- Hey, guys. Alex here
from SketchUp School. Today, I'm going to show
you how to model a house using SketchUp Free in 10 easy steps. We'll build this model
from start to finish. And when we're done, you'll have learned the essential
steps that you can follow to build any project you have
in mind using SketchUp Free. Plus, I'll share with you some
critical tips along the way to help you avoid the biggest,
most frustrating mistakes that often trip people up as they set off to model their own projects. Just know that this video
isn't for complete beginners who've never used SketchUp Free before. You'll want to at least be
familiar with the fundamental drawing tools and
features in SketchUp Free and be sure that you've practiced using those tools the correct way. So if you haven't already, I recommend you watch our "Getting Started with
SketchUp Free" video first to make sure you're comfortable with all the concepts we cover there. Oh, and I almost forgot. This is going to be like
one of those cooking shows where if we've already
covered how to do something, or there's a part of a step that may take us a while to complete, we may cut ahead to the end result or show you the process in fast forward. But I'll be sure to let you
know when we're doing that so it doesn't just seem like stuff is magically happening in SketchUp. (electronic chiming) All right, let's bring
up the 10 easy steps and jump right in with number
one, draw accurate walls. To begin, we'll go to app.sketchup.com to launch SketchUp Free
and create a new file. I'll pick the "feet and inches" template. Next, we can delete the scale
figure, and as you'll remember from our "Getting Started
With SketchUp Free" video, I always recommend starting from a "top-down" view from the
"scenes" panel. Perfect. Now we've got a blank canvas, and we're ready to model our house. Our first step will be
to create our walls. Now, SketchUp is designed
to be fast and flexible, allowing you to draw geometry in any shape and size with ease, but it can also be dead
accurate when you need it to be. That's because whenever you draw or edit, you can always specify exact measurements. Remember, when we created our new file, we selected "feet and inches." If you need to check or adjust
the unit of measurements you're using in your file, just open the "model info"
panel, and under "length units," you'll see the unit of
measurement being used. Here, we've got fractional inches with a precision of
one-sixteenth of an inch, but you're welcome to use
whatever works best for you. Okay, I know we're going through some of these items pretty
fast, but don't worry. I've gone ahead and created a set of notes that will make it easy for you to review everything we're covering in this video, and to follow along with when you work on your own projects later. You'll find a link to
download them in the cards. Now, let's create a shape that will serve as the basis for our walls. We'll start by selecting the "line" tool. Then, let's click and let
go of the left mouse button and move the cursor to
start drawing a line. You'll see SketchUp automatically
infers that we're drawing this line along the same
direction as the red axis. Now, over on our keyboard,
we can type in the dimension, "20 feet," and hit "enter" or "return." When you do that, SketchUp creates a line
that's precisely 20 feet long. Next, let's start another line
perpendicular to this one. You'll see SketchUp
again automatically infer the direction we're drawing in, along the green axis this time. We can type "15 feet" on the keyboard, and again, hit "enter" or "return" to create a line that's 15 feet long. Okay, let's continue with the line tool to complete the footprint of the house, which for our example will just be a 20-foot by 15-foot rectangle, but you can use the line tool to create any shape you need for your own project. Of course, we could have
drawn this same footprint using the rectangle tool. To do that, select the "rectangle" tool, click once to begin drawing the rectangle, then use a comma to
separate the two dimensions. So "20 feet, comma, 15 feet," followed by "enter" or
"return" on the keyboard. Keep in mind, I'm using feet
and inches in this file, but if you're using metric
units, you'd enter "meters," "centimeters," or "millimeters" instead. And also, know that you can enter decimals or fractions here if you need them. Even though the dimension
area in SketchUp looks like a text field where you would
click on it and then type, you don't want to ever do this. Clicking will inevitably
mess up the tool operation you're trying to do, which
can be super frustrating. The right way to enter a dimension is to simply click to
start the tool operation, move your mouse in the direction you want to draw or edit in, then type the dimension on your keyboard and hit "enter" or "return"
