine the scale ● Select the object, then the Scale tool. factor. ▶ Grips appear at the corners and midpoints of the selection. ● Click and drag the grips to stretch or shrink the selected object. ▶ Each grip will scale on a different axis, or combination of axes. Grip ● Control the scale factor by typing in the Measurements window during the operation or immediately after, then hit the Enter key. The scale factor is a ratio based on the original object's size; typing “2” will double the size, typing “.5” will make the object half the original size. If you have something six inches long, and want to make it eight inches long, you will have to

▲ The green “grips” of the Scale tool allow you to stretch objects along one, two or all three axes. ▶ The tags tell you which axis, or

combination of axes will be scaled.

254


calculate the ratio by dividing the desired length by the original length. When you scale in one or three directions, a single scale factor is used. When you scale in two directions, each direction may have its own factor. The Measurements window will let you know which directions are being scaled, and when two scale factors are required, separate them with a comma when you type them. The downside to using scale is keeping the

stretch on one axis Scale without changing sizes Tool in other directions, or in keeping some parts at their original size while you change others. If you only want to make something longer or wider, there are usually easier ways to do it than to use the Scale tool.

Tag

Command line

Measurements window

▲ The command line (at lower left) and the tags (next to the cursor) spell out the options for scaling. Enter the scale factor in the Measurements window.

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Scale Tool

◀ The scale tool can

transform a circle into an ellipse.

The Scale tool can be used to turn a circle into an ellipse by stretching it in one direction. When working with very small objects, SketchUp can get buggy. To overcome this, scale objects up by a factor of 10, make the changes, then scale the object back to its original size. The Scale tool can also be used to make a mirror image of an object by selecting the object and entering a scale factor of “-1”.

The CTRL and Shift keys modify the scale tool’s functions. Look for tags that appear when the cursor is over one of the grips, and look at the command line in the lower left corner of the screen. You can also make a mirror image of a three-dimensional object by entering a scale factor of “-1”.

◀ The CTRL and Shift keys enable options for the Scale tool.

Check the Command line to see options for the Scale tool.

256


Scale Tool

◀ Use -1 as a

scale factor to make a mirror image.

click on image below to play video ▶ using the scale tool

257

Appendix 2 Keyboard Shortcuts Select Arrow shortcut :

Push/Pull

Spacebar

shortcut :

Selection Boxes: • Left to right selects everything within box • Right to left selects everything crossed by box

Tape Measure shortcut :

Move/Copy shortcut :

M

T

CTRL toggles guideline creation.

TRL toggles copy function C (+ sign by cursor).

Click from one point and hover over another to measure distance. Click and drag off any line (but not on endpoint of line) to create a parallel guideline.

Move from a specific point to a specific point, watch axis inferences. Multiple Copies: Make one copy, immediately type “total number of copies, X,” and hit Enter.

Rotate

Equally Spaced Copies: Make one copy at distance, then type “/number of spaces”.

shortcut :

Q

CTRL toggles copy function (+ sign by cursor). Hold shift key to keep in proper axis orientation. Click on pivot point, then one other point to establish base line of rotation. Move cursor and click again. Type degrees and hit Enter.

Rectangle shortcut :

P

Extrudes a face at a right angle to the face, click and let go, drag cursor to start, click on an existing point in the model, or type a distance and hit Enter.

Click on object, hold Shift key to add/ subtract from selection.

R

Two dimensions separated by comma. Use an existing dimension for one by typing “X,” or “,X” and hitting Enter.

Zoom Extents Line

shortcut :

Backs up camera position so that entire model is visible. Click on this if you get “Lost in Space”.

L

Click and let go to start, drag cursor in axis direction, then either click again, type dimension and hit Enter, or type dimension and hit Enter. Look for axis and point inferences.

ESC

Escape key stops a command and leaves the tool active.

CLICK & LET GO!

CTRL+Z

Click to start command, let go of mouse button, drag in axis direction, click a second time to end command.

