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

Creating and Editing Materials with the Materials Panel

We have already seen that the Materials panel can be used to select the active Material for the Paint Bucket tool. However, in order to use Materials in our Models, we must first understand how the Materials panel can be navigated to find Materials, and then how to create and edit Materials to be exactly what we need in our SketchUp Model.

Finding Materials

The Materials panel has two tabs underneath the current Material, the Select and Edit tabs:

Figure 8.37 – The Materials Panel’s Select and Edit Tabs Underneath the Current Material

The Select tab is used to find all Materials in SketchUp Pro. The Select tab has three navigation buttons, Back, Forward, and Home. The Back and Forward buttons allow the navigation to be moved backward and forward, and the Home button opens the In Model Collection. The In Model Collection is continuously updated as Materials are added and purged from...