Getting Started with SketchUp Video 1

in this video I'm gonna be giving you an introduction to one of my most versatile and used tools it is a 3d modeling software called Sketchup before I build anything in real life I first build it digitally in Sketchup and this not only saves time because I can go to my shop with a detailed plan but it also saves material as I'm able to head off bad design choices or mistakes before I ever make my first cut the learning curve can be steep and a little bit frustrating if you're learning it on your own so the goal of this video is to shorten the learning curve for you and at least get you going now my videos are gonna be geared towards woodworkers as that is what I am but know that Sketchup has a ton of learning resources available for plenty of niches out there and those are linked for you down below I've broken this video down into two videos this one where I'll cover the main concepts the basic tools and their functions then the second video where I'll be modeling a woodworking project from scratch and putting those teachings into application I encourage you to model along with me and pause the video in order to practice a technique but know that I've also broken the video down into timestamps and topics so that you can go back or skip ahead quickly alright let's go ahead and get going to open up Sketchup just double click on the icon right off the bat you're going to be prompted to pick a template and you'll notice that under the templates are call-outs for what measurement system is used in that template this can be changed later but if you prefer to work in a certain system then you can choose it right off the bat I'm gonna be choosing woodworking and since I'm American I work in inches when first opening up Sketchup you'll see three colored lines these represent the three axes X Y & Z the point they all meet is called the origin point along the top you're gonna see icons which represent different tools that can be used in the program note that you can go to view tool palettes then click large toolset to bring up an expanded tool icon set I'll be showing you which icon is which tool however one key skill to learn when modeling is using short keys so instead of using my mouse to click on the rectangle tool every time I want to use it I'll be telling you to hit the short key which in this are on the keypad when modeling I recommend keeping your left hand on the keyboard in your right hand on the mouse I personally prefer to model with just the trackpad so that I'm not dependent on a mouse as I do a lot of modeling when traveling but I am certainly going against the grain here so I do recommend learning with a mouse it's much easier to show you how to navigate around after something is drawn in the modeling space so let me show you the rectangle tool first this is a tool that'll allow you to draw a 2d square or rectangle and you can access it by clicking this icon here or by using the short key by hitting the R on your keyboard you'll notice your mouse will go from the select arrow to the rectangle tool icon to use the tool you can click once anywhere in the modeling space then drag in any direction and you'll see the shape follow you you will click a second time to deactivate the tool which leaves the shape you'll notice that as you drag the tool the bottom-right will call out the exact dimensions of your shape there are two ways to get an exact measurement here one is to click once start pulling in the direction you want to go and then type in your measurement let's go ahead and make this a two foot by three foot square the way to input the measurement is to type the first dimension then separate it with a comma before typing in the second dimension now you can hit enter and the shape will automatically scale to that size the second way to size it correctly is to click once to start the tool drag in any direction then click a second time to drop it now before clicking anywhere else highlight the call-out in the lower right and change it to read two foot comma three foot then hit enter if you wanted to change it you could always highlight it again and let's just for practice change it to four feet comma four feet something really important to know about sketchup is typically whenever we use a mouse and once you drag and drop something we click the mouse hold it down drag it and then release however you need to get in the habit when you're using Sketchup to click the mouse once release it drag it and then click it again so instead of this it's this click once drag release and then click again it is a subtle difference but it's an important habit to get into to avoid headaches when modeling so to draw a rectangle I'm going to click once which starts the tool now I release my finger and drag in whichever direction I'd like to go and then I'm going to click a second time to release the tool all right now let's go over how to navigate around Sketchup there are three main navigational tools zoom orbit and pan to zoom you simply move the scroll wheel forward or backwards to orbit you push in the scroll wheel and move the mouse around then to pan you hold down the shift key on the keyboard while pushing in the scroll wheel and this will allow you to move left right up or down I recommend go ahead and spending some time practicing moving around and using the combination of the navigational tools note that on the zoom tool wherever you have your mouse located in the model is where it's going to zoom in on so if you want to get a closer look at this top right corner I need a hover my mouse on it when zooming if you ever your mouse out here or over here then that is exactly where it will take me now I'm gonna cover taking a 2d shape and turning it into a 3d one using a tool called push-pull it's this icon here but the short key