This article will introduce new users to Sketchup to the basics of modeling. Here you’ll learn the fundamentals of the way that tools, faces, and extrusions work. This write-up will introduce you to new users to Sketchup to the basics of modeling. We will start off with a quick orientation to the workspace.
Menubar
The menu bar contains links to only about everything, from opening and saving the models, to drawing and camera tools. You can manage almost everything from the menu bar.
Toolbar
The toolbars contain quick links to most of the drawing tools, as well as any extensions you have loaded.
Extensions
Extensions are add-ons you put in in SketchUp to expand its functionality.
Tray
The tray contains different sections for adjusting the way your model looks, also as some sections that contain some information about the objects.
Status Bar
The status bar contains instructions for using the currently active tool, also because the measurements box, which can tell you things like lengths and other information that tool.
Workspace
Finally, the workspace is where you really draw your models.
Now we are getting to begin by noting that SketchUp may be a face modeler, meaning that SketchUp draws a face any time you’ve got 3 or more intersecting co-planar lines. All of your tools in SketchUp allow different inputs.
Example
If you activate the road tool, you’ll see how there’s an instruction within the status bar telling you to pick your start point. Once you decide on your start point (the point where you would like to start out your line), you’ll pick a second point to draw a line between those two points. You can do this either by clicking a second time or by moving your mouse in the direction you would like your line to go and typing a length, then hit the enter key. Some tools in SketchUp draw full faces directly. For example, if you decide on the rectangle tool, you’ll click once to line your first point, then click again to line a second, and SketchUp will draw the perimeter of a shape and fill it in. You can see how within the corner during this tool, it’s 2 inputs – length and width. To create a precise rectangle, you would simply type in one length, then a comma, then the other length.
Extruding any Object
Now let’s look at extruding our object. There is a tool called the push/pull tool that will extrude a flat object to 3D quickly. Simply activate the tool, click once on a face, then click again to extrude it to 3D. You can see how this creates a 3D box very quickly.
You can also use the push pull tool to chop holes and take away material. For example, if I draw a circle on the face, then push pull it, you will see how it cuts a circular hole through the box. In the same way, if I draw an arc along the sting of this box, I can push pull the resulting face to get rid of material from my box. It is worth noting that this would not work on curved faces.
Here’s why.
If you go up to the view window, and check the box for hidden geometry, you’ll see that curved faces aren’t actually curved in SketchUp – instead, they are made up of a series of segmented flat faces – this means that when you try to extrude a curved face, you are actually trying to extrude multiple flat faces at once, which SketchUp would not do (unless you download an extension).
