Where do you want your imagination to take you? SketchUp will help you get there. This powerful software lets you easily create 3D models, and Chopra shows you how. He ISBN To access the Cheat Sheet created specifically for this book, go to www.
Sign up for Newsletters on titles, Dummies is a global leader in how-to information. Google and SketchUp are trademarks or registered trademarks of Google, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Wiley Publishing, Inc. For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U. For technical support, please visit www. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Aidan writes the SketchUpdate, a monthly e-mail newsletter that reaches over a million SketchUp users worldwide.
Aidan is based in Boulder, Colorado, even though he is what many would consider to be the diametric opposite of a world-class endurance athlete.
Finally, I need to thank the very long list of individuals who provided critical help. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U. Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:. Editorial Manager: Leah P. Part V: The Part of Tens Chapter 2: Establishing the Modeling Mind-Set. Rotating the right way Chapter 3: Getting Off to a Running Start. Chapter 5: Falling in Love with Components.
Chapter 6: Going Beyond Buildings. Chapter 7: Keeping Your Model Organized. Chapter 8: Modeling with Photographs.
Working with Shadows Chapter Printing Your Work. Chapter Exporting Images and Animations. Chapter Diving Deeper into LayOut. BC1 Exporting Drawings in 2D BC2 Sizing up the export formats BC2 Exporting a 2D drawing BC16 Wrapping your head around 3DS BC25 Getting the Lay of the Land BC25 Coping with Component Attributes At one point, a boy raised his hand to ask a question, and I noticed he looked younger than most of the others.
Squinting, I read a logo on his T-shirt that told me he was in elementary school. These kids were motoring, after all. SketchUp was invented in by a couple 3D industry veterans or refugees, depending on your perspective to make it easier for people to see their ideas in three dimensions. That was it, really — they just wanted to make a piece of software that anyone could use to build 3D models. What I saw in Arkansas makes me think they were successful. About This Book The thing I like least about software is figuring out how it works.
I once saw a movie where the main character acquired knowledge by plugging a cable a rather fat cable, actually into a hole in the back of his head. A computer then uploaded new capabilities — languages, martial arts, and fashion sense apparently — directly into his brain. Afterward, the character ate a snack and took a nap. This book, on the other hand, is a fairly analog affair. In it, I do my best to guide you through the process of building 3D models with SketchUp. People use SketchUp so that they can build 3D models.
As such, most of this book focuses on what you can do with SketchUp, and not what SketchUp does. Naturally, this emphasis has a few implications:. I try to keep this in mind by letting you know how you can use the features I talk about to do what you want to do.
The fact is, a lot of people want to use SketchUp to model buildings, so I assume that a good many of you the collective you, in this case want to do the same. In writing this book, I had to make a tough choice: I had to figure out what to show you and, more importantly, what to leave out. The Table of Contents I settled on is a list of what most people want to know, most of the time.
You use it. Ruby is a scripting pro- gramming language that you maybe can use to code your tools for SketchUp. Just so you know, any figures in this book that show the SketchUp user inter- face show the Windows version. I mean for this book to be useful for people with just about any level of SketchUp skill. To begin with, I assume you know how to work your computer well enough to under- stand how to do basic things like saving and opening files. Next, I take for granted that you have, and know how to work, a mouse with a scroll wheel.
Just look for something with a left button, a right button, and a little scroll wheel in the middle. Finally, I assume you have at least occasional access to the Internet. SketchUp — I do most of my best work on airplanes, in fact. How This Book Is Organized Tell me if you think this is strange: I read most computer books in completely random order. I never start at the beginning and work my way through. In fact, I only pick them up for two reasons:. Computers are lousy for browsers like me.
Despite these two facts, this book does have structure. Basic concepts are grouped in the first few chapters, and more advanced material appears toward the end. Chapter 3 is devoted entirely to a step-by-step approach to getting started, just for those who like to get to know software that way.
In general, though, this book is intended to be a reference. I recommend that you start with Chapters 1 and 2, just to get your bearings. To make it easier to understand how certain chapters are related, this book lumps them together into parts.
Start here, lest you get frustrated and decide to. Chapter 1 talks about how SketchUp fits into the bigger 3D modeling picture. Chapter 3 offers a basic end-to-end workflow for creat- ing and sharing a model.