to complete the action. And remember, SketchUp draws everything at a one-to-one scale. So if you've drawn a rectangle and entered the correct
dimensions, but it looks too small, or the opposite happens and
you can't see the whole thing, you just need to adjust your view by zooming and panning in
the SketchUp drawing window. All right, we've created a
dimensionally accurate rectangle. Now let's use that to create our walls. To do that, let's select
the "offset" tool. Then, we'll click once on
the face of the rectangle and move the mouse to begin
offsetting all four edges. Here, we'll want to move our cursor so the edges are offsetting
inside our rectangle so the exterior dimensions of our walls remain 20 feet by 15 feet. Then, we can enter the dimension for the thickness of the walls. In our example, we'll just type "six inches" and press "enter." Next, let's right-click on the middle face and pick the option for "erase." All right, we're off to a great start, and we've created the profile we'll need to make our 3D walls. Let's orbit the model so we're in more of a bird's-eye 3D view. Next, let's select the "push-pull" tool and then hover our mouse over the face. It will actively highlight,
then click and let go, and move the mouse up in
the blue axis direction to begin extruding the walls up in 3D. Again, we'll want the height of our walls to be dimensionally accurate, so let's go ahead and type in "10 feet" and press "enter" or "return" to finish the push-pull action. All right, we've created
dimensionally accurate walls for our house. Before we get too much further, let's be sure to save our file. To do that, we'll just
click on the "save" button on the top left, then click
on the project folder, name it, and click "save." What's next? Perhaps the most important
step of this whole video. Number two, group early and often. As we covered in our "Getting Started with SketchUp Free" video,
hands down one of the biggest and most costly mistakes
that SketchUp users make is failing to use groups. In other words, they model away, not realizing that
everything they're drawing is getting stuck together. And later, when they need to make changes, they end up with a
tangled, uneditable mess. As we like to say, "group
early and group often. Your future self will
definitely thank you." (country music)
Thanks. So to protect something we
draw, such as these walls, from getting stuck to other stuff, we need to turn it into a group. To do that, first, let's
pick the "select" tool. Then, we'll triple-click on
the walls to select them all. Then, right-click on that selection and pick the option for "make group." Now, anything we draw
that touches the walls won't get stuck to them. Practicing what we've learned so far, the next thing we'll want to do is create the floor and the roof. For the floor, let's orbit
underneath the walls, then pick the "rectangle"
tool and draw a rectangle from one corner of the walls
to the opposite corner. Then, we'll pick the "push-pull" tool, and click on the face of the rectangle, and begin to pull it down a bit, and on our keyboard, type "four inches," and press "enter" or "return." Next, let's switch to the "select" tool, and triple-click on the floor
to select the whole thing. Notice that we didn't select the walls. They're protected by being a group. And we'll right-click and make
the floor a group as well. We'll follow the same process
for creating the roof. It'll be easiest to make it flat now, and then we can come back
and give it a slope later. So we'll orbit to get a better
view, then draw a rectangle, and use the "push-pull" tool
to give it some thickness. This time, we'll set it to eight inches. Then, let's also give our roof an overhang by using the "push-pull" tool again. We'll say "two feet," and
press "enter" or "return" to complete the action. Again, let's not forget the
most important step here and make the roof into a group. Okay, now that we have our
floor, walls, and roof, we're ready to move on
to step number three, edit groups to add detail. The next thing we'll want
to do for our house model is start to add in more details, such as window and door openings. As you know, the groups
we've created are protected from getting stuck to one another, but they're also protected from
us being able to edit them. See how SketchUp won't let us push-pull any of the faces inside the groups? So how do we edit something
we've already grouped? We'll need to enter "edit
group" mode. Here's how. First, let's orbit to get a good view for what we're trying to work on. In this case, we're going to add window and door openings to our "walls" group. Next, we'll right-click
on the "walls" group, and pick the option for "edit group." Now we're inside the group container, and are able to edit the
geometry of the walls directly. In order to create our openings
for the doors and windows, we first need to figure out
