SketchUp For Dummies

Aidan Chopra is a former SketchUp evangelist and author of previous editions of SketchUp For Dummies. Rebecca Huehls creates content for the help system on current versions of SketchUp.

Introduction 1


About This Book 1


Foolish Assumptions 2


Icons Used in This Book 2


Beyond the Book 3


Where to Go from Here 3


Part 1: Getting Started with SketchUp 5


Chapter 1: Meeting SketchUp 7


Things You Ought to Know Right Away 8


Comparing SketchUp to Other 3D Modeling Programs 8


Jumping right in 8


Understanding the difference between paper and clay 9


What You Should (and Shouldn’t) Expect SketchUp to Do 10


Taking the Ten-Minute SketchUp Tour 12


Customizing the toolbar 15


Checking out some special tools 15


Chapter 2: Getting a Running Start 17


Setting Up Your Workspace 17


Making a Quick Model 19


Slapping On Some Paint 25


Giving Your Model Some Style 28


Switching On the Sun 30


Sharing Your Masterpiece 32


Chapter 3: Establishing the Modeling Mindset 33


All about Edges and Faces 34


Living on the edge 34


Facing the facts about faces 35


Understanding the relationship between edges and faces 37


Drawing in 3D on a 2D Screen 39


Giving instructions with the drawing axes 40


Keeping an eye out for inferences 41


Using inferences to help you model 43


Warming Up Your SketchUp Muscles 45


Getting the best view of what you’re doing 45


Drawing and erasing edges with ease 47


Injecting accuracy into your model 48


Selecting what you mean to select 52


Moving and copying like a champ 55


Rotating the right way 60


Making and using guides 62


Painting your faces with color and texture 65


Part 2: Modeling in SketchUp 69


Chapter 4: Building Buildings 71


Drawing Floors and Walls 72


Starting out in 2D 73


Coming up with a simple plan 77


Going from 2D to 3D 84


Adding floors to your building 89


Inserting doors and windows 97


Staring Down Stairs 101


The Subdivided Rectangles method 102


The Copied Profile method 104


Raising the Roof 106


Building flat roofs with parapets 107


Creating eaves for buildings with pitched roofs 109


Constructing gabled roofs 110


Making hip roofs 112


Sticking your roof together with Intersect Faces 114


Chapter 5: Falling in Love with Components 119


Grouping Things Together 120


Working with Components 121


What makes components so great? 122


Exploring the Components panel 126


Creating your own components 131


Editing, exploding, and locking component instances 134


Discovering Dynamic Components 136


Taking Advantage of Components to Build Better Models 142


Modeling symmetrically: Good news for lazy people 143


Modeling with repeated elements 149


Chapter 6: Going Beyond Buildings 153


Extruding with Purpose: Follow Me 154


Using Follow Me 154


Making lathed forms like spheres and bottles 156


Creating extruded shapes like gutters and handrails 157


Subtracting from a model with Follow Me 163


Modeling with the Scale Tool 167


Getting the hang of Scale 167


Scaling profiles to make organic forms 171


Making and Modifying Terrain 177


Creating a new terrain model 177


Editing an existing terrain model 184


Building a Solid Tools Foundation 193


Understanding solids 193


Checking out the Solid Tools 195


Putting the Solid Tools to work 198


Chapter 7: Keeping Your Model Organized 203


Taking Stock of Your Tools 203


Seeing the Big Picture: The Outliner 205


Taking a good look at the Outliner 205


Making good use of the Outliner 206


Discovering the Ins and Outs of Layers 207


What layers are — and what they’re not 207


Navigating the Layers panel 208


Moving entities to a different layer 209


Staying out of trouble 210


Putting It All Together 211


Chapter 8: Modeling with Photos and Other Resources 215


Painting Faces with Photos 216


Adding photos to flat faces 216


Editing your textures 220


Adding photo textures to curved surfaces 226


Modeling Directly from a Photo: Introducing Photo-Matching 230


Choosing a Match Photo-friendly image 231


Modeling by photo-matching 232


Making your matched photo reappear (or disappear) 238


Modeling on Top of Photo Textures 239


Making a texture projected 239


Modeling with projected textures: A basic workflow 240


Adding Geographic Data 241


Geo-locating your model 242