Chapter 5 deals with using groups and components, two of the most impor- tant elements in any SketchUp model you make. Chapter 6 lays out advanced techniques for modeling things like terrain, characters, and other non-boxy objects, whereas Chapter 7 deals with tools and techniques you can use to manage big models.
In Chapter 8, I talk about using photographs in SketchUp. Chapter 9 dives in to Styles and Shadows. Chapters 12 and 13 deal with printing and exporting images and movies from your model files. Chapters 14 and 15 provide an introduction to LayOut. This rela- tively new program, which is included as part of SketchUp Pro, is for creating 2D presentation documents that automatically link to your 3D models.
On the Web site I created a little online presence for this book so I could share more informa- tion with you. That information is still relevant, but I cut it out of this book to make room for new features.
The good news is that you can get the whole chapter in digital form on the Web site. DCs are programmable, configurable pieces of SketchUp content that can make your workflow a lot more efficient. I use the Remember icon to remind you of something I cover earlier in the book, just in case you may have forgotten or skipped it. You can skip them without fear of missing anything important, but reading them can give you something to annoy your SketchUp friends with later.
When you see this icon, pay special attention. It occurs rarely, but when it does, something you do could harm your work. If you want to see a complete list of new features and improvements in SketchUp 8, open your Web browser of choice and do a Google search for new in SketchUp 8 — something gloriously list-like will no doubt appear.
T his part of the book is dedicated to helping you get your bearings. Chapter 1 is a very general overview of Google SketchUp. In Chapter 2, I jump right in. The contents of Chapter 3 are included for the benefit of those readers who like to figure out software by getting their hands dirty right away. The whole chapter is a work- flow that takes you through the process of making a sim- ple model, changing the way it looks, and creating an image of it that you can keep forever.
O nce upon a time, software for building three-dimensional 3D models of thing like buildings, cars, and other stuff was hard to use. I mean really hard — people went to school for years to learn it. Then along came SketchUp. Operating under the assumption that lots of people may want — and need — to make 3D models, the folks who invented SketchUp decided to design a program that worked more intuitively. So do you need to know how to draw to use SketchUp?
In the latest version of the software, not really. Traditional drawing is about translating what you see onto a flat piece of paper: going from 3D to 2D, which is hard to do for most people.
In the last part of the chapter, I give a quick tour of the program, just to let you know where things are. Click the links to download the application to your computer and then follow the installa- tion instructions on the Web.
Google SketchUp is avail- able for both operating systems, and it looks and works about the same way on both. The Pro version includes a few terrific features that folks like architects, production designers, and other design professionals need for exchanging files with other software. Photography is the main way that visual informa- tion is communicated. But what comes after photography?
The furniture you buy or build is 3D, and so is the route you take to work. Software like SketchUp lets you see 3D information on a 2D screen, which is good, but affordable 3D printers and holography yep, holograms are just over the horizon. By making SketchUp free for everyone, Google is leading the 3D charge. Rather than relying on a small number of 3D nerds to get around to modeling everything in the universe, Google made SketchUp available to anyone who wants to participate.
Sometimes the best way to solve a hard problem like modeling millions of buildings and other objects is to get lots and lots of people working on it.
The following sections tell you something about how SketchUp compares to other 3D modeling programs — how long it takes to figure out how to use it and what kind of models it produces. This software has been successful for one reason: People can get good enough at SketchUp to build something within a couple hours of launching it for the first time.
You have no thick manuals to read, and no special geometric concepts to understand. Modeling in SketchUp is about grabbing your mouse and making something. So how long should it take you to discover how SketchUp works?
That depends on your background and experience, but in general, you can expect to make something recognizable in less than four hours. But is SketchUp easy? Some people catch on right away, and some folks take longer. Chapter 3 walks you through the basics to help you start modeling in SketchUp quickly. Understanding the difference between paper and clay Three-dimensional modeling software comes in two basic flavors: solids and surfaces.