exactly where they need to go. To do that, I recommend using the "tape measure" tool
to create guidelines. Let's set some up for
a folding glass door. We'll pick the "tape measure" tool, then click and let go on the vertical edge of the right corner of the wall. Then we'll move our mouse to the left, in the red direction,
to pull a guideline out from the edge of the wall. We'll want our guideline to be three feet from the outside edge of the wall, so we'll type "three feet," and press "enter" or
"return" on our keyboard. And the guideline will be
placed three feet from the edge. Next, let's repeat those
steps to create a guideline three feet from the left edge. Finally, we'll create a guideline for the height of the opening. Using the "tape measure" tool again, we'll click once and let go,
this time from the bottom edge, and move our mouse up
in the blue direction. Then, we'll type in "eight feet," press "enter" or "return" on our keyboard, and the guideline will be placed eight feet from the bottom edge. Now that we've created accurate guidelines for where the opening will
go, we can use the "rectangle" and "push-pull" tools
to quickly create it. First, let's pick the "rectangle" tool. Then, draw a rectangle from
the top left intersection where the guidelines meet to
the bottom right intersection where the vertical guideline
meets the bottom edge. This rectangle will be
the shape of our opening. Next, let's pick "push-pull." Then, we'll click once and let go on the face of the rectangle we just drew, and push-pull towards the
backside of the walls. We're looking for a blue inference stock that says "on face." And may also notice that the white face flickers with blue splotches. When we have this "on
face" inference showing, we can click again to
finish the "push-pull," and SketchUp automatically
punches out an opening. That's because when we push-pull
one face to another face, the two faces cancel each other out, making it easy to carve
away or punch out openings. Let's repeat the same
process to create the opening for the window on the side of the house. We'll start by orbiting
to get a better view. We should still be in edit group
mode for the "walls" group. We can tell if we see
the dotted bounding box around our walls. Again, we'll use the "tape measure" tool to create guidelines
for our window opening. Let's set these three feet from each side, and the bottom of the window
three feet from the floor. Then let's create another
guideline from that bottom guide, which we can set to five feet for the height of the window opening. And again, once the
guidelines are in place, we can draw a rectangle,
then use the "push-pull" tool to punch out the window opening. Great. Now that we're done
editing our "walls" group, we'll want to exit "edit group" mode. To do that, let's hover our cursor in the space away from the group, right-click, and pick the
option for "close group." Now, to clean our view up, since we no longer need these guidelines, let's open the "display"
panel on the right and select "delete all guides." All right, we've got the basic shape of our house drawn accurately, and everything is safely grouped. We're ready for the next step. Number four, stay organized with tags. As we create more detailed
models in SketchUp, we'll end up with a lot of groups. And while groups won't get stuck together, sometimes they can get
in the way of each other, making it hard for us to see or edit the part of the model
we're trying to work on. Fortunately, we can use the
"tags" feature in SketchUp to turn the visibility
of a group on and off. Not only can this be helpful
when we're working on our model and need to hide something in our way, but it's also useful later
for controlling what options we want to see in our final
model or presentation. So now that we have a
few groups in our model, let's create and assign some tags to stay organized and make it easier to edit what we need to as we continue on. Let's start with the roof. First, let's open the "tags" panel on the right side of the screen and click on the "plus"
symbol to create a new tag. Then, double-click the "tag
name" and rename it "roof." And on our keyboard,
press "enter" or "return" to finish creating the tag. Next, we'll need to assign
that tag to a group. To do that, let's
right-click on the roof group and pick the option for "entity info." In the entity info dialog box, we'll see that the
current tag is "untagged." We can click on "untagged" and then select the roof
tag we just created. And now we've assigned
that tag to the group. Now in the "tags" panel, we can click on the "I" icon
to the left of the roof tag to toggle on and off the
visibility of that tag. Okay, let's repeat these
same steps to create and assign tags to the "walls"
group and the "floor" group. (bright music) Great. Now our model is organized
