Book Image

Getting Started with SketchUp Pro

By : David S. Sellers
Book Image

Getting Started with SketchUp Pro

By: David S. Sellers

Overview of this book

Owing to its ability to create models quickly and with high level of dimensional accuracy, SketchUp Pro has become a popular choice for many industries, including architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, and video game design. If you are seeking to adopt Trimble's exceptional design software, Getting Started with SketchUp Pro serves as an ideal primer to prepare and equip you for its use. This book will help you lay the foundation of a project from scratch, set up appropriate units, and follow a guided path to structure your 3D models. You’ll explore the workflows used for creating designs from sketches, making CAD drawings (DWG), and even updating your existing 3D models. Finally, you’ll work with extensions and 3D Warehouse to find new workflows and models to add to your skill set. By the end of this SketchUp book, you’ll be able to confidently create and share models of your design through CAD drawings and 3D views, and even take them online through the 3D Warehouse
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1 – User Interface and Beginning Modeling!
7
Part 2 – Views, Animations, and Materials
11
Part 3 – Advanced Modeling and Model Organization
12
Chapter 9: Entity Info, Outliner, and Tags Dynamically Organize Your Models
13
Chapter 10: Model Info and Preferences

Materials

Materials in SketchUp Pro are applied to Faces. Materials can represent a solid color or image texture. Materials can be painted onto Faces using the Paint Bucket tool found on the Large Tool Set. Before we learn about all of the Paint Bucket options and ways to add Materials to your SketchUp Models, let’s look at the difference between color and texture Materials.

Colors

Color Materials are represented by a single color for the entire Face. Color Materials can also include an Opacity amount to make the color translucent. A color Material may appear to look different, depending on the orientation of the Geometry, because of how SketchUp shades a Model to provide depth, even when Shadows are turned off. In this next example, a box has all Faces colored the same shade of orange, but the Faces appear to be different shades:

Figure 8.1 – Orange Box Appears to Have Different Color Materials

This box has been painted with the same Material...