Figure and the following points illustrate the difference:. Surface models are hollow Solid models are solid. Figure SketchUp models are hollow. Everything in SketchUp is basically made up of thin infinitely thin, actually surfaces — dubbed faces. Even things that look thick like cinder-block walls are actually hollow shells. Making models in SketchUp is a lot like building things out of paper — really, really thin paper. Surface modelers like SketchUp are great for making models quickly because all you really need to worry about is modeling what things look like.
People who make parts — like mechanical engineers and industrial designers — tend to work with solid models because they can use them to do some pretty precise calculations.
Being able to calculate the volume of an object means that you can figure how much it will weigh, for example. Also, special machines can produce real-life prototypes directly from a solid-model file. These prototypes are handy for seeing how lots of little things are going to fit together.
The Solid Tools feature offers a whole new way to work in SketchUp — you can read all about it in Chapter 6. Yet another caveat: When I said a few paragraphs ago that 3D modeling programs come in two basic flavors, I sort of lied. The truth is, you can split them into two groups another way: by the kind of math they use to pro- duce 3D models. You can find polygonal modelers of which SketchUp is an example and curves-based modelers.
The latter kind of modeler uses true curves to define lines and surfaces. These yield organic, flowing forms that are much more realistic than those produced by polygonal modelers, but that put a lot more strain on the computers that have to run them — and the people who have to figure out how to use them. I once saw one that was a combina- tion screwdriver, pliers, saw, tape measure, and I swear hammer.
I some- times wonder whether the hardware store people put them there as a joke, just to make you feel better about standing in line. I much prefer specialists — tools that are designed for doing one thing really well. In the case of SketchUp, that one thing is building 3D models. If you want, you can even delete him, leaving you a completely blank slate on which to model anything you want. SketchUp Pro can even import CAD computer-aided drawing files that give you even more of a head start.
You can start a model in Building Maker and modify it in SketchUp 8. You can make models that are super-sketchy, but if you want, you can also make models that are absolutely precise. SketchUp is just like paper in that way; the amount of detail you add is entirely up to you. You work only with lines and shapes — or in SketchUp, edges and faces — so how you arrange them is your busi- ness. Add or take all the models you want. Is this model a toaster or a bungalow?
SketchUp models are made from two basic program that has what software types would kinds of geometry: edges which are straight call intelligence. I go on and on about Dynamic draw a bunch of edges and faces in the shape Components in Chapter 5. Coming to stair in SketchUp — just edges and faces. If you want a model of something, introduced an exciting new development: you have to make it out of edges and faces. The Dynamic Components are pre-programmed thing to remember is that SketchUp was cre- objects that know what they are.
A dynamic ated to let you model anything, not just build- staircase, for example, is smart enough to ings, so its tools are designed to manipulate know that it should add or subtract steps geometry. Fantastic programs are available that do the things in the following list, and SketchUp can exchange files with most of them:. SketchUp has always focused on non- photorealistic rendering NPR instead. If you want to make realistic views of your models, I talk about renderers that work great with SketchUp in Chapter True animation software lets you move things around inside your model.
Taking the Ten-Minute SketchUp Tour The point of this portion of the chapter is to show you where everything is — kind of like the way a parent shows a new babysitter around the house before leaving for a couple hours.
I just want you to feel like you know where to start looking when you find your- self hunting around for something. Just like most programs you already use, SketchUp has five main parts. Figure shows them all, in both the Windows and Mac versions of the pro- gram. I describe these parts, plus an additional feature, in the following list:. Getting Started toolbar Modeling window Dialog box Menu bar. Status bar. What you see in your mod- eling window is always a 3D view of your model, even if you happen to be looking at it from the top or side.
Each menu contains a long list of options, commands, tools, settings, and other goodies that pertain to just about everything you do in SketchUp. SketchUp has a few toolbars, but only one is visible when you launch it the first time: the Getting Started toolbar.
The status bar contains contextual information you use while you model. Download from Wow! All the same, here are the menus:. The File menu is also where to go if you want to import or export a file, or make a printout of your model view.
Instead, the View menu includes all the controls you use to affect. Chapter 17 introduces a few of my favorites. Checking the status bar The narrow strip of information below the modeling window is packed with information goodness:. Chapter 2 goes into more detail, but the basic purpose of the Measurements box is to enable you to be precise while you model.