and ready for the next step. Number five, use components. So far, everything we've created, we've turned into a group. But now let's talk about something called a "component" in SketchUp. They work a lot like groups, but components have
some extra functionality that can really come in handy, especially when it comes to things we plan to use more
than once in our model. Let's take a look at what I mean by that by using a metal roof as an example. For a 3D representation of a metal roof, we'll want evenly spaced ribs running the length of the roof. To create those, we'll
start by orbiting to a view above the roof and looking down on it. Next, we'll use the rectangle tool and start by clicking on the
outside corner end point, then drawing across to the other side, then type "2.5 inches, comma, 17 feet," and press "enter" or "return"
to create a skinny rectangle. Then, we'll use "push-pull" to pull it up three-quarters of an inch. Now, before we go any further, we want to protect this from getting stuck to anything we do next. Based on what we've learned so far, your instinct might be
to turn it into a group so it won't get stuck to anything. (hands clapping) (electronic ding) However, in this case, we're going to turn this roof
rib into a component instead, and we'll talk about why in a minute. To make a component, let's follow the same
process as making a group. Using the "select" tool, we can triple-click on
the rib to select it all, then right-click on that
selection, only this time, let's pick the option
for "make component." Then we can name the
component and click "okay." No need to worry about the other options. Let's also take a second now
to create a tag for our ribs. Okay, we're going to want a number of ribs evenly spaced out across our roof, but we don't have to draw
them all individually. Let's talk about another trick instead. We can use the "move"
tool to create our copies. So we'll start by picking the "move" tool. Tap the "option" key on your
keyboard if you're on a Mac, or the "control" key if you're on a PC, and notice that a "plus" symbol appears next to the "move" tool cursor. This lets us know we've
turned on the "copy" function. Now, any object we click to move will create a copy of that
object instead of moving it. Let's move a copy of the rib
to the other side of the roof by hovering over the inside
bottom corner point of the rib, we'll click and let go on that point, then move the cursor on
the far corner of the roof, then click and let go to
set the copy in place. But wait, if you're
following along at home, take your hands off
your mouse and keyboard and don't do anything else yet. We just moved a single copy of the rib, but here's the trick. As soon as we move a copy, we have the ability to tell SketchUp that we want multiple copies instead. For example, we can type "five"
and the "forward slash" key, and then press "enter" or "return," and we will end up creating
five copies of the rib. Notice that there are six ribs. The first one is the original, and the other five are the copies. What we've just done is
called a "divide array." That means that we moved
one copy the total distance and then told SketchUp to divide that distance equally for the five copies. But the best part is we don't have to get it right on the first try. We can type "15, forward slash," and hit "enter" or "return," and now we've got 15
equally spaced copies, or 16 total ribs, including the original. And we can keep making
changes until we move on or click to begin
another task in SketchUp. Pretty cool, right? If you like that little trick, make sure to give this video a like. All right, we now have multiple
copies of our roof rib. And remember how earlier, I mentioned the components
can really come in handy if we have multiple copies in our model? Well, now I can show you what I mean. Let's say that we've done all this work, but now we decide that the
roof ribs would look better if we added some detail. With a component, we can
right click on a rib, it doesn't matter which one, and pick the option for "edit component." Then, using the "move" tool, we can click on the top
edge and move it in, in the red direction, and type
"three-quarters of an inch," and press "return" or "enter." Then, we can do the same
thing with the other top edge, moving it in three-quarters of an inch. Notice that when you edit one component, all of the others are edited
too. This is a huge time saver. Okay, we're done editing
our roof rib component. Let's right-click outside
of the bounding box and pick the option for "close component." Now we're ready for the next step. Number six, use nested
groups and components. So far, we've covered
making individual groups and individual components, but there might be times
where you'll want to treat a collection of groups and/or components as a unified object. For example, what if we
