SketchUp Pro, the powerful and popular 3D design software, boasts a robust tool kit that users can leverage to design, document, and share their projects. Whether you're a SketchUp veteran or a brand-new user, this weekly series can help you spend less time fussing with settings and features and more time designing amazing things.
Experts shares actionable, bite-sized tips for using common SketchUp tools more efficiently, as well as how to generally work smarter with the software.
Contents
SketchUp Tips Weekly
- Best practices for importing CAD drawings
- Clean up CAD drawings with extensions
- Model walls with outer shell
- Use math to model precise forms
- Control softening and smoothing
- Composite SketchUp 2D graphics
- Make photographic entourage
- Create depth-of-field effects with fog
- Animate section planes
- Master arrays
- Use the tape measure and protractor
- Create flights of stairs for any rise and run
- Work with drawing axes
- Add functionality to SketchUp
- Explore Fredo6's Bezier Spline tools
- Model pottery with a Bezier spline
- Loft a handle with Curviloft
- Cycle materials in dynamic components
- Control object visibility
- Keyboard shortcut strategy
- Animate a door as a dynamic component
- Prepare and save dynamic components
- Work in interiors
Settings and Efficiencies
- Replace groups with components
- Make your own template for a great start
- Lose a face? Bring it back
- Three ways to keep your SketchUp model running quickly
- Smart selection with X-ray and back edges
Interiors
- Tips for tracing floor plans efficiently
- Creating an opening for a sink
- Building a detailed kitchen cabinet
- Scale using the FredoScale extension
- Creating a framed out-of-perspective image of artwork
- Seeing more in a small space
- Show two different options in the same space
- Measuring and drawing stairs
Exterior / Shell
- Measuring roof pitch
- Create an awning using Autofold
- Create site plans on terrain
- Create and place windows
Materials
- Applying materials from the 3D Warehouse
- Best practices for applying materials
- Replace materials with and without an extension
- Sampling a material from outside of SketchUp
- Sampling an edited material to apply to another surface
- Applying a material to multiple surfaces at once
- Changing the color of texture
- Add more segments to circle or arc
- Nesting a group using the Outliner
- Turn off animation for faster modeling
- Healing two edges
- Mixing styles for a custom look
- Move the axis to rotate your top view
- Isolate section plane to one group
- Creating copies more efficiently
- Using multiple section planes
- Hiding edges in adjacent groups