They change to tell you things about your model, and you can click them to find out what they do. The most important one to note this early on in your SketchUp tutelage is the one that looks like a question mark. Where are all the tools? The Getting Started toolbar contains a small the Large Tool Set to begin with and then subset of the tools that you can use in SketchUp.
To add even more tools, right-click selection helps people. Now drag whatever through the menus , you do different things, tools you want onto your toolbar and click depending on which operating system you use: the Done button. The mother lode! I recommend starting off with.
Taking a peek at the dialog boxes Most graphics programs have a ton of little controller boxes that float around your screen, and SketchUp is no exception.
Dialog boxes in SketchUp contain controls for all kinds of things; here are the ones that I think deserve special attention:. Pay particular attention to the Shortcuts panel, where you can set up keyboard shortcuts for any tool or com- mand in the program. It has controls for everything under the sun; you should definitely open it and take your time going through it.
You can also open it at any time by clicking the little? If you did, you probably have bigger things to worry about than get- ting started with SketchUp. My point is, you should really know several things before you get started. This chapter introduces those things — concepts, really — that can make your first few hours with SketchUp a lot more produc- tive and fun.
Understanding how SketchUp represents depth is everything when making models. All about Edges and Faces In SketchUp, everything is made up of one of two kinds of things: edges and faces. Collectively, the edges and faces in your model are geometry.
Other modeling programs have other kinds of geometry, but SketchUp is pretty simple. Edge Face Face Edge. Figure SketchUp models are made from edges and faces. Living on with, actually the edge Edges are lines. You can use lots of tools to draw them, erase them, move them, hide them, and even stretch them. Here are some things you ought to know about SketchUp edges:. Not only is everything in your SketchUp model made up of edges, but all those edges are also perfectly straight.
Even arcs and circles are made of small straight-line segments, as shown in Figure You can read more about making your edges look thick in Chapter 9. Take a look at Figure On the left is a model that looks rounded. Figure Even curved lines are made up of straight edges. These edges are smoothed, but still there. Figure Even organic shapes and curvy forms are made up of straight edges. Facing the facts about faces Faces are surfaces. If you think of SketchUp models as being made of tooth- picks and paper which they kind of are , faces are basically the paper.
To have a face, you need to have at least three coplanar on the same plane edges that form a loop. In other words, a face is defined by the edges that surround it, and those edges all have to be on the same, flat plane.
Because you need at least three straight lines to make a closed shape, faces must have at least three sides. Figure shows what happens when you get rid of an edge that defines one or more faces.
In SketchUp, even surfaces that look curved are made up of multiple, flat faces. In the model shown in Figure , you can see that what looks like organically shaped surfaces on the left are really just lots of smaller faces on the right. To make a bunch of flat faces look like one big, curvy surface, the edges between them are smoothed; you can find out more about smoothing edges in Chapter 6.
To make a thick surface say, like a 6-inch-thick wall , you need to use two faces side by side. Figure You need at least three edges to make a face. Each of these triangles is perfectly flat. Figure All faces are flat, even the ones that make up larger, curvy surfaces. Figure shows this in action: As soon as I connect the last edge that I draw to the first one to close the loop, SketchUp creates a face.
That face is deleted, but the edges that defined it remain. See Figure When I erase one of the edges in the cube with the Eraser tool, in this case , both the faces that were defined by that edge disappear. If you already have a closed loop of coplanar edges but no face because you erased it, per- haps , you can redraw one of the edges to make a new face. Just use the Line tool to trace over one of the edge segments, and a face reappears.
Figure SketchUp automati- cally makes a face whenever you create a closed loop of coplanar edges. Figure You can delete a face without deleting the edges that define it. When you draw an edge like with the Line tool from one side of a face to another, you cut that face in two. In this way, you can split simple edges you draw with the Line tool, as well as edges that are created when you draw shapes like rectangles and circles. Flip to the first part of Chapter 5 for more information.
Figure Drawing an edge from here Drawing in 3D on a 2D Screen For computer programmers, letting you draw 3D objects on your screen is a difficult problem. If some old guy could figure it out years ago, why should your computer have problems?