want to rotate the roof and the ribs together as one object so that we can give the roof a slope? In that case, we can actually select more than one group or component and turn the entire selection into its own group or component. Let's try it. Using the "select" tool, let's click and drag a selection window around the roof and roof rib components. We just need to be careful not to select the "walls" group or the "floor" group. Then, let's right-click on the selection and pick the option for "make group." Now this is one big group that we can think of as a parent group. Inside it are what we call
"nested" groups and components. This can feel a little confusing at first, but one way to think about it
is that groups or components are like containers for our geometry. We started out making some end points, edges, and faces in the shape of a roof, which we put into a roof group container. Then we made a few more end points, edges, and faces in
the shape of a roof rib and put those into a
rib component container. Then we made a bunch of copies of that roof rib component container. And finally, we took
the roof group container and all of the roof rib
component containers, and we put all of them inside a bigger parent group container. And now that we've got everything grouped in a parent container, we're ready to rotate the
roof to give it a slope. To do that, let's pick the "rotate" tool, then hover the mouse over the bottom back corner of the roof. We can always zoom in or orbit
if we need a better view. For this rotation, we'll
want to rotate the cursor to be active in the red direction. If it's flip-flopping around in the green or blue directions, we can try making a subtle
move with the cursor, or even orbit a tiny
bit, and then hover again until we get the red direction cursor. Once we do, click and let go. That sets our cursor down and creates the central pivot point for our rotation. Now we have two more clicks to use the "rotate" tool correctly. First, we'll need to select
the initial leg of rotation, meaning the plane that will be rotating anchored on the central
pivot point we've just set. So we can move the mouse
onto the horizontal roof edge and click anywhere along that edge, then move the mouse up to begin rotating the roof and ribs up. And we'll see that the roof rotates up and around the pivot point. In the bottom right of the browser window, notice that the measurements box is showing us the degrees of rotation. And remember, SketchUp
can be dead accurate when we need it to be. Let's set our roof with a two-12 pitch, or nine and a half degrees. Type "9.5," and press "enter" or "return." The rotation will be set at
exactly nine and a half degrees. All right, now we've set the
pitch of our parent roof group, but of course, now we'll
see we've created a gap where the walls meet the roof. Let's talk about how to fix
that with the next step. Number seven, learn to
edit existing 3D shapes. So far, we've created
the exact shapes we need, then turned them into
groups or components. But in the real world, there are design changes and edits that need to be made along the way. This could get tricky the
further we get into a model, as it can be harder to imagine
to best make the changes to the existing geometry. For example, we need to edit our walls so that they support the pitched roof. Of course, you'll run into
any number of situations where you'll need to make edits that look different than this one. But let's talk about how to
approach this specific example using techniques you can
apply to most situations. First and foremost, remember
that we'll need to be in "edit group" or "edit component" mode in order to make changes
to the end points, edges, and faces contained
in any group or component. And sometimes, as we discussed
in the previous step, we may need to edit groups or components nested within other groups or components. In those cases, we'll
just need to continue to right-click and select "edit group" or "component" as many times as needed until we're at the level
of the underlying geometry. For our example, however, we'll only need to right-click
and pick "edit group" once to be at the geometry level of the walls. Next, we'll need to consider
what combination of tools will be most effective for
what we're trying to do. When you're new to SketchUp, you won't have the experience
to know what the best approach for a given situation might
be, but practice makes perfect. So your best bet is to just
experiment to see what works. Remember, if you try one thing
and end up getting stuck, you can always use the undo
arrow as many times as you need to get back and experiment
with a different approach. Of course, there are also a number of ways to accomplish what we're trying to do, and there isn't necessarily
a right or best way, but let's talk about one good
way to approach this problem. First, let's orbit to