Undo. You can undo back to the last save.

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Appendix 3 Notes on Navigation

●

Navigation commands are transparent; they can be performed in the middle of other commands.

●

To work precisely, you need to be able to see what you’re doing.

●

Don’t hesitate to use these tools if you need a close look at what you’re trying to do.

●

Hit the Escape key to end a navigation command without disabling the active tool.

●

All the navigation tools are centered on the cursor location.

Zoom

● Hold down left mouse button and drag cursor to zoom

● Zoom function is centered on cursor location. If you want to zoom in on a specific part of the model, place the cursor over that part before starting.

▶ Dragging UP moves IN

▶ Dragging DOWN moves OUT

● Right-clicking opens Zoom pop-up menu with options to Orbit, Pan, Zoom Window or Zoom Extents

● Zoom slows dramatically if cursor is in empty space in model. Cursor must be over an object to function at normal speed. (This may not be evident until there are several objects in the model.)

● Navigation tools can also be found on the

Camera toolbar, but this is the slowest way to reach them and should be avoided.

Orbit

● The easiest way to Zoom is with the scroll

wheel on the mouse.

▶ Rolling the wheel UP zooms IN

▶ Rolling the wheel DOWN zooms OUT

● Orbit changes the position of your point of view, allowing you to look under, over, around or behind your model.

Zooming with the Zoom Tool

● The easiest way to Orbit is to hold down the scroll wheel on the mouse. ▶D ragging the cursor in different directions changes your point of view

● Slower than scroll wheel zooming, but has

more options ● Invoke by:

▶ hitting “Z” on keyboard,

▶ selecting Magnifying Glass icon from toolbar,

▶C hanges position of Camera in 3D space

Remember: All the navigation tools are centered on the cursor location.

▶ or selecting Zoom from the Camera menu.

259

appendix 3: notes on navigation

Zoom Extents

● You can also engage the Orbit tool by:

▶ clicking the icon on the toolbar,

● Zoom Extents will back up the camera until the entire model is visible.

▶ t yping the letter “O”, ▶ or selecting Orbit from the Camera menu. Orbiting this way requires holding down the left mouse button while dragging.

▶ Good way to get your bearings if you find yourself “lost in space”

● Right-clicking opens the same pop-up menu as

▶ Good way to find geometry that may get away from you in moving or copying

seen with the Zoom tool. ● Orbit will maintain vertical positioning of

Zoom Previous

objects. Hold down CTRL key to disable “gravity”.

● Zoom Previous takes you back to where you’ve been.

Remember: All the navigation tools are centered on the cursor location.

Three Camera Tools you Likely Won’t Ever Need

Pan

● Used for navigating through large and complex architectural models

● Pan moves the point-of-view camera up and down or side to side. Pan is centered on the cursor location.

▶ Look Around ▶ Walk ▶ Position Camera

● The easiest way to Pan is by holding down the

Shift key while in the Orbit command.

Standard Views on the View Toolbar

▶ This works whether you are orbiting with the scroll wheel held down, or by selecting the tool.

● Little houses show isometric view and standard

drawing views.

● You can also Pan by:

▶ t yping the letter “H”, ▶ clicking the hand icon on the toolbar, From left to right: Isometric, top, front, left side, back right side

▶ or selecting Pan from the Camera menu.

Zoom Window

● If you get disoriented (lost in space):

● Accessible from the Camera

toolbar or the Camera pop-up menu (fast)

▶ Hit Zoom Extents, then

▶ click on the roof of the little house (top view),

● Also accessible from the Camera menu, or by typing CTRL + Shift + W (window) or CTRL + Shift + E (extents); these methods are slow.

▶ then the isometric house.

▶T he location of the chimney indicates point of view.

● Zoom Window will quickly bring you in to examine a detail.

● When generating a standard view to print, select parallel projection from the Camera menu.

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Building Blocks of SketchUp by Robert W. Lang.pdf

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