Viewing your model in Google Earth 244


Working with Imported CAD files 245


Importing a CAD file into SketchUp Pro 245


Cleaning up imported CAD data 247


Modeling on top of imported CAD data 251


Chapter 9: 3D Printing with SketchUp Models 259


Building Up a View of 3D Printing 260


Building a Model in Layers 260


Supporting layers from below 260


Designing to avoid support material 261


Bridging 262


Preparing a SketchUp Model for 3D Printing 263


Peeking inside a model 263


Knowing what makes a solid model 264


Using Solid Tools to combine groups 265


CleanUp3 and Solid Inspector2 266


Combining groups with Intersect Faces 267


Checking a model’s normals 269


Checking your model’s size 270


Breaking Your Model into Parts 272


Exporting Your SketchUp File 276


Knowing Your 3D Printers 277


Desktop 3D printers 277


Professional 3D printers 279


3D printing services 279


Using Your 3D Printer 280


Print early, print often 280


Inside your model 281


Going beyond Basic 3D Printing 282


Designing parts that connect 282


Testing your model’s moving parts 286


Designing Things That Move 286


Captive joints 287


Pins 287


Gears 288


Part 3: Viewing Your Model in Different Ways 291


Chapter 10: Working with Styles and Shadows 293


Styling Your Model’s Appearance 294


Choosing how and where to apply styles 294


Applying styles to your models 295


Editing your styles 297


Creating a new style 313


Saving and sharing styles you make 314


Working with Shadows 317


Discovering the shadow settings 317


Adding depth and realism 319


Creating accurate shadow studies 323


Chapter 11: Presenting Your Model inside SketchUp 329


Exploring Your Creation on Foot 330


These tools were made for walking 330


Stopping to look around 332


Setting your field of view 333


Taking the Scenic Route 334


Creating scenes 336


Moving from scene to scene 337


Modifying scenes after you make ’em 341


Mastering the Sectional Approach 347


Cutting plans and sections 348


Animating sections with scenes 356


Part 4: Sharing What You’ve Made 359


Chapter 12: Paper or Cloud? Printing and Uploading Your Work 361


Printing Your Work 362


Printing from a Windows computer 362


Printing from a Mac 367


Printing to a particular scale 371


Working with the 3D Warehouse 374


Why Warehouse? 375


Getting to the 3D Warehouse 376


Uploading a model 376


Managing models online 378


Chapter 13: Exporting Images, Animations, and CAD Files 381


Exporting 2D Images of Your Model 381


Introducing raster versus vector files 382


Exporting a raster image from SketchUp 382


Looking at SketchUp’s raster formats 387


Making sure you export enough pixels 389


Making Movies with Animation Export 394


Getting ready for prime time 394


Exporting a movie 395


Figuring out the Animation Export Options settings 397


Exporting a CAD File 399


Preparing your file 399


Exporting a 2D DWG file 400


Exporting a 3D DWG file 400


Chapter 14: Creating Presentations and Documents with LayOut 403


Building a LayOut Document 404


Customizing a document’s pages and layers 404


Adding and editing text 408


Inserting SketchUp model views 409


Adding photos and other graphics 416


Drawing with LayOut’s vector tools 417


Annotating with labels 419


Displaying dimensions 420


Creating tables 425


Creating Your Own Templates 426


Putting Together Your Own Scrapbooks 427


Getting Your Document Out the Door 428


Printing your work 429


Exporting a PDF or image files 429


Exporting a DWG or DXF file 430


Going full screen 431


Part 5: The Part of Tens 433


Chapter 15: Ten SketchUp Traps and Their Workarounds 435


SketchUp Won’t Create a Face Where You Want It To 435


Your Faces Are Two Different Colors 436


Edges on a Face Won’t Sink In 437


SketchUp Crashed, and You Lost Your Model 437


SketchUp Is Sooooo Slooooooooow 438


You Can’t Get a Good View of the Inside of Your Model 439


A Face Flashes When You Orbit 440


You Can’t Move Your Component the Way You Want 440


Bad Stuff Happens Every Time You Use the Eraser 440


All Your Edges and Faces Are on Different Layers 441


Chapter 16: More Than Ten Ways to Learn About SketchUp 443


Free Online Resources 443


The Ultimate SketchUp Reading List 445


Other Tools from the Makers of SketchUp 446


Index 449