the side of the house and pick the "line" tool. Then, let's start by
drawing the triangle profile for the missing piece of the side wall. We already have the top edge of the wall, which will be the bottom
edge of the triangle. Using SketchUp's inferences
to be sure our lines are snapping to the correct points, we can draw in the other
two edges of the triangle. And when the triangle is complete, the face will automatically fill in. Now, we can begin to
push-pull that new face to the same thickness as the walls. Then, we can orbit around
to get a better view, and again use SketchUp's
inferences to be sure we're extruding the triangle
to the same thickness as the wall, and click again
to complete the push-pull. Then we can repeat the same
process on the opposite wall. Now, for the front wall piece, if we just push-pull
the top of the wall up, the top of the wall
won't be angled correctly along the bottom of the roof. Instead, let's lever it
so we can see the inside of the triangle shape and
the top of the front wall. Then, let's draw a line
from the top inside corner of the wall, up along the blue axis to the top edge of the triangle. SketchUp will split that
triangle into two pieces, and now we can push-pull that
piece above the front wall all the way across the
house to the other wall. All right, almost done. The final step is to erase
the extra edges we don't need. We can do that using the "eraser" tool. It's looking good. Now, we can right-click outside the group and pick "close group." Before moving on to our next major step, you can continue to the groups
and components we've made using the same techniques we've covered to clean up any overlapping
geometry or extra lines. Then, we're ready for the next step. Number eight, use pre-made
components from the 3D warehouse. When it comes time to add
objects to your models, know that you don't have to
model everything yourself. SketchUp Free comes with
access to the 3D warehouse, which is a vast library of
components made by other people that are free to use in your projects. The 3D warehouse makes
it easy to find models of all kinds of different objects from furniture, to plants,
appliances, you name it. And many of them are made to the exact product specifications by
product manufacturers themselves. Using these 3D components
can save you a ton of time, and can make your models look great. Let's learn and practice
how to use the 3D warehouse on our example project. To access the 3D warehouse,
click on the "3D warehouse icon on the right side of the screen. This will open a new
window where we can browse by clicking on thumbnails
for featured content or search for something more specific. For our house, let's search
for "window" in the search box and press the "return" key. The results are divided into categories. So above all the
thumbnails, we see products, models, collections, and catalogs. Products are components that are accurate representations
of real-world products, and have been verified by the company that makes the product. Models are any other type of component. Note that many models can be extremely accurate representations of
products, but if they haven't been made and verified
by the company itself, they'll still fall under
the "models" category. "Collections" are like folders of models. Any SketchUp user can save collections, like folders of their favorite models, to make it easier to access them later. Often, a good way to find nice models is looking at collections
saved by other users. And lastly, "catalogs"
are like collections, only they contain products
instead of models. At this point, we could
download any window we like, and it would be imported
directly into our project. But to make things easier for
the purposes of this example, we've gone ahead and
created an entire collection of components suited to our house example, including a window. To find it, type "SketchUp school" in the search box and press "return." Then, we can click on
the "collections" tab and click on the "how to model a house in SketchUp Free" thumbnail. There, we'll see the "window" component. Then, we can click on the "download" icon in the lower right to download
the window into our model. When we download something
from the 3D warehouse, it comes into our project attached to the "move" tool cursor. Now, let's hover over the bottom
edge of the window opening and click on it to set the window down. Don't worry if it's not
oriented properly yet. Now take note, when we
click to set the window down on the bottom of the
opening, this was intentional. Our first click should
be to set a component in a logical place relative to where it eventually needs to go. For something sitting on the floor, we would click to set it on the floor. In this case, the window
is sitting on the opening, so that's where we set it down. Next, we'll need to rotate
the window component to face the right way.
