Creating an Exploded Model View in SketchUp - SketchUp Quick Tips

what's up guys Justin here with the Sketchup essentials comm back with another Sketchup quick tip for you so in this video we're gonna talk about how to create an exploded view of an object in Sketchup so let's go ahead and just jump into it so if you ever look online websites like Popular Woodworking they often contain exploded views of projects in order to give a better idea of what the inner workings and the parts and pieces of those projects look like and I just wanted to make a quick video teaching you how to kind of create a view like that in Sketchup so unfortunately Sketchup at this point doesn't contain the functionality to do something like this automatically so we're gonna have to do it manually it's not a ton of work to do but there's a few things you have to kind of figure out in order to do this properly so that you don't get yourself in trouble so the first thing is so that this is a model of an upper cabinet that I modeled using an extension called GK where cabinetmaker um and I've made a video a while ago about that that I'll link to up above that's a very in-depth cabinet making extension it's a paid extension but it creates really cool cabinets it gives you a lot of different it gives you a lot of different options that sort of thing but what it does is it allows you to change basically all the parts and pieces it'll put like drawers and all sorts of things in your cabinets so this is kind of pre modeled the way that we want it to be but one of the keys when you're doing this is you need to setup your model properly so that you can actually move everything apart and so what that means is you need to make sure you setup your model so that all the parts and pieces that you may want to explode our model does their own objects so like for example if you had the sides of this in the top of this in here and they weren't in their own groups then you wouldn't be able to move them apart you know like if I was to just come in here real quick and let's say you modeled the top and the bottom of your cabinet kind of like this and you didn't have each one of these objects in their own group then you wouldn't be able to create exploded views because the geometry merges so you would have to make sure that you modeled everything as groups and components so that you would be able to actually move everything apart so it's it's just a question of you need to set up your model in a way that you can come through and you can move everything apart later so it's just something you need to be aware of when you're modeling so what we're gonna do is first of all we're going to create a copy of this object the object that we want to explode and the reason for that is because there's no non-destructive way to do this meaning when you do this you're going to be basically taking your model and moving all the parts and pieces and so it's it's not like it's something where there's a button you can click to put everything back together and so you're always going to want to work from that copy not from your original so that you still have an original that's all put together and so what we're gonna do is first of all you're gonna select the object that you want to explode and you can use the move tool in copy mode so just to activate the move tool by tapping the M key and then click on this corner and then what you're going to do is you're going to tap the control key and that activates copy mode meaning you can create a copy and so now what you have is you have two copies of this cabinet you've got this one here and you've got this one this one here so now we're gonna be able to take this one and move all the parts and pieces apart and another thing to note is if you have these modeled as components then you're gonna want to make sure that you make this new one unique because right now I made a copy of a component meaning if I change one then the other copy of that in my model is gonna change as well you can see that here on the screen and you don't want that because you want your original to kind of stay in place and so what we're gonna do is we're just gonna right-click on this object we're gonna click make unique and all that means is now when you move the parts and pieces and this one you're not moving the parts and pieces and the other one so that's the first thing that we're going to do and then the second thing that I'm gonna go ahead and do is I'm going to create two different layers so I'm going to create one layer for my unexploded object and I'm going to create a second layer for my exploded object and so that way what we're going to be able to do is we can select this first object and we can put it on the unexploded object layer we can take the second one and this is all up in the entity info section of your tray I'm just selecting my object clicking this drop-down and then selecting which layer I want it to be on but when I do that then now I can turn one or the other off so I can turn my unexploded object off or I can turn my exploded object off so that's gonna allow us to create both an unexploded and an exploded view of this object so and you can add that layer in the layers section of your tray and if you don't see your tray just go up to window default tray make sure show tray is checked and also make sure that the layers box is checked so that shows up so now that we've got these set up so we can show our different views now we're gonna come in and we're gonna start moving these parts and pieces and so what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna set this up so that I can see my other object because what I want to make sure that I stay aware of is sometimes there's other components in your object like you can see if I click on this door right now that's getting selected in this other object as well so if I move it around it's going to move around in the other object that's because that's also a copy of a component so you're just gonna make sure that when you do this and it's helpful to have the outliner open in order to do this you're just going to want to make sure that all these objects get made unique so if you ever see one of these that you select over here pop up and blue over here just go down to the outliner right-click on the object that you're talking about and click the option for make unique so then you won't have that problem anymore so now