on the keyboard is P so go ahead and hit P on the keyboard and now hover your mouse over this top face of the rectangle and you'll see that it turns spotted this lets you know that this is a surface you can use this tool on click once to start the tool which grabs ahold of the surface you're on then either pull it up or push it down you can click a second time to deactivate the tool and drop the part after you drop it you can click again to pick it up and adjust it or pick up a different surface and do the same just like the rectangle tool there will be an exact call-out on its size and the bottom right hand of your screen let's roll another rectangle from scratch so that we can practice sizing things accurately hit R to pull up the rectangle tool click once to start it start dragging in any direction and then type in 2-foot comma two-foot and hit enter now hit P for push-pull and click once to start the tool drag in any direction and type in 2-foot and hit enter and now I have a perfect two-foot cube on all sides let's practice a little bit by grabbing the top surface and grow it by another foot click once pull in the upward directions then type in 12 inches and hit enter you're gonna be telling Sketchup that you want the surface to grow by one foot use your navigational tools to orbit around and grab on this front base and shorten it by 6 inches click once push it inwards then type in the measurement you want to change by now when people are new to modeling they have a tendency to take really short strokes if they want to move half an inch then they barely move the mouse however it is far easier to over exaggerate in order to make sure the tool is moving in the right direction let me go ahead and show you an example if I wanted to move this space half an inch out I will hit P for push-pull click on it then over-exaggerated in the direction I want it to move it doesn't matter how much you pull it out because as soon as you type in half an inch and hit enter it's gonna pop exactly to it so when you hear me say feel free to over exaggerate this is what I'm referring to push-pull is what you use to turn a 2d into a 3d shape it's also what you use to shorten or lengthen apart but it's also really great for punch out features such as dedos or holes let's say I wanted a toe on this face I can hit R for rectangle tool click once to activate it then click a second time to drop it now let's hit P for push-pull and hover over this new section you'll see as you move your mouse around you now have two options to use the tool on the blue dots indicating that click once on the newest rectangle then drag the shape downwards you can either type in a dimensions such as 6 inches or if you wanted it to go all the way through you can drag your mouse all the way to the bottom and click a second time to drop the tool something else to note about push-pull is that it has a great built in feature that will snap what are for surface you have a hold of to whatever you hover your mouse on for example if I wanted this dado surface to go away and once again be flushed to this surface I could hit P for push-pull click on this space and then instead of typing in a dimension I can hover my mouse on this surface and it automatically pops the grab surface to the correct length I'll draw some lines here so that I can show you a little bit more I'll show you how to use a line tool later on but right now watch as I hover my mouse over each one of these lines and how the Daito surface snaps to each plane as I hover on it another great habit to get into is hitting the space bar after you're done using a tool the space bar is the short key for the Select tool and will prevent accidentally using the tool while moving around the Select tool is also used for selecting things within the model by clicking on them I'll hit the spacebar now to activate my select tool so that I can click on the lines left behind on the surface then hit delete to trash them note that if you hold down the shift key when using the Select tool you're able to select multiple items at the same time if you click on something you don't want selected simply click on it again to deselect it another way to select things is to click and drag the mouse where you create a box around it I know I told you at the start to get out of the habit of clicking and holding down the mouse but this is the only time and sketch up that you can do it everywhere else you need to click release then click again if I wanted to highlight this entire part I will click my mouse hold it down and create a box around the entire part then release my mouse note there are two different boxes you can create with this tool if you drag your mouse from left to right it creates a solid line box and only parts that are 100% within this box will be selected however if you drag the mouse from the right to left a dotted line box will appear and anything inside the box or anything it touches will be highlighted this is a sneaky feature that really comes in handy when you have a built-up model let me show you the circle tool which of course is used to draw circles it's this icon here but the short key to use is B so hit V to bring up the tool then click once on any surface to start drawing you can pull out then click a second time to drop it if you want an exact hole size you can click once to start the tool then type in the radius of the circle you want to end up with not the diameter but the radius so if you wanted an 8 inch hole you would click once type in 4 inches and hit enter now if you wanted a counterbored hole in a part you can hit P for push-pull click once on the new surface and then push down and type in how deep you'd like your whole-- if you wanted a through-hole then click once on the surface and drag all the way down and click a second time to drop it