SketchUp For Dummies

Bill Fane is the author of AutoCAD For Dummies. He spent years as a product designer before becoming an educator focused on design tools. Mark Harrison is a product manager for Trimble, Inc., SketchUp's parent company. He studies learnability in 3D software. Josh Reilly is a training manager with Trimble and a longtime SketchUp instructor.

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 2

Beyond the Book 3

Where to Go from Here 4

Part 1: Getting Started With Sketchup 5

Chapter 1: The SketchUp Setup 7

Picking a Version of SketchUp 7

SketchUp for Schools 9

SketchUp Pro 9

SketchUp for Web 10

Trimble Connect 12

Navigating SketchUp 12

Customizing settings to see better 13

Getting to know your mouse 13

Finding your Zen with click-release, click-to-finish 14

Working faster with keyboard shortcuts 15

Introducing Undo 16

Taking the 10-Minute SketchUp Tour 17

The SketchUp Frame of Mind 19

Chapter 2: Getting a Running Start 21

Making a Quick Model from Scratch 21

Slapping On Some Paint 28

Giving Your Model Some Style 31

Switching On the Sun 33

Sharing Your Masterpiece 35

Chapter 3: Establishing the Modeling Mindset 37

All about Edges and Faces 38

Living on the edge 38

Facing the facts about faces 39

Understanding the relationship between edges and faces 41

Drawing in 3D on a 2D Screen 43

Giving instructions with the drawing axes 44

Keeping an eye out for inferences 44

Using inferences to help you model 47

Warming Up Your SketchUp Muscles 49

Getting the best view of what you’re doing 49

Drawing and erasing edges with ease 52

Injecting accuracy into your model 53

Selecting what you mean to select 57

Moving and copying like a champ 60

Making and using guides 67

Painting your faces with color and texture 70

Part 2: MODELING IN SKETCHUP 73

Chapter 4: Building Buildings 75

Drawing Floors and Walls 76

Starting out in 2D 77

Coming up with a simple plan 82

Doing an inside job 83

Going from 2D to 3D 90

Adding floors to your building 95

Inserting doors and windows 104

Staring Down Stairs 108

The Subdivided Rectangles method 109

The Copied Profile method 111

Raising the Roof 113

Building flat roofs with parapets 115

Creating eaves for buildings with pitched roofs 116

Constructing gabled roofs 117

Making hip roofs 119

Sticking your roof together with Intersect Faces 121

Chapter 5: Falling in Love with Components 125

SketchUp Groupies 126

Working with Components 127

What makes components so great? 128

Exploring the Components panel 132

Creating your own components 138

Editing, exploding, and locking component instances 140

Discovering Dynamic Components 142

Poking around to see what happens 147

Taking Advantage of Components to Build Better Models 148

Modeling symmetrically: Good news for lazy people 148

Modeling with repeated elements 155

Chapter 6: Going beyond Buildings 159

Extruding with Purpose: Follow Me 160

Using Follow Me 160

Making lathed forms 162

Creating extruded shapes 164

Subtracting from a model with Follow Me 169

Modeling with the Scale Tool 174

Getting the hang of Scale 174

Scaling profiles to make organic forms 177

Making and Modifying Terrain 183

Creating a new terrain model 184

Editing an existing terrain model 192

Building a Solid Tools Foundation 199

Understanding solids 200

Checking out the Solid Tools 202

Putting the Solid Tools to work 204

Chapter 7: Keeping Your Model Organized 209

Taking Stock of Your Tools 210

Seeing the Big Picture: The Outliner 211

Taking a good look at the Outliner 212

Making good use of the Outliner 213

Discovering the Ins and Outs of Tags 214

What Tags are — and what they’re not 214

Navigating the Tags panel 215

Tag, you’re it! 216

Staying out of trouble 217

Putting It All Together 218

Chapter 8: Modeling with Textures, Photographs, and CAD Files 223

Painting Faces with Image Files 224

Applying textures to flat faces 224

Controlling color and transparency 232

Applying textures to curved surfaces 233

Modeling Directly from a Photo: Introducing Photo-Matching 238

Choosing a Match Photo–friendly image 238

Modeling by photo-matching   239

Making your matched photo reappear (or disappear) 245

Adding Geographic Data 246

Working with Imported CAD files 249

Importing a CAD file into SketchUp Pro 249

Cleaning up imported CAD data 252

