Getting Started in SketchUp Pro Part 2 - Modeling 3D OBJECTS!

what's up guys Justin here with the SketchUp essentials.com so last week we got you familiar with the interface of SketchUp and drawing in two Dimensions this week we're going to talk about how we can start taking shapes to 3D and modeling with those so let's go ahead and just jump into it all right so remember that you can download that free keyboard shortcut guide by going to the SketchUp essentials.com beginner um but what we want to do in this video is we want to start taking objects to 3D so last week we talked about drawing those two-dimensional shapes like a rectangle so this week let's start by drawing a rectangle so you can just tap the r key on your keyboard or click on the rectangle button and I'm just going to single click move my mouse and then I'm going to click again remember single click move Mouse and click again or type in values so I could type in like 5 foot comma 5 foot and hit the inner key as well and so what that's done is that's given me a face on the ground and what I want to do is I want to take that face and I want to make it into a cube and so to do that we're going to use a process known as Extrusion what Extrusion is is it's basically taking a face like this one and then it's creating a copy of that face in an upward Direction but it's going to automatically fill in Geometry associated with that face and so we're going to do that using a tool called the push pull tool because what we could do is we could draw a line up 5T draw a line across 5T and we can just do this manually for all of our sides right so I could do this this is a valid way of doing this but it's very time consuming because I have to draw all of these edges in here like this and so that's a little bit problematic and so what we want to do instead is we want to take this face and we want to extrude it to 3D very quickly and so to do that we're going to use a tool called the the push pull tool so what the push pull tool is going to do is it's going to do what it sounds like it's going to push this face up and create supporting geometry around it so to activate that tool you can either click on this button right here or you can tap the P key on your keyboard mouse over this face and single click which is what we're going to do well notice how now if I move my mouse upper down what this is going to do is this is going to extrude this shape into 3D and notice what it's doing is exactly what we described right it's taking this face moving it into 3D and creating supporting geometry around it and so in this case we can either click to set this or I'm going to type in a value of 5 foot and hit the inner key and so what we've done if we orbit around this using our middle Mouse button is you can see that we've created a cube inside of our 3D space and so extruding things like this into 3D is really easy so let's say that we wanted to draw a cylinder I'm going to tap the c key on my keyboard I'm going to move my mouse and I'm going to draw a circle and in this case if I tap the P key Mouse over this and single click notice how I'm able to use this in order to extrude this to 3D now one cool thing about this and this is another reason why we don't want to click and drag we want to single click is notice how when I'm moving this object it's just kind of staying active well the cool thing about this is I can actually Mouse over different things in my model like this and notice what it's doing it's it's inferencing to that height because this only push pulls in a certain direction um I'm basically able to set the base length and then by clicking anywhere in my model I can set the height so if I was to Mouse over this object and click notice what it does is it creates this face right here and makes this cylinder now one thing that is really important for you to understand understand is you can't push pull curved faces so if I tap the P key and mouse over this face right here notice how I don't have the option to push pull this at all and so the reason for that is because this is a curved or smooth surface um I don't want to go too far down into rabbit hole on this one but if you go up to view hidden geometry notice how this surface is actually made up of a number of different flat faces in here what that means is that means that this is not actually a curved face it's a collection of flat faces and you can kind of see that when you zoom into this object right here so what that means is that means if I turn that hidden geometry off and I try to push pull this it's not going to work because this is actually multiple different faces in here now that being said you can push pull basically any existing face that is flat and so let's say for example that I was to split this object up so I'm just going to draw a line from this midpoint to this midpoint right here and what I want to do is I want to push pull this back like this well notice how I can push pull this forward in order to add material or I can push pull it back in order to remove material so you can use this not only to add things but also to remove things and notice how again because I've single clicked what I can do is I can move my mouse and I can go find an inference point so in this case I could take this and I could push pull back so that I've removed half of the material in here now you can also do this by drawing something like a triangle across the face and I could push pull this back and notice what that's going to do is that's going to remove material and basically create a bevel so you can use this in order to create these beveled shapes in here as well now this also works for arcs so if I was to tap the a key draw an arc across this corner like this and I'm going to push pull this back notice what this is doing is this is creating a curved face on this corner like this so by removing material you can kind of set what sort of shape is created by the shape that you draw before you remove this material now one place this gets extremely extremely valuable when you're modeling SketchUp is when you want to cut openings so let's say for example that I wanted to cut a circular opening in this face right here well what I could do is I could tap the c key and notice how when I Mouse over this face by the way um my mouse is going to basically turn into this circle right here well what I want to do is I want to find the midpoint so I'm going to Mouse over this then I'm going to move my mouse up and notice how this has kind of locked me to this Middle Point I can hold the shift key in order to lock this as well but now if I single click move my mouse out I can draw a circle on this surface well now if I come in here and activate the push pull tool by tapping the P key and I Mouse over this notice how I can click and I can move my mouse and remember that since we've single clicked we can click and hold our middle Mouse button down in order to orbit and this tool stays active which is a great feature by the way but notice how I can push pull this through this object but if I Mouse over this back