The thing is, human perception of depth on paper is a trick of the eye. You need to give your computer explicit instruc- tions. In SketchUp, this means using drawing axes and inferences, as I explain in the sections that follow.
This has probably people are taught, unfortunately. Even if SketchUp could models is a real kick. Giving instructions with the drawing axes Color Plate 1 is a shot of the SketchUp modeling window, right after you create a new file.
See the three colored lines that cross in the lower-left corner of the screen? If you were standing at the spot where all three axes meet the axis origin , the blue axis would run vertically, passing through your head and feet. The axes are all at right angles to one another, and extend to infinity from the origin. Take a look at Color Plate 2. Consider the example shown in Color Plate 3: If I click the cylinder with the Move tool and move my cursor up, how is SketchUp supposed to know whether I mean to move it up in space above the ground or back in space?
If I want to move it back, I follow the green direction because the green axis happens to run from the front to the back of my screen. When you work in SketchUp, you use the colored drawing axes all the time. Having colored axes instead of ones labeled x, y, and z lets you draw in 3D space without typing commands to tell your computer where you want to draw. They make modeling in SketchUp quick, accurate, and relatively intuitive.
After your first couple hours with the software, paying atten- tion to the colors becomes second nature — I promise. Luckily, it does. Point inferences see Color Plate 4 appear when you move your cursor over specific parts of your model. They look like little colored circles and squares, and if you pause for a second, a yellow label appears.
In SketchUp, lines are called edges, and surfaces are called faces. Everything in your model is made up of edges and faces. When you move your cursor, sometimes you see a colored, dotted line appear. Tangent, in this case, means that the transition between the two arcs is smooth. At first, these actions seem a little like that thing where you pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time, but with practice, they get easier.
Locking inferences If you hold down the Shift key when you see any of the first four types of linear inferences described previously, that inference gets locked — and stays locked until you release Shift. Check out the following example for some clarity. Click once to start drawing an edge. Hold down the Shift key to lock the inference I see. Click the peak of the roof to make my vertical edge end at exactly that height. Release Shift to unlock the inference.
The following example demonstrates how to encourage an inference. Color Plate 7 shows a model of a cylinder. Follow these steps:. Move slowly toward the middle of the circle until the Center Point inference appears. Move your cursor slowly in the direction of where you want to start drawing your edge. A dotted From Point inference appears. Click to start drawing your edge.
Formal-education types would probably call them core competencies, but I find language like that tends to put people to sleep. Whatever you care to call these activities, I introduce them all in the following sections, so you can come back and get a quick refresher whenever you want. In the dark.
With your hands tied behind your back. Using chopsticks. Get the picture? Most people who try to figure out SketchUp on their own take too long to under- stand this; they spend hours squinting, grunting, and having an all-around. The following sec- tions help you avoid the headache literally. SketchUp has three tools that are dedicated to letting you get a better view of your model.
Going into orbit Hold a glass of water in your hand. Stop when the glass is completely empty. Just as your wrist helps you twist and turn a glass to see it from every angle, think of using Orbit as the way to fly around your work.
Figure shows Orbit in all its glory. By far the least productive way to use Orbit is to choose it from the Camera menu. The second-least productive way to activate Orbit is to click its button on the toolbar; it looks like two blue arrows trying to form a ball. Now move your mouse around. See your model swiveling around? Close your eyes and then bring the glass rushing toward you, stopping right when it smashes you in the nose.
Now throw the glass across the room, noticing how it shrinks as it gets far- ther away. That, in a nutshell, describes the Zoom tool. You use Zoom to get closer to and farther from your model. To see everything at once, zoom out. Figure is a demonstration. I can think of a couple things to tell you about Zoom:. The worst way is from the Camera menu; the next-worst way is to click the Zoom tool button in the toolbar. If you use Zoom either of these two ways, you actu- ally zoom in and out by clicking and dragging up and down on your screen.
Figure The Orbit tool lets you see your model from any angle. Zoomed in Zoomed in even more. Figure Use the Zoom tool to get closer to the action. The best way to zoom is to roll your finger on the scroll wheel of your mouse to zoom in and out.