you can also draw a circle anywhere in the model and then push or pull it to turn it into 3d alright introducing a new tool the line tool lb in the short key this tool allows you to draw lines in the modeling space or on any surfaces heddell to bring up the tool then click once to start drawing you can use this tool to section off a solid surface to create new surfaces to then manipulate for example if I wanted a dado on this front surface I could hit L for the line tool hover my mouse on one of the edges click once to start drawing pull down until I hover my mouse on the opposite edge then click a second time to drop it now repeat a short distance away now if you hit P for push-pull you'll see that I can either grab the main surface or this new section off surface if I click on it once push N and then type in one-inch and hit Enter I now have a recess dado that's an example of using the line tool to draw on a part but now as an example of drawing something from scratch with it let's draw a simple square hit L to bring up the line tool notice how the mouse icon changes to it click once to start drawing then pull in any direction notice as you drag your mouse in the different directions it'll want to pop to the different axes when you're close to them you'll see the line turn eat a green red or blue when you're on one this is a really handy feature if you want to do something like draw a box or draw a line parallel to an existing edge if you stick to drawing on the axes then you can draw a perfect square or rectangle click wants to start drawing then click a second time to stop when you're drawing your third line of the box you'll notice that as you pulled the line close to the starting point of the first it'll want an inference for you so that you can stop even with it making drawing your fourth and final line for a square easier and since I brought it up let's going to talk about inference points hit l4 line tool and hover your mouse without clicking on the different corners of the square you'll see that as you get close Sketchup will want to snap to the intersection of the two lines the corner these are called inference points this is another subtle tool but very useful for accurate modeling some different inference points include corners edges and even midpoints the midpoint inference will allow you to find dead center of any line within the model you can use the different colors the indication circle turns to note when you're on one of these inference points or even the small call-out that pops up T is for the tape measure tool and just like in real life the tape measure tool allows you to take measurements of things you click once on this starting point let's go ahead and click on this edge here then move the mouse across to hover over the opposite edge if you just hover instead of clicking a second time a pop-up will appear telling you the measurement but it'll also appear in the bottom right to take a measurement on a different edge you can hit the Escape key to cancel out the tools action then go to the other edge click once to start the tool and drag to where you want to measure hitting escape works on every tool in Sketchup so for example if you're in P for push pull and grab the wrong surface you can hit the Escape key and it will go back to where it started if you're in the L for line tool and start drawing but change your mind just hit escape it works the same with every tool another thing to know and remember is there is nothing wrong with drawing something then undoing it a quick way to do this is by hitting ctrl Z or command Z on Macs let's go back to the t4 tape measurer tool quick so that can show you another incredibly handy feature built into it hover your mouse over the edge and click once to start the tool you'll notice as you pull away from the edge a dotted line follows your mouse this is called a guide line and where you sees the most is setting up reference lines for drawing in features or sizing things let me cover how to drop them and then I'll cover a few examples on their use you need to be in the tape measure tool to use them so go ahead and hit T on your keyboard then click once on an edge in the model now drag your mouse across and click a second time to drop the tool and a guideline will be placed so earlier I showed you how to make a dado on this face by drawing two straight lines just randomly well if you want a dado that is exactly 3/4 of an inch wide and place three inches off this edge then setting up a few guidelines would be the way to do that if I wanted three inches from the edge I can click on this edge once to start the tool drag over in the direction I want the guideline to be placed then type in 3 inches and hit enter that will be the start of my dado if I want it to be 3/4 of an inch wide I will click my guideline once to start the tool again then move the mouse out then type in 3/4 of an inch and hit enter remember that over-exaggerating when pulling the tool is just fine now guidelines aren't viewed as geometry and sketchup when you place a line using the line tool on a surface that's out of geometry that will divide the space into two a guideline is just a visual reference to help me place the out of geometry in the needed place so now that I know where to draw my lines to you have them in the needed location I can hit L for line tool use my inference point to let me know I'm at the correct starting point click once to start the tool moving a mouse to the opposite edge then click a second time to stop the tool repeat a second time to draw the second line for the dado now you could hit P for push-pull and be able to click once on the surface of the dado and push it inwards another example of using guidelines as an aid is if I wanted to find center of this face - let's say drill a hole I could hit T for tape