Drawing Scale Size
These settings let you control the final physical size of your exported drawing. If you're in Parallel Projection view, you can assign a scale if you're in Perspective view, scale doesn't apply. You have the following options 1 Full Scale 1 1 Most people use SketchUp Pro's DXF DWG Export feature to produce nonperspectival, orthographic views of their models that they can use in their CAD programs. If that's what you're trying to do, you should select this check box it'll make opening your...
Raising the Roof
If you're lucky, the roof you want to build is fairly simple. Unfortunately, home builders sometimes go a little crazy, creating roofs with dozens of different pitches slopes , dormers, and other doodads that make modeling them a nightmare. For this reason, I'm going to keep things pretty simple The following sections are dedicated to showing you how to identify and model some of the basic roof forms. After that, I tell you about a great tool you can use to assemble complicated roofs from...
Some menu bar minutiae
Just like almost every other piece of software in the universe, LayOut has a menu bar. And just like SketchUp, you can use LayOut's menu bar to access the vast majority of its tools, commands, settings, and dialog boxes. Here's a brief description of each of LayOut's nine menus 1 File No big surprises here you use the items in the File menu to create new LayOut files, save and adjust settings for the document you're working on, and insert SketchUp and other graphics files. 1 Edit You use the...
Portable Network Graphics PNG
ftoER Hooray for PNG Pronounced ping, this graphics file format is my hero. Unfortunately, it isn't as widely used as it should be. If I had my druthers I keep leaving them on the subway , every raster export from SketchUp would be a PNG. Why Because, at least as far as SketchUp is concerned, PNG combines all the best features of TIFF and JPEG. Why don't more people use PNGs Because standards are hard to change, and right now, it's a JPEG world. PNG details are as follows 1 PNGs compress image...
Creating eaves for buildings with pitched roofs
My favorite way to create eaves roof overhangs is to use the Offset tool. Follow these steps to get the general idea see Figure 4-31 1. Make a group out of your whole building before you start modeling the roof. This makes it easier to keep your roof separate, which in turn makes your model easier to work with. Retrace or Copy and Paste the roof line Retrace or Copy and Paste the roof line Eaves are the parts of the roof that overhangs a building's walls. Eaves are the parts of the roof that...
The coolest things since radially sliced bread
You can model objects that exhibit radial symmetry just as easily as those with bilateral symmetry you just start out slightly differently. The only thing you have to decide before you start is how many wedges how many identical parts your object is made of. To set yourself up to model something with radial symmetry, you start by modeling one wedge, then you make it into a component, and then you rotate copies around the center. Follow these steps to get the hang of it yourself 1. Draw a...
Making hip roofs
Believe it or not, building a hip roof is easier than making a gabled one. Hip roofs don't have rakes, which makes them a lot less complicated to model. Follow these steps to find out what I mean see Figure 4-35 1. Follow Steps 1 through 5 in the section Constructing gabled roofs to begin making a hip roof. 2. Measure the distance from the midpoint of the gable to the corner of the roof. Because hip roofs have pitches that are the same on all sides, you can use a simple trick to figure out...
Working smarter by only building half
Bilaterally symmetrical forms are everywhere. Most animals you can name, the majority of the furniture in your house, your personal helicopter they can all be modeled by building half, creating a component, and flipping over a copy. This section and the section that follows talks extensively about the use of components, a SketchUp feature so useful it figures prominently in no fewer than three chapters of this book. If you haven't done so already, take a few minutes to read through the first...
Making good use of the Outliner
If you're going to use lots of groups and components and you should , having the Outliner open on your screen is one of the best things you can do to model efficiently. Here's why 1 Use the Outliner to control visibility. Instead of right-clicking groups and components in your model to hide them, use the Outliner instead. Just right-click the name of any element in the Outliner and choose Hide. When you do, the element is hidden in your modeling window, and its name is grayed out and italicized...
Conveying depth in D views
Have you ever looked at a roof plan or building elevation a straight-on view of the exterior and wondered what the heck was going on One of the main reasons that 2D drawings are so hard to read is that they usually don't convey depth. Without knowing how close or far away things are, everything turns into a flat jumble of lines. Of course, experienced draftspersons can use line weight thickness and tone to convey depth SketchUp's style settings, which you can read about it Chapter 8, provide...
