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