measure click on this start edge then move up as I move I'm looking for the midpoint and friends point letting me know that I'm there and then click a second time on the mouse to drop the guide now let's repeat from the other edge again looking for the midpoint and friends then dropping the guide I can now hit V for the circle tool click once to start drawing at the center section then type in the radius of the hole I need let's type in 1.5 inches and hit enter to complete the task now I can hit P for push-pull click once on the surface you pick it up then move it a mouse all the way to the back edge so that it pushes all the way through and I'm left with the hollow Center last note to mention on guidelines right now it is a good habit to get into to keep a clean modeling space and one way to do that is to delete guides after they're done being useful since I no longer need the center of this face I can delete these guides to do that go up to edit and delete guides if any of the tools have confused you during this example feel free to go back to the time stamps below where I've covered them and practice on them okay now let's get into one of the most important things to remember when modeling making something a component when you draw something in Sketchup such as this rectangle you can see if you hit the spacebar and go into your select tool then I can select this face independently from this face or this line independently from this face even though all these lines and faces are touching one another Sketchup is still viewing them as separate geometry at this point so after you draw something new such as this box you need to turn everything that makes it up all those lines all the faces into a single component which will tell Sketchup that they all belong together to make something in a component you triple click anywhere on the part make sure that you triple click or not everything will be selected I just double clicked and see how this here is blue but nothing over here is that's a visual cue that you didn't click enough so triple click make sure everything is highlighted in blue then right-click and say make component this window will pop up giving you the option to name the component so go ahead and name it test one then hit enter now I can try and select just one face or line and you'll see that I'm no longer able to if I click anywhere on the part everything is selected this is your visual cue that it's been made into a component now whenever I try and move the part we'll all move as one and not turn into a mess for me when you make something into a component you can think of it as placing a protective bubble over it it will not only hold all of the individual lines and faces together as one part but it'll also prevent changes being made to it from the outside of that protective bubble let me show you an example this shape is not a component but this one is I can hit L for line and draw a line on this face then hit P for push-pull and I have the option to use the tool on either section and that's because this line is part of the shape now and sectioned off the face into two however if I draw a line on this part that is a component then happy for push-pull and won't allow me to use it on either one because this shape is protected by the bubble and while you can draw on top of it it won't become a part of it of course there are cases where you're going to want to modify a shape after turning it into a component let's say I wanted to have a step up in my part here in order to edit a component all you need to do is double click on it a good visual cue to know when you're editing on component is the shadow box that appears double click and the box will appear and you can think of this as now being under that protective bubble and able to modify the part so let's hit L for line tool once again and draw the line across the center now hit P for a push-pull and pull up on one of the halves once the changes are made click anywhere outside of the shadow box to stop editing the component click spacebar to go back to the Select tool and now when you click back on it it's back to all being highlighted in blue meaning it's back under that protective bubble I'm going to go ahead and cover the move tool then come back to components the move tool short key is M and it allows you to move things around the space you click once to start the tool and pick up a part move your mouse where you want the part then click a second time to drop it one huge thing to remember when using this tool is to always grab by a corner or an edge this is a little thing but it's valuable for fast and accurate modeling when you're in the real world and you push two objects together you just stop when they touch but when you're in the 3d modeling space you need to be precise with telling Sketchup what you want to place exactly where for example if I want to move this box so that it's flush up against the face of this box you'll hit M to bring up the move tool hover your mouse over the corner of the part and then click once to pick it up drag your mouse over until you hover on this corner then click a second time to drop it in place it's very easy when you first start modeling to just pick up objects wherever but to show you why that's a bad habit let's pick this up by the front face and try to place the right corner flush with the right corner of the next box it looks pretty good from this point but when you zoom in and orbit around you'll see that it's off so to ensure things are flush and lined up always grab things by a corner when moving in Sketchup pick up this corner and then click a second time on this corner to drop it and now things are perfect let's cover a secondary function within the move tool which is the option to copy what it is that you're moving let's say I want to build