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

Modeling with the Drawing Tools

We learned about the different types of SketchUp Geometry in Chapter 1, Introduction to SketchUp Pro, in the Geometry “Rules” section. Those rules are set out here:

  • All edges are straight lines between two points
  • All faces are bounded (surrounded) by edges
  • All faces are two-dimensional (flat)

Using these rules, we can create straight Edges and flat Faces. We also discussed that we could use Edges and Faces to create Rectangles, Polygons, and Curves (Welded Edges). The Drawing tools are the tools we use to create all of this Geometry!

The Drawing tools can all be found on the Getting Started toolbar, the Large Tool Set toolbar, and the Drawing toolbar. The Getting Started toolbar utilizes dropdowns to show the nested tools, which create miniature collections of the Drawing tools:

Figure 4.1 – Getting Started Toolbar and Drawing Tool collections

These collections are the Line tools...