In this case, 90 degrees. Even though we're going
to rotate and move it, we can actually do all of
that with the "move" tool. To do that, if we hover
over the top of the window, four red "plus" symbols appear. Let's hover over one of the red pluses, it doesn't matter which one, and the cursor will turn into
a compass or a rotate icon. Once we see that, we can click
and let go on that red plus, then move the mouse to begin rotating the window about its center point. We can hover over the tick
marks on the "tool" icon to rotate in 15 degree increments until we get to 90 degrees, then click and let go to end the rotation. Next, we'll move the
window into the exact spot where it needs to sit. To do that, we need to be intentional about the point we click on
the window so that we can then move that point onto a
particular point in the opening. For this example, it's best
to click on the bottom corner end point of the window,
and then move the cursor onto the bottom corner
end point of the opening and click to finish moving the
window to that exact point. Great, now we can repeat the same steps to add the folding door. So we'll open the 3D warehouse,
then find the folding door in the "how to model a house
in SketchUp Free" collection, then download it, and finally, we'll use the "move" tool,
being careful to click on exact points to move it into place. And as you probably saw
from the collection, we've included all sorts
of things for you to add to both the interior and
exterior of the house. So now would be a great time
to practice what you've learned and add various components to your model. If you can't find something,
or you have a question, or you just want to say hi, let us know in the comments below. All right, there's one
thing we should talk about related to using components
from the 3D warehouse. Sometimes, you'll download
something and it just won't work. The scale might be way
off, or something about it isn't built in the way you'd like. Often, the best bet might
be to just delete it and then go look for
something else that will work. On the other hand, if
it's looking pretty good, but just needs to be slightly
altered to fit your design, it is possible to edit
components that you download from the 3D warehouse, just as
if you'd made them yourself. Just know that, depending on
what we're trying to edit, the level of difficulty can range from fairly straightforward
to quite difficult, especially if whoever made the model didn't group their geometry. All right, there's one
last piece to this step, and that's for us to remember
that it's always a good idea to create tags for these
components as we go. Of course, there's no right
or wrong way to tag things, but we could, for instance,
create a tag to assign all our furniture and fixtures to. That way, it would be easy
to toggle those on or off for different views that we might need. Okay, now that we've
added all these objects from the 3D warehouse, let's
talk about the next step. Number nine, add colors and materials. As we've been adding components, you've probably noticed
that they already have colors and materials applied to them. But now let's talk about how
to add colors and materials to the elements we're creating ourselves. To do that, let's right-click
on the "walls" group and pick the option for "edit group." Then, let's pick the paint bucket tool. Then we can click on the "browse" icon in the panel on the right and pick colors. Next, scroll down the
list of color swatches and click on one to fill our
paint bucket with that color. Then, we can move the mouse
onto the face of the wall and click to paint that
color on that face. And what about materials
like a wood floor? We can right click
outside the "walls" group and pick the option for "close group." Then, right-click on the
floor and pick "edit group." Let's scroll down the list of
color swatches on the right until we can see the other
categories at the very bottom. Click on the wood category to reveal a few wood material swatches. Click on one of them to fill the paint bucket
with that material, then move the cursor onto
the face of the floor and click on it to paint
that material onto the floor. That's right. Just like flat colors, we can paint materials
onto any face in our model. That's because the material
swatches are actually images of real world materials that are designed to tile or repeat across
any face we paint. Okay. A couple of things to note here. First, the materials that are available in SketchUp Free are low resolution. So they may look a little blurry, especially when we zoom in close. If you want to import
higher quality materials, you can do that by going to the top menu and clicking "import." From there, select the
file for the material you'd like to bring into SketchUp, and then "select material." You'll see the image attached
to the paint bucket tool. Click to add it to the desired face, and you'll see that you
can then scale the material to whatever size you desire. Click again, and SketchUp
will place the material and automatically tile it. Inserting your own images
in this way can be great for things like rugs or artwork
as well as nicer materials than you'll get out of
the box in SketchUp Free. I've made sure to add links
to some of my favorite materials resources in