face notice how this inferences to this face well if you push pull something to the same to a depth like this where it picks up that you're push pulling to the back face and then I click on this notice what that does is that automatically Cuts an opening in my object like this so we can use this in order to quickly cut holes another place this might be valuable is say I was to tap the r key um in order to draw a rectangle I'm going to tap control that's going to going to put me in a mode where I can draw a rectangle from the center but if I Mouse up right here and then I single click and I move my mouse notice how I can create a rectangular object and I can push pull it like this and again notice how I can either orbit around and find this back face or I can find anything that's the same depth as that back face so I could click on this Edge right here but notice what that did is that did the same thing it cut an opening in the face like this and so we use this for a lot of different things let's say for example that we were to draw a wall so I'm just going to tap the r key and what I want to do is I want to draw a rectangle that's going to be we'll call it 20 ft long so I'm going to type in 20 ft comma six for 6 in and I'm going to hit the inner key that's going to draw a 20t long rectangle that's 6 in wide well I can activate the push pull tool single click on this and type in a value so say I wanted this to be 10 ft tall I would type in 10 ft and hit the inner key and what I've done is I've created a wall well within that wall what we want to do is we want to create a door opening and so to do that I'm actually going to mark it using a tool in SketchUp called the tape measure tool and so what the tape measure tool does is it gives you the ability to create guides a guide is basically like snapping a chalk line out on a construction site it's going to create a line in here that's not actual geometry it's just basically something for a measurement so if I click on the tape measure tool notice how there's a little plus next to this if you don't see the plus you can tap the control key in order to toggle the Plus on but what I can do is I can use this to create a guide so if I Mouse over this Edge and single click notice how I can move my mouse off of it and I can create a guideline in here we'll say I wanted to create a door that's 5T off of this wall I can just type in a value of of 5T and notice what that does is that creates a guide in here well then I could click on it again and I could type in a value of 3T in order to set another guide 3 ft from this one and you can measure that just by um you're going to tap the control key to turn create guide mode off but with this tape measure tool active which is the T key on your keyboard by the way but if I single click and move my mouse notice how this is going to show me the measurement in here which is 3 ft and so I want to create one more guide so I'm just going to single click move my mouse up I'm going to type in a value of seven feet we'll notice what we've done is we've created guides on this surface well then I could use the rectangle tool just by tapping R draw a rectangle by clicking and clicking and then I can tap the P key Mouse over this and single click and notice how I can move this back until this stops extruding this is another way to cut the hole and I can click and this is going to remove the material material so we could do the same thing with a window opening so I could do a single click say this was going to be 6 ft say this was going to be 3 ft right here and say this was going to be 4T I could use this in order to draw a rectangle on the surface and cut an opening for that window as well and then once you're done you can either tap the E key to activate the Eraser and you can click and drag across these or you can just go to edit delete guides and when you do that that's going to get rid of all the guides that are in your scene so now I want to talk about another way to create a three-dimensional shape which is called which is also Extrusion but in this case we want to extrude along a path so let's say for example that I wanted to create something that followed along a path like this and I'm going to select this and I'm going to make a copy of it we can talk about how to do that a little bit later but what I want to do is I want to create a profile along this path well what I could do is I could come in here and we're going to create something very simple so we'll just uh tap the r key tap the left Arrow key to lock this to standing up and I'm just going to draw this up here and I'm going to draw a line from here to here just like this and then I'll tap e click and drag across here in order to erase this now what I could do is I could try to come in here and model this once and then push pull it and then I would have to model it again and push pull it the other way it just gets really kind of nasty but what we can do instead is we can use a tool in SketchUp called the follow me tool what the follow me tool is going to do is it's going to allow you to extrude something along a group of edges so if I take this whole thing click and drag across it like this what I'm doing is I'm selecting a path so in this case my path is these three edges well with my path selected what I can do is I can activate the follow me tool and it's going to ask you for a profile to extrude so I'm just going to Mouse over this face I'm going to click and notice what that does is that extrudes this object along this path and it nicely fills in things like corners and other things like that in here as well now a lot of people will come in here they'll activate this tool and they'll click on it and then they'll try to like move their Mouse along the path you can definitely do that as well but it's better to just select your whole path activate that tool and then run it like this now where that one gets extremely valuable is you can actually use that in order to add bevels so um say that for example I wanted to create just a simple be bevel along the perimeter of this object right here well what I could do is I could push pull this in and then redraw that and try to push pull it in here but it's not necessarily ideal what you can do instead is you can select the whole top face of an object either by selecting these edges so I'm just going to do a shift click like this or whoops by just selecting the face it's going to recognize the perimeter edges of an object as a face but then you can activate that follow me tool and use this to remove material all the way along this object and so you could do the same thing over here to create a recess so say that I wanted to create a recess well I can select this surface and use it as a path activate that follow me tool and notice how I can use that to remove the material all the way along the path so that's actually a really powerful tool within SketchUp and so there's a concept I want you to understand before we go much further and that's going to be the concept of sticky geometry and so what sticky geometry means is