Instead of clicking the scroll wheel to orbit, just roll your scroll wheel back and forth to zoom. When you use the Zoom tool, SketchUp zooms in on your cursor; just position it over whatever part of your model you want to zoom in on or zoom out from. Just panning around Using the Pan tool is a lot like washing windows — you move the paper towel back and forth, but it stays flat and it never gets any closer or farther away from you.
The Pan tool is basically for sliding your model view around in your modeling window. You need to know these three things about Pan:. You can access the Pan tool by clicking its button Download from Wow!
When your cursor does so, move your mouse to pan. Drawing edges with ease Being able to use the Line tool without having to think too much about it is the secret to being able to model anything you want in SketchUp. SketchUp models are made up of edges and faces. Anytime you have three or more edges that are connected and on the same plane, SketchUp creates a face.
If you erase one of the edges that defines or borders a face, the face disappears, too. Drawing edges is simple. Just follow these steps:. Select the Line tool some people call it the Pencil tool. Click where you want your line to begin. Move your cursor to the desired endpoint for your line and click again to end. Figure demonstrates the basic idea.
When you draw a line segment with the Line tool, notice how SketchUp automatically tries to draw another line? This is called rubber banding — the Line tool lets you continue to draw edge segments, automatically starting each new one at the end of the previous one you drew. When you want the Line tool to stop drawing lines, press the Esc key to snip the line at the last spot you clicked.
SketchUp lets you draw lines in two ways: You can either use the click-drag- release method or the click-move-click one. They both work, of course, but I highly recommend training yourself to do the latter. Because the Line tool draws only straight lines, think about using it less like a pencil even though it looks like one and more like a spool of sticky thread. Figure Use the Line tool to draw edges.
The key to accuracy in SketchUp is the little text box that lives in the lower-right corner of your SketchUp window — the one I point out in Figure This box is the Measurements box, and here are some things you can do with it:.
To do so, follow 3. Deselect the Continue Line Drawing check these steps: box. Measurements box. What this box controls depends on what you happen to be doing at the time. If inches are your default unit of measurement, just type 14 into the Measurements box and press Enter — SketchUp assumes that you mean 14 inches. If you want to draw something 14 feet long, type 14', just to let SketchUp know that you mean feet instead of inches.
You can override the default unit of measurement by typing any unit you want. If you want to move something a distance of 25 meters, type 25m and press Enter. You set the default units for the Measurements box in the Units panel of the Model Info dialog box which is on the Window menu. If you type 6 and press Enter, and then type 6s and press Enter again, SketchUp draws a hexa- gon a 6-sided circle with a radius of 6 inches.
Click once to start your operation such as drawing a line or using the Move tool. Be sure not to click again. Without clicking the Measurements box, type the dimension you want. The dimension appears in the box. Press Enter to complete the operation. Complete your operation. This may be drawing a line, moving something, rotating something, or any of the other things I mention at the beginning of this section.
Before you do anything else, type whatever dimension you intended and then press Enter. Whatever you did is redone according to what you typed. To give you a more concrete example, say I want to move my box as shown in Figure a total of 5 meters in the red direction parallel to the red axis. With the Move tool, I click the box once to pick it up. I type 5m and then I press Enter. My box is positioned exactly 5 meters from where I picked it up. I type 15m and then press Enter again. The box moves another 10 meters in the blue direction.
Selecting what you mean to select If you want to move rotate, copy, and so on something in your model, you need to select it first. The Shift key works both ways when it comes to the Select tool. You can use it to add to your set of selected objects which I mention earlier , but you can also use it to subtract an object from your selection. SketchUp has a terrific trick 3. To measure the distance I want to change for taking care of this exact situation: You can in this case, the riser height , I click once use the Tape Measure tool to resize your whole to start measuring and click again to stop.
In the dialog box that appears, asking me doing so will make it easier to keep working on whether I want to resize my whole model, I it.
I know I want the riser height the vertical click the Yes button. Select the Tape Measure tool choose entered. Measure from here Figure I move the box 5 meters, and then I change my mind and move it 15 meters instead. When you double-click a face, you select that face and all the edges that define it. Double-clicking an edge gives you that edge plus all the faces that are connected to it. Figure shows what I mean. In this case, only things that are entirely inside your selection box are selected.