what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna come in here and I'm gonna start moving my parts and pieces outward so in this case I'm gonna do a shift click and I'm gonna select both doors and I'm gonna move them forward like this and you can move these as far out or as close in as you want to move them so it kind of depends on what you're trying to do like for example if I want this drawer box to be out here in my exploded view then I'm going to need to move this far enough out that that drawer box kind of fits in here so and all you're gonna do is you're just gonna move these objects along the axes so I would recommend always moving these along the red green or blue axes so straight up and down all of that and one way that you can do that is to tap the arrow keys to lock them to an axis so like if I'm start moving this around if I tap the up key that's gonna lock this object to the up and down axis meaning that I can move this straight up and down no matter where where I go with my mouse it's only gonna move this along the blue axis and so and you can get us in depth with this as you want like for example I can take one door and I can move it further out and then I can move the individual parts and pieces in this door and you can see how again this object over here is selected so I just need to make sure I come in here I right-click and I make this door unique so again you have to kind of keep keep an eye out for that but then you can just come in here and you can just move the individual parts and pieces up and down or outward as much as you want to so I could take this I could take this door pull and I can move that out as well and so what that gives me is that gives me my kind of exploded view here and if you remember and now once you've got everything kind of exploded you can come in here and you can turn off your unexploded object in the background and so now all you have is your exploded view right here so and then the other thing you can do if you want to is if for whatever reason you feel like some of your stuff is kind of getting lost like like for example if you feel like if you feel like it's starting to get a little bit confusing as to where these pieces go what you can do is you can create guides in your model using the tape measure tool that kind of indicate where the pieces go when you move them back in so that way you know you just kind of give a visual indicator of the way those work and all you do is you select the tape measure tool and if you look by the by the tape measure tool on my screen there's a little plus mark right now next to the little line on the lower right hand corner by my cursor that indicates that create guide mode is turned on so if I tap the control key you can see how that goes away and so now if I click in here it's not gonna create guides it's just gonna measure whoops that turn back on so you can see how that didn't create a guide but when the little plus sign is shown then it's going to create a guide so so that'll kind of allow you to come in here and kind of customize the way this looks and the other thing you can do is if you want to you can turn perspective off so you can see how when I turn perspective off the stuff doesn't go to a vanishing point anymore everything just kind of runs parallel so now if I was to do like a plan view for example then this doesn't then everything is this is how you'd create like a plan view just like straight up-and-down with no perspective but you can see how now if I take this and I look at it from kind of this this isometric view you can see how this looks much more technical more like a technical drawing if you turn perspective off so you don't have to do that but that's an option for the way this will look and then the last thing that I would say that you can do and again this is this is all preference type stuff but you could create a scene for your exploded view and also a scene for your unexploded view so all you would do is you'd go over to the scene section of your tray and you could just click the plus to add a scene and we'll just call this exploded view and hit the enter key now whenever I rotate around my model if I click on this it'll take me back to my exploded view so that's gonna be our first view and then we'll create a second view for the unexploded view so that you can toggle back and forth between the two and to do that all you would do is you would just turn off your exploded object layer and you're gonna have to make sure you put all your guide points on the correct layer as well but then you'll just turn your unexploded object layer on and you'll just add another scene so you can just click the little plus button and you can call this one unexploded view and the other thing we may do is we may turn perspective back on and then you can just right click on your view and click update so now you have your unexploded view your cabinet and then if you click on exploded view then that's gonna come over here and that's that's going to have your stuff that's on your unex your exploded view layer so you can quick click back and forth between the two of them really easily to kind of toggle between the two leave a comment below and let me know what you thought um did you like this video was it in-depth enough for you I just loved having that Sketchup conversation with you guys if you like this video please remember click that like button down below if you're new around here remember to click that subscribe button for new Sketchup content every week feel like I'm doing on this channel please consider visiting my support me page on my website it's the sketchup essentials comm slash support but in any case thank you so much for taking the time to watch this I really appreciate it and I will catch you in the next video thanks guys

Channel: TheSketchUpEssentials

Views: 137,608

Rating: 4.9042516 out of 5

Keywords: thesketchupessentials, the sketchup essentials, thesketchupessentials.com, sketchup tutorials, sketchup lessons, sketchup modeling, sketchup 2016, architecture, sketchup 2017, sketchup tutorial, justin geis, sketchup exploded view, sketchup woodworkers, sketchup woodworking, sketchup woodworking tutorial, sketchup cabinets, sketchup, exploded view sketchup, how to explode in sketchup, sketchup tutorial for beginners, sketchup for woodworkers

Id: Pa8Jun3vyno

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 13 2017