right now notice how inside a SketchUp I can select any of these individual faces right so these are just geometry in a three-dimensional space well if I was to activate one of these and use a tool to move it around like the move tool right here so I'm just going to tap the m key on my keyboard notice how what's going to happen is this geometry sticks together right it's just the nature of the way this geometry Works where if you select an edge and you move it the geometry is going to deform in order to stay connected to this object and so you can use this um first off for modeling things in order to create different kinds of shapes so if I tap the c key I create a cylinder and then I push pull this up like this and I'm going to go ahead and tap the control key that's going to put me in a Mode called create new face mode that's going to leave this face in here and create a new one but notice how if I was to create this additional geometry in here and then use the scale tool so if I tap the S key in order to scale this and I can tap control in order to do this about the center but notice how this geometry is going to deform in and out in order to stay connected now you can use this to your advantage for modeling different kinds of shapes right so if I wanted to create something that kind of like tapered in a little bit what I could do is I could just use the push pull I could um bring this in I could use the move tool in order to move it up and down like this so notice how it's kind of adjusting the way that that shape works then I could come in here and I could scale this in even further in order to create this tapered shape um so that's how that sticky geometry works well sometimes you don't want that geometry to stick together you want to create objects that are separate so the way that we can do that is using something that's known as a group and so say that I was to draw two rectangles in here so I'm going to draw a rectangle right here I'm going to push pull it to 3D so tap the P key single click click move this over then draw another one over here and push pull it to 3D um and I'm going to go ahead and copy these so I'm just going to use the move tool and the move tool has a Mode called copy mode where if I select these tap M and tap control it's going to let me create a copy over here more on that in a future video but um right now what's going to happen with this object is if I select it and I move it over here what's going to happen is these two objects are going to merge together and so what that means is that means that now they're not acting as individual objects anymore those two faces because they occupied the same space cause SketchUp to merge this into another shape which sometimes is fine but when you start modeling things without separating them it can just turn into this big mess of stuck together geometry that's very difficult to work with and so what we do in order to avoid this is we use what's known as a group and so what a group is is it's basically like taking a bunch of geometry and sticking it in a box so if I was to take this select it I can rightclick on it and I can see a bunch of different options well notice how there's an option in here for make group and so when I make a group what that's going to do is it's going to take all of that geometry and it's going to basically wall it off from the rest of the geometry in here so notice how now for this one I can single click and I can select all of those raw faces this one if I click on it it's only selecting the entire object and it's telling me that I have a solid group selected well now if I use the move tool and I move this over notice what happens is these don't merge together anymore so that means that you can keep these separate which is going to be really important when we start modeling things like doors and frames and windows stuff that goes into walls um because you don't want all of that that geometry to merge together because it gets very difficult to work with so I'm going to move this back over here and just note that these are no longer merging now you can still edit this object by double clicking notice how now I can get in here and I can do things like push pulling the faces so if I wanted to um whatever split this across with a line push pull it up things like that I can edit that and notice how I can click out of that group in order to get out of the group so if I doubleclick and you see this bounding box in here this is indicating that you're in here editing this geometry inside of that group and then once you're done with that you can just click out of here and by the way I'm tapping the space key in order to go back to the select tool when I do this so if I draw a line across here use the push pull tool to extrude it across I'm just tapping space in order to get back to the select tool so that that tool is no longer active but if I click out of here notice how now I'm outside of this group and I'm no longer editing it like this and so say that I was to create a copy right here I'm going to create another copy and I'm just using the move tool in copy mode which we'll get more into in a future video but say I was to flip these two objects that was the flip tool by the way but if I was to flip these two objects I can select them both and explode them if I no longer want them to be group gen ometry so to explode objects you just right click on them and you click on the option for explode and notice how when I did that all of that bounding box stuff goes away and this just gets exploded into its deeper level geometry and now we're back to things being stuck together so if I make a change like this notice how it's deforming the geometry in the model so in general when you start modeling elements in your models I highly recommend that as you go you group them to keep them from merging because otherwise this can just get really nasty from a bunch of stuck together geometry standpoint all right so now you have a general idea of how to create three-dimensional shapes in SketchUp in the next video we're going to go over some Advanced tools for doing things like creating copies and other things like that that can make your life a lot easier if you do want to get more in depth on learning how to use SketchUp you can check out my course which is going to be a lot more in-depth and it's also going to have a community forum and live calls where you can go to get help so I'll link to that on this page as always thank you so much for taking the time to watch this and I'll catch you in the next video thanks guys

Channel: TheSketchUpEssentials

Views: 19,666

Keywords: thesketchupessentials, the sketchup essentials, thesketchupessentials.com, sketchup tutorials, sketchup lessons, sketchup modeling, architecture, sketchup 2017, sketchup tutorial, justin geis, sketchup, sketchup 2021, sketchup 2020, sketchup pro for beginners, sketchup pro tutorial, sketchup beginner tutorial, sketchup desktop beginner tutorial

Id: HA36qOoYbfg

Length: 21min 36sec (1296 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 30 2024