Getting to know Intersect with Model
Luckily, SketchUp has a relatively little-known feature that often helps when it comes to making roofs with lots of pitches Intersect with Model. Here's what you need to know about this terrific little tool i Intersect with Model makes new geometry from existing geometry. That's how it works It takes faces you've selected and creates edges wherever they intersect. You use Intersect with Model in cases where you need to create forms that are the union both put together , difference one minus the...
What layers are and what theyre not
In a 2D program like Photoshop or Illustrator, the concept of layers makes a lot of sense You can have content on any number of layers, sort of like a stack of transparencies. You find a distinct order to your layers, so anything that's on the top layer is visually in front of everything on all the other layers. Figure 5-12 shows what I'm talking about. In 2D software, layers are pretty straightforward. In 2D software, layers are pretty straightforward. But hold on a second SketchUp isn't a 2D...
Getting Set Up
Every time you launch LayOut, and every time you choose FileONew, you're presented with a dialog box that asks you how you want to start out. See Figure 15-3. The theory is that when you open most programs, you usually want to do one of two things I Start a new document The New tab at the top of the dialog box presents you with a list of templates that come preloaded in LayOut. There's nothing special about these templates they're just ready-made LayOut files you can use as a starting point for...
Tweaking edge settings
The Edge tab is tricky because it changes a little bit depending on what kind of style you currently have applied to your model. NPR styles have different settings than regular, non-NPR styles. Figure 8-3 shows both versions of the Edge tab, which you open by choosing WindowOStyles, selecting the Edit tab, and then clicking the box icon on the far left. The Edge tab comes in two flavors regular and NPR. The Edge tab comes in two flavors regular and NPR. SketchUp 6 comes with two different kinds...
Encapsulated Postscript EPS
Postscript is a computer language that was developed to describe graphical objects. An EPS is an encapsulated Postscript file, meaning that it's a self-contained bundle of instructions for a how to draw an image. Back before PDFs existed, this was the best way to move vector information around. The key here is back before PDFs existed nowadays, you don't have much reason to use EPS when you could export a PDF file instead. Here are some things you should know about the EPS file format 1 EPS is...
Complex hip roofs and the Follow Me tool
Ready to see something really cool SketchUp has a tool called Follow Me, which I describe in detail in Chapter 5. You can use Follow Me to create complex hip roofs in about one-fifth the time it would normally take you to make them sometimes even less. At its core, Follow Me works a bit like Push Pull, except it lets you extrude faces along predetermined paths. You can use it to create very complicated geometry the kind of stuff you probably wouldn't be able to make without it. When it comes to...
PresentationPerfect Images
After you import content, it's generally not quite presentation-ready. You may want to crop images or use the drawing tools to create an professional-looking, well-organized layout. The following sections show you how. Cropping an image means reframing it so that you can only see part of it every page-layout program on the planet allows you to crop images, and each one insists that you do it a little differently. LayOut is no exception. In LayOut, you use clipping masks to hide the parts of...
Modeling with the Scale tool
In this book, I don't spend a lot of time on the Scale tool because I don't think it's very complicated to figure out. I do, however, want to point out something that a lot of new SketchUp users don't realize using the Scale tool to alter the shape of your model instead of just the size is an incredibly powerful way to work. The following figure shows what I'm getting at. The basic idea is to reshape your geometry by only selecting certain faces and edges, and then scaling those. You can see a...
Put Away Your Wallet
I have a confession to make At fancy receptions, I'm the one stuffing my suit pockets with hors d'oeuvres wrapped in napkins. I love free stuff that much. So without further ado, what follows are six complementary sources of SketchUp help. Everything in this section requires that you have an Internet connection, so make sure that your computer's online before you try any of these. If you take a peek at SketchUp's Help menu, you'll see a bunch of different options see Figure 18-1 these are my...
Editing a Watermark
You can edit any watermark in your SketchUp file at any time. Follow these simple steps to edit a watermark 1. Select the watermark you want to edit in the Watermark list. You can find the Watermark list on the Watermark tab, in the Edit pane of the Styles dialog box. 2. Click the Edit Watermark button to open the Edit Watermark dialog box. The Edit Watermark button looks like a couple of little gears it's right next to the Add and Delete Watermark buttons above the Watermark list. You can...