Figure Click things with the Select tool to select them. Hold down Shift to select more than one thing. Double-click selects the Triple-click selects the Figure Single-click selects a face face and edges whole object Try single-, double-, and triple-click- ing edges and faces in your model to make different kinds of selections.
Only this is selected. Figure Dragging left to right selects everything inside your All this is selected too selec- tion box. Dragging right to left selects everything that your selec- tion box touches. I keep saying that selected stuff turns blue in SketchUp, but you can make it turn any color you want.
Blue is just the default color for new documents you create. Accidentally selecting too much is an easy mistake to make. Moving and copying like a champ To move things in SketchUp, use the Move tool.
To make a copy of something, use the Move tool in combination with a button on your keyboard: the Ctrl key in Windows and the Option key on a Mac. Using this tool involves clicking the entity you want to move, moving it to where you want it to be, and clicking again to drop it.
Here are tips for using Move successfully:. Just like using the Line tool, try to avoid the temptation to use the Move tool by clicking and dragging with your mouse; doing so makes things a lot harder. Figure shows two boxes that I want precisely to stack on top of each other. To stack the boxes precisely, I have to click the bottom corner of the soon-to-be top box to grab it there and then move my cursor over the top corner of the bottom box to drop it. Now my boxes are lined up perfectly.
Instead of pressing Esc, they try to use Move to put things back the way they were. If you change your mind in the middle of moving something, just press Esc, and everything goes back to the way it was. To move something in one of the colored directions, just wait until you see the dotted On Axis linear inference appear; then hold down Shift to lock yourself in that direction. By moving only certain entities all the things I just mention , you can change the shape of your geometry pretty drastically.
Picking it up here In SketchUp, you can — and should. This comes in handy every time you need to move more than one object; Figure shows how to move selected items with the Move tool. Only the thing you click moves, as shown in Figure Moving an edge Moving a face. Figure You can use the Move tool on verti- ces, edges, and faces to model different forms. Figure Using the Move tool when you have a selection moves only the things in that selection.
Figure Without anything selected, you can click any- thing in your model with the Move tool to start moving it. Making copies with the Move tool Lots of folks spend time hunting around in SketchUp, trying to figure out how to make copies. Instead of moving something, you move a copy of it. Here are a couple things to keep in mind:. Figure shows this in action. This means that all the same rules that apply to using the Move tool apply to making copies, too. Perhaps I want to make five equally spaced copies of a column, as shown in Figure This makes five copies of my column and spaces them evenly between the first and last column in the row.
Neat, huh? If I know how far apart I want my copies to be, I can move a copy that distance, type 5x, and press Enter. My five copies appear equally spaced in a row. Figure To make multiple copies in a row, type the number of copies you want, type an x, and press Enter.
First things first, though:. Press the Ctrl key Option on a Mac to switch between rotating your original or rotating a copy. This is called Auto-Fold, and tool, so SketchUp constrains your movement to the following figure shows how it works. Click once with the Move tool to start moving. Using Rotate: The basic method Follow these steps to rotate objects in your model:.
Select everything you want to rotate. Activate the Rotate tool. Click once to establish an axis of rotation. Your axis of rotation is the theoretical line around which your selected objects will rotate; picture the axle of a wheel. When the cursor is red, green, or blue, its axis of rotation is currently parallel to that colored axis. Click again to start rotating.
Move your mouse; then click again to finish rotating. If you like, now is a good time to type a rotation angle and press Enter. As with everything else in SketchUp, you can be as precise as you want — or need — to be. This makes rotating things about a million times easier, and those who use SketchUp a lot danced little jigs albeit awkwardly when we heard the news. In this case, using Rotate goes from being a five-step operation to a seven- step one check out Figure for a visual explanation :.
Drag your cursor around still holding down the mouse button until your axis of rotation is where you want it. As you drag, notice your Rotate protractor changes orientation; the line from where you clicked to your cursor is the axis of rotation. Release your mouse button to set your axis of rotation. Making and using guides Sometimes you need to draw temporary lines while you model.
Figure shows an example of guides in action. I use guides positioned 12 inches from the wall and 36 inches apart to draw the sides of a doorway. I use another guide 6 feet, 8 inches from the floor to indicate the top, and then I draw a rectangle, bounded by my guides, which I know is exactly the right size. Click Drag to locate axis of rotation. Release mouse to define axis Click to rotate. Figure Define a custom axis of rotation by click- dragging your mouse.