Modeling on top of imported CAD data 256

Chapter 9: 3D Printing with SketchUp Models 263

Building Up a View of 3D Printing 264

Knowing Your 3D Printers 265

Fused deposition modeling (FDM) 265

Stereolithography (SLA) 266

Fused powder modeling (FPM) 266

Designing for Successful 3D Printing 267

Building a model in layers 267

Designing to avoid support material 268

Bridging 269

Preparing a SketchUp Model for 3D Printing 270

Peeking inside a model 270

Knowing what makes a solid model 271

Using Solid Tools to combine groups 272

CleanUp3 and Solid Inspector2 273

Combining groups with Intersect Faces 275

Checking a model’s normals 277

Size matters! 278

Breaking your model into arts 279

Exporting Your SketchUp File 284

3D printing services 284

Using Your 3D Printer 285

Print early, print often 285

Inside your model 286

Going beyond Basic 3D Printing 287

Designing Parts that connect 287

Testing your model’s moving Parts 291

Designing Things That Move 292

Captive joints 292

Pins 293

Gears 293

Assemblies 294

Part 3: Viewing Your Model In Different Ways 295

Chapter 10: Working with Styles and Shadows 297

Styling Your Model’s Appearance 298

Choosing how and where to apply styles 298

Applying styles to your models 299

Editing your styles 301

Creating a new style 318

Saving and sharing styles you make (Desktop only) 319

Working with Shadows 322

Discovering the shadow settings   322

Adding depth and realism 324

Creating accurate shadow studies (Desktop only) 328

Chapter 11: Preparing Models for Presentation 333

Exploring Your Creation on Foot 334

These tools were made for walking 334

Stopping to look around 337

Setting your field of view 337

Taking the Scenic Route 339

Creating scenes 340

Moving from scene to scene 342

Modifying scenes after you make ’em 344

Mastering the Sectional Approach 352

Cutting plans and sections 353

Animating sections with scenes 361

Part 4: Sharing What You’ve Made 363

Chapter 12: Creating Images, Presentations, and Documents in LayOut 365

Building a LayOut Document 366

Customizing a document’s pages and layers 368

Adding and editing text 370

Inserting SketchUp model views 372

Adding photos and other graphics 379

Drawing with LayOut’s vector tools 380

Create clipping masks to emphasize details 384

Annotating with labels 385

Displaying dimensions 387

Creating tables 392

Creating Your Own Templates 394

Putting Together Your Own Scrapbooks 395

Getting Your Document out the Door 396

Printing your work 396

Exporting a PDF or image files 396

Exporting a DWG or DXF file 398

Going full-screen 399

Chapter 13: Other Ways to Share Your Work 401

Exporting Images from SketchUp for Web 402

Making Sure You Export Enough Pixels 405

Exporting Enough Pixels for a Digital Presentation 407

Printing from SketchUp for Web 407

Printing to Scale in SketchUp for Web 408

Making Movies with Animation Export 410

Getting ready for prime time 410

Exporting a movie 411

Figuring out the Animation Export Options settings 413

Exporting a CAD File 415

Preparing your file 415

Exporting a 2D DWG file 416

Exporting a 3D DWG file 417

Working with the 3D Warehouse 418

Why use 3D Warehouse? 418

Getting to the 3D Warehouse 419

Find, preview, and download models 420

Uploading a model 420

Managing models online 421

Part 5: The Part of Tens 425

Chapter 14: Ten SketchUp Traps and Their Workarounds 427

SketchUp Won’t Create a Face Where You Want It To 427

Your Faces Are Two Different Colors 429

Edges on a Face Won’t Sink In 430

SketchUp Crashed, and You Lost Your Model 431

SketchUp is Sooooo Slooooooooow 432

You Can’t Get a Good View of the Inside of Your Model 434

A Face Flashes When You Orbit 435

You Can’t Move Your Component the Way You Want 435

Bad Stuff Happens Almost Every Time You Use the Eraser 436

All Your Edges and Faces Have Different Tags 437

Chapter 15: Ten SketchUp Quick Wins 439

Setting Your Click Style to Click-Move-Click 439

Customizing Shortcuts 440

Using the Inference Locking Force 442

Transporting Yourself across Space and Time 444

Rounding Off Edges with the Arc Tool 445

Using the Scale Tool to Set Length for Simple Objects 446

Ten Extensions for Dummies 447

Getting SketchUp on Your Smartphone 450

Turning Off Your Profiles 453

Connecting with the SketchUp Community 453

Index 455