Getting a handle on OBJ FBX XSI and DAE Collada
I am pleased to report that the Export Options dialog boxes for each of the aforementioned file formats are almost identical, even if the file formats themselves aren't this means that I'm lumping them together into one section. Here are a few reminders about using OBJ, FBX, XSI, and DAE Collada Try using Collada first. Because it's relatively new, not all 3D programs support it yet, but you never know your software might. If Collada doesn't work, use OBJ for Maya, XSI for Softimage, and FBX if...
Portable Document Format PDF
You've probably already heard of PDF files. Back in the old days a few years ago , it was hard to send someone a digital graphics file because so many different kinds were available, and because the person to whom you were sending the file had to have the right kind of software to be able to open it. If I made a brochure in QuarkXPress and wanted to send it to you to review, you had to have QuarkXPress, too and chances were, you didn't QuarkXPress cost 1,000 . Remembering the location and color...
For exporting to DV to be viewed on a TV with a DVD player
If you need to export an animation that will be burned onto a DVD that will in turn be played in a DVD player, you should go all-in on quality and file size. The export process will take a long time, but you'll get the best-looking movie you can get. Try these settings first Compression Type Mac DV DVCPRO Compression Quality Windows 100
Making a basic print Mac
Follow these steps to print exactly what you see in your Modeling Window on a Mac 1. Make sure that your Modeling Window contains whatever you want to print. SketchUp prints exactly what you see in your Modeling Window, unless of course you're printing to scale. This is considerably more complicated, so I gave it a whole section at the end of this chapter. This opens the Page Setup dialog box, where you decide what printer and paper size to use. 3. In the Page Setup dialog box see Figure 12-5 ,...
Modeling Symmetrically Good News for Lazy People
And smart people, I suppose. The fact is, a huge amount of the stuff in the galaxy exhibits some kind of symmetry. This makes modeling a heck of a lot easier, because it means you don't often have to model things in their entirety. With SketchUp's Components feature described at length in Chapter 5 , you can make a piece of something, copy it, flip it over if necessary , and put it in position. Better yet, any changes you make to one part are automatically reflected in the others that's what...
Navigating the PDFEPS Options dialog box
Figure 14-1 shows what this dialog box looks like. Careful it's ugly. Luckily, it's the same for both PDF and EPS exports, so that's something, I guess. The PDF EPS Options dialog box for Windows left and the Mac. The PDF EPS Options dialog box for Windows left and the Mac. In Windows, the name of this dialog box, as written in its title bar, is PDF or EPS Hidden Line Options, but that makes no sense. I think it's probably a remnant from when SketchUp could only export vectors in the Hidden...
Meeting Google SketchUp
Finding out why it's free from Google Comparing SketchUp with other 3D software Finding out what you can and can't do with SketchUp Looking around the application rn Jnce 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. And if that wasn't bad enough, 3D modeling software was expensive. It was so expensive that the only people who used it were...
Staying out of trouble
As I said before, layers can be really helpful, but you need to know how to use them if you don't, bad things can happen. Here's some more detail 1 Do all your modeling on Layer0. Always make sure that LayerO is your current layer when you're working. Keeping all your loose geometry that's not part of a group or component together in one place is the only way to make sure that you don't end up with edges and faces all over the place. SketchUp, unfortunately, lets you put geometry on whatever...
Coming up with a simple plan
If all you're trying to do is model an exterior view of a building, just measure around the perimeter, draw the outline of the building in SketchUp, and proceed from there. See Figure 4-9. Your walls will only be a single face thick meaning paper-thin , but that's okay you're only interested in the outside, anyway. To make an exterior model, just measure the outside of your building to draw an outline in SketchUp. To make an exterior model, just measure the outside of your building to draw an...
Cutting plans and sections
The most common use for sections is to create straight-on, cut-through views of your model. These are some of the views that often include dimensions, and are typical of the kinds of drawings that architects make to design and explain space. They're useful because they're easy to read and you can take measurements from them if they're printed to scale , and they provide information that no other drawing type can. The following terms which are illustrated in Figure 10-9 can help you create...