some ledges on this wall here let's hit R for a rectangle click once to start the tool drag in the direction we want to go then let's just randomly drop it at a good-looking distance by clicking a second time to turn it into a 3d shape let's hit P for push-pull click once on the surface and start pulling it out type in 3 inches and hit enter this is something brand new that we just modeled so before trying to move it or do any further modeling we need to turn it into a component triple click it so that everything is highlighted hit G which is a shortcut for making something at this point I can hit em for move and click once to pick up the ledge and start moving it however I don't want to just move it I want to leave one behind and make a copy of it so that it's in both places to make a copy hit m4 move pick the item up making sure to grab it by a corner then hit option on the keyboard now you will leave behind the original and only move a copy click a second time to drop the part where you need it now if I were modeling this for real I would actually use the T for tape measure tool to first set a guideline let's just say 12 inches up from the first that way when I move and make a copy of the ledge I can grab it by a corner and place that corner directly on the guideline so that I won't have to move it again now that I've shown you how to move and copy parts let me hop back to the subject of components to show you yet another feature of them if you remember the first ledge was made into a component and then we made copies of it which turned into these ledges since we made a copy of a component these are also components and whenever you make a change to a component in the model it's gonna be reflected amongst all of its copies for example let's say we wanted to modify these ledges to extend flush with the wall I can double click the ledge to start editing the component and get under that protective bubble to make the changes now hit P for push-pull grab the face I want to extend and start pulling since I don't know the measurement needs to be to be flush with wall remember that I can just hover my mouse on a surface when using push-pull and it will pop whatever is grabbed to that length so I hover my mouse on the edge of the wall and the ledge is flush now let's orbit around and repeat on the other side click wants to grab the surface hover on the edge then click a second time to drop the part click anywhere outside of the shadow box to stop editing the component alright last thing for components then moving on I'm gonna hit command Z here to back up so that all my ledges are short again let's say you don't want all three of these the same you'd like the middle one to be short and only the upper and lower to be long you can hit spacebar to bring up the Select tool and click on the part you want to be different right-click and say make unique this will leave the part as a component in Sketchup but separate it from the others that are the same so that now when I change this one down here only it and the upper one will reflect the change let me quickly show you one last tool which is the rotate tool this is the tool that can be used to rotate parts within the model and it's short key is Q this tool is kind of unique as it's a 3 click tool instead of a two click so when using it I will click once to activate it a second time to create a grab point and then a third time to drop it go ahead and hit Q to bring up the rotate tool and you'll see a colored protractor symbol pop up as you move your mouse around the different surfaces this protractor will change colors to reflect which access will be rotating around to use the tool make sure the color or the protractor is the axis you want to rotate around then click once to start the tool now move your mouse out along the axis the link doesn't matter you click a second time then move your mouse again and the part will start rotating at this point you can either type in the exact amount you want your part to rotate and hit enter or you can hover your mouse over the tick marks on the protractor icon then click a third time to drop the tool I recommend pausing the video and practicing using this tool and flipping things around the three different axes the first click will be the pivot point the second click will be the grab point and then the third click will be where you drop okay and I think I'm gonna end it there I would love to continue honor this there's so so many things to talk about however this should accomplish the goal on getting you started with the basic tools and their function in the next video I'm gonna be modeling a woodworking project using these tools so if anything confuses you reference back to this video and remember that have time-stamped everything for you so that you can jump around to the different talking points if its components or if it's a tape measure tool or guidelines or moving things by a corner use this as your reference if you're interested in learning Sketchup then I really hope that this video has helped you out if you're interested in following along in my next video I'm gonna be modeling a woodworking project that is gonna be linked for you down below as well

Channel: April Wilkerson

Views: 353,388

Rating: 4.9127626 out of 5

Keywords: april wilkerson, diy, triton tools, wilkerdos, wilker dos, how to, home improvement, shop project, wood, diy project, woodworking shop, outdoor project, female builder, diy shop project, april, female woodworker, female carpenter, diy projects, woodworking project, women who build, do it yourself, how to build, woman builder, sketchup tutorial, the sketchup essentials, sketchup tutorial for beginners, get started with sketchup, intro to sketchup

Id: rjSE28T3u78

Length: 29min 25sec (1765 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 15 2020