Creating guides with the Tape Measure tool You can create three kinds of guides, and you use the Tape Measure tool to make them all. Just move your mouse, and you see a parallel, dashed line; click again to place the line wherever you want. Pressing the Ctrl key Option on a Mac toggles between the modes. Figure Use guides to measure things before you draw. Click here to start.
Parallel guide line. Click here to start Linear guide line. Figure Use the Tape Measure Click here to start tool to create guide lines and points. Guide point. Just click or drag over them with the Eraser tool to delete guides individually. You can also right-click them and choose Erase from the context menu. Figure shows what you see when you do. Figure The Materials dialog box in Windows left and on the Mac. In SketchUp, you can choose from two kinds of materials to apply to the faces in your model:.
The preview image you see in the Materials dialog box is actually a picture of a single texture image tile. SketchUp comes with a whole bunch of textures, and you can always go online and choose from thousands more available for sale.
The following facts about SketchUp materials are also handy to know as you work with them:. These black areas are areas of transparency: When you paint a face with one of these textures, you can see through the areas that look black. In fact, photo-texturing is an incredibly important part of some SketchUp workflows — especially those that relate to building models for Google Earth.
As such, I dedicate Chapter 8 to the subject of modeling with photographs. Just click a material to load your bucket and then click the face you want to paint. Release the Alt key to revert to the Paint Bucket tool. If you hold down Shift when you click to paint a face, all faces in your model that match the one you click are painted, too. Here, I help you make a simple model step by step, spin it around, paint it, and even apply styles and shadows. Above all, these pages are about doing and about the basics of putting together the various SketchUp features to produce a knockout model in no time.
So what are you going to build? Perhaps a doghouse. If you want to follow along, start on this page and work your way to the end. Setting Things Up I know — setup is boring. Who wants to flip through menus and options dialog boxes instead of jumping in? I completely agree, so I keep this short and sweet. This section is just about making sure that you start at the right place.
Launch Google SketchUp. Choose your default settings. Click the Choose Template button. Follow Steps a and b in the preceding steps list. Make sure that you can see the Getting Started toolbar. Figure shows the Getting Started toolbar. Clear your modeling window. Making a Quick Model Figure shows what your computer screen looks like at this point.
You should see a row of tools across the top of your modeling window, a little person, and three colored modeling axes red, green, and blue lines. Delete the little person on your screen. Draw a rectangle on the ground. Use the Rectangle tool between the pencil and the circle on your tool- bar to draw a rectangle by doing the following: a. Click once to place one corner on the left side of your screen. Click again to place the opposite corner on the right side of your screen. Figure shows what you should aim for in this step.
Figure This is what your screen should look like in Windows left and on a Mac right. You can use Undo to go back as many steps as you like.
Use this tool it looks like a brown box with a red arrow coming out the top to pull your rectangle into a box by following these steps: a. Click here to start drawing Finish drawing here. Figure Draw a 3D rectangle on the ground. Draw a couple diagonal lines for your roof. Click here to start drawing Click here to finish your first edge. Figure Draw two diagonal lines that will become your peaked roof. Move slowly to make sure that you see it.
Repeat the previous two steps to draw a similar but opposite line from the midpoint to the edge on the other side of the face. Make YouTube one of your teaching aids - Works perfectly with lesson micro-teaching plans.
With four apps, each designed around existing classroom activities, Spiral gives you the power to do formative assessment with anything you teach. Carry out a quickfire formative assessment to see what the whole class is thinking.
Team Up. Student teams can create and share collaborative presentations from linked devices. Add text or drawings AND annotate an image! Using SpiralEducation in class for math review. Student approved! Thumbs up! Absolutely amazing collaboration from year 10 today. The Team Up app is unlike anything I have ever seen. So impressed! Activity overview:. Add multiple choice quizzes, questions and browse hundreds of approved, video lesson ideas for Clip Make YouTube one of your teaching aids - Works perfectly with lesson micro-teaching plans.
Students enter a simple code.
0コメント