Making and using guides
Sometimes you need to draw temporary lines while you're modeling. These temporary lines, called guides, are useful for lining things up, making things the right size, and generally adding precision and accuracy to what you're building. In previous versions of SketchUp, guides were called construction geometry, because that's basically what they are a special kind of entity that you create when and where you need them. They aren't part of your model, because they're not edges or faces. This...
Editing your textures
After you've successfully mapped an image to a face, you're probably going to want to change it somehow make it bigger, flip it over, rotate it around you get the idea. This is where the Texture Tweaker Position Texture tool comes in. The Position Texture tool is actually more of a mode I call it Texture Edit mode. Within this mode, you can be in either of two submodes Their names are less important than what they do, so that's how I describe them l Move Scale Rotate Shear Distort Texture mode...
Making lathed forms like spheres and bottles
And nuclear power plant chimneys. A surprising number of things can be modeled by using Follow Me to perform a lathe operation. A lathe is a tool that carpenters and machinists use to spin a block of raw material while they carve into it that's how baseball bats are made the good ones, anyway . A simple example of a lathed object is a sphere. Here's how you might make one with Follow Me 1. Draw a circle on the ground. 2. Rotate a copy of your circle up by 90 degrees, as shown in Figure 6-8 If...
Printing Your Work
Printing views of your model Figuring out the printing dialog boxes Learning how to print to scale ZM s much as everyone likes to pretend that we all live in an all-digital W world, the ugly truth is that we don't. People use more paper now than they ever have I have a stack of junk prints on the coffee table in front of me as I'm writing this. It's not that I have anything against trees it's just that printing is so satisfying. I love having something I can fold up and put in my pocket, or...
Depth Cue
Using different line thicknesses to convey depth is another drawing convention that's popular. Objects closest to the viewer are drawn with the thickest lines, whereas the most distant things in the scene are drawn with the thinnest ones. The number of line thicknesses varies according to taste, but it's usually somewhere between 3 and 6. If you're looking for something to provide a sense of depth in your model views, look no further than the Fog feature. New for this version of SketchUp, Fog...
Jitter
Most people either love Jitter or hate it. With it on it's only available for non-NPR styles , SketchUp jitters your edges, making it look like you rendered your model with a burnt stick while driving down a dirt road. I really like the effect. Before NPR styles came along, Jitter was the best way to make your model look hand-drawn. Use it if you want to, but be careful not everyone will approve of your decision. I use it in the same situations where I use Extensions. Figure 8-6 shows Jitter in...
Adding photos to faces
Technically, painting surfaces with pictures using 3D software is mapping, as in I mapped a photo of your face to the underside of the pile-driver model I'm building. Different software programs have different methods for mapping pictures to faces, and luckily, SketchUp's very straightforward. Mapping photos of building facades to your building models with the Texture Tweaker Position Texture tool has a number of benefits 1 Using photographs can make your models look more realistic. 1 Taking...
Moving entities to a different layer
Moving things from one layer to another involves using the Entity Info dialog box. Follow these steps to move an entity an edge, face, group, or component to a different layer 1. Select the entity or entities you want to move to another layer. Keep in mind that you should only be moving groups and components to other layers have a look at the next section in this chapter to find out why. This opens the Entity Info dialog box. You can also open it by right-clicking your selected entities and...
Creating a new Photo Match
Setting up a new Photo Match is generally a step-by-step procedure. Whether you're building a new model using Photo Match or lining up an existing model with a photograph, you start by getting your modeling window ready to create a new Photo Match. How you do this depends on which one you're trying to do 1 Use a photograph to build a model If this is what you want to do, open a fresh, new SketchUp file and you're good to go. 1 Line up a model you've built already with a photograph This case...
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'll keep this short and sweet. This section is just about making sure that you're starting at the right place. That's it. 2. Choose your default settings. If you've never launched SketchUp on your computer before, you'll see the Choose Default Settings dialog box. See Figure 3-1. Here's what to do if it pops up The Choose Default Settings dialog box, which pops up the...