the notes for this video. And the other minor thing to note, if you want to customize
the colors you specify, for example, picking an
exact pink color rather than one of the default swatches,
that's only available if you upgrade to the desktop
version of SketchUp Pro. Okay, now that you know how
to add colors and materials, this is a great time for you
to practice what you've learned by repeating these steps and
adding colors and materials to the rest of the house. Just remember that you
need to get in and out of "edit group" or "component" mode to paint the individual faces. All right, once we've got all
our colors and materials set, we're ready for the last step. Number 10, create a final rendering. We've done a great job putting together our first house in SketchUp Free. Now it's time to show it off
by creating a final image. First, we'll want to navigate to find a nice view of the model. Then, we can try out some of
SketchUp's predefined styles to see if we like any of them. To do that, let's click
on the "styles" icon to open the "styles" panel. There, we can see a bunch of options from standard colors to black and white, to more artistic and sketchy styles. Feel free to try any of them
out to see how they look by simply clicking on
one of the thumbnails. For this example, though, let's stick to a standard color
shaded with texture style, and then let's talk about
one more thing we can try. Let's open up the "display"
panel on the right. Then, let's check the
box next to "shadows" on. Now, we can slide the
"time" and "date" sliders to see shadows cast across the model. All right, this is looking pretty good. And now that we have a view and
style settings that we like, we need to save a scene. To do that, let's click
on the "scenes" icon to open the "scenes" panel on the right, then click the "plus"
icon to save the scene. If you get a warning, just pick the option for
"save as a new style." Now, if we navigate
anywhere else in the model, we can always get right
back to the saved view by clicking on the scene thumbnail. We can also use the
"scenes" feature to set up other views of our model
that we might need. For instance, if we had a section cut using the "section plane" tool, we could switch to a "top-down" view, switch from "perspective"
to "parallel projection," open the display panel
and "hide section planes," then use the "styles" panel to set our view to "black and white," and we've got a nice looking plan view, which we can save as a new scene. And again, if we want to
get back to our first scene, we can click on the "scene" thumbnail, and the style, visible tags,
and camera will all go back to their settings for that saved scene. All right, now that we've
got our scene set up and we're ready to export our final image, let's talk about what to do next. First, it's always a good
idea to save the file. Then we'll go to the
menu in the upper left and pick "download PNG." If you need a different image file format, like a "JPEG," for example, you'll need to upgrade
beyond SketchUp Free. So for now, we'll stick with a PNG. In the "export" window, we can set our desired pixel dimensions and any other "view" options.
And finally, click "export." Just know that PNG is a raster image, meaning it has a set pixel dimension. If you need the sort of
image where the line work is crisp at any size, you'd
need a vector format like a PDF, and you can only export vector
formats using SketchUp Pro. Also, be aware that any image you export out of SketchUp Free will
have the SketchUp logo watermarked in the upper right corner. To export an image without the logo, you'll also need to upgrade. And there's one last
thing we should discuss when it comes to exporting a final image. There are a ton more
options available to you if you upgrade beyond SketchUp Free. For instance, with SketchUp Pro, you can use a rendering
extension or application that will allow you to create
realistic lighting effects and add realistic materials to your model to create beautiful
renderings or animations. And if you need to export
other image or 3D file formats, CAD drawings like DWGs,
create shop drawings, or even a full set of
construction documents with detailed dimensions and annotations, you can only do that with a
SketchUp Pro subscription. We have comprehensive
courses on all those topics on our website if you're
ready to get serious. Or if you're not ready
to get serious just yet, but you are interested in
learning more about those topics, we have some great videos
on our YouTube channel that will get you started
down the right path. Okay, now that you've
completed all 10 steps to building a house in
SketchUp Free, what's next? If you're not sure SketchUp Free has all the features you need, and you're wondering
if it's worth upgrading to either SketchUp Shop or SketchUp Pro, then I recommend checking out this video, which compares all the features of the different versions of SketchUp, or head over to this page on our website and send me a quick message
about your particular situation. And I'd be happy to let you know which software I recommend for you. Until next time, happy sketching. (bright music) Then we'll need to whisk that
up. I always recommend... We want to go ahead and set those there.