Animating a shadow study
As if playing with the shadow settings weren't sexy enough, it's a relatively easy next step to create a simple animation that shows shadows moving over time. To do this, you'll use scenes, a feature so impressive and relevant to this topic I mention it here as well as in Chapter 10, where you'll find more detailed coverage of scenes in general. Even if you're not an architect, you might want to study shadows accurately for these reasons I To figure out where to locate the plants in your garden...
Printing to scale Windows and Mac
The steps in this section allow you to produce a scaled print from SketchUp I give Windows instructions first, and then Mac. When the user-interface elements are different for the two platforms, the ones for Mac are shown in parentheses. Figure 12-8 shows the relevant dialog boxes for printing to scale in Windows and on a Mac. When printing to scale, don't worry about these numbers. Setting up to print at 1 inch 4 foot 1 4 inch 1 foot scale. When printing to scale, don't worry about these...
Grouping Things Together
Anyone who's worked with SketchUp for even a short time has probably noticed something SketchUp geometry the edges and faces that make up your model is sticky. That is to say, stuff in your model wants to stick to other stuff. The people who invented SketchUp built it this way on purpose the reasons why would take a while to explain. Suffice it to say, making and using groups are the keys to keeping the stuff in your model from sticking together. For additional help, check out this book's...
Modeling with projected textures A basic workflow
Follow these steps to get the hang of working with projected textures see Figure 7-11 1. Make a basic rectangular box. 2. Apply a photo texture to one of the side faces. Check out the section, Adding photos to faces, earlier in this chapter. 3. Right-click the textured face and choose TextureOProjected from the context menu. Make sure that Projected has a check mark next to it. 4. Draw a rectangle on the textured face and push pull it inward. Notice the stretched pixels effect 5. Add other...
Lighting indoor spaces
Adding shadows to interior views presents an interesting problem There are no lights besides the sun in SketchUp, so how are you supposed to make anything that looks halfway realistic With a ceiling in your room, everything's dark. If you leave off the ceiling, your model looks ridiculous. Don't despair here are some tricks I've learned i Decrease the darkness of the shadows. Sliding the Dark slider to the right brightens your view considerably. You'll still be able to see the shadows cast by...
SketchUp Crashed and I Lost My Model
Unfortunately, SketchUp crashes happen sometimes. The good news is that SketchUp automatically saves a copy of your file every five minutes. The file that SketchUp autosaves is actually a separate file, which it calls AutoSave_ your filename.skp. So if your file ever gets corrupted in a crash, there's an intact one, ready for you to find and continue working on. The problem is that most people don't even know it's there. Where i If you've ever saved your file, it's in the same folder as the...
The Copied Profile method
This method for modeling a staircase relies, like the last one, on using Push Pull to create a three-dimensional form from a 2D face, but I think you'll agree it's a lot more elegant. In a nutshell, you draw the profile the side view, sort of of a single step, and then you copy as many steps as you need, create a single face, and extrude the whole thing into shape. It's breath-takingly satisfying the first time you do it one of those guaranteed to make you smile SketchUp operations you'll want...
Modeling on a Google Earth snapshot
Now that you've imported a snapshot from Google Earth, you can build a model on it. To do this, just go about your SketchUp business the way you always do everything about SketchUp stays exactly the same, even after you import a snapshot. To follow the steps in this section, you need to know how to do some basics, such as how to use the Line tool to trace a building's footprint, work with the drawing axes, and more. I cover these basics in detail in Chapter 2. Here are the basic steps for...
Setting up the background
In the Background tab of the Styles dialog box, you choose colors and decide whether you want to be able to see a sky and a ground plane. It doesn't get less complicated than this folks. Check out Figure 8-12 to get a view of the Background tab, along with an idea of how it works. To open these options in your own copy of SketchUp, choose WindowOStyles, select the Edit tab, and click the middle icon, at the top of the tab. You have the following options on the Background tab i Background Click...
Adjusting transparency
Because how well SketchUp runs on your computer depends on what's in your model, and because displaying transparency as in translucent materials is an especially taxing operation for SketchUp and your computer to handle, you can decide how to display translucent materials i Enable transparency Deselect this check box to display translucent materials as opaque. You should turn off transparency to speed SketchUp's performance if you find that it's slowed down. 1 Transparency quality If you decide...