SketchUp: Solid Tools

but Sketch ups solid tools you can create new shapes by combining or cutting one shape with another making it easy to model an outer shell or joinery the first step to using the solid tools is making sure your geometry is grouped and of course solid the solid tools will only work on groups or components and only on groups made of clean geometry with all surfaces filled for example this form is complete at all sides we can group it and use it with the solid tools however this form has a surface missing we can group it but it will not work with the solid tools similarly a group needs to be cleaned without extra edges or surfaces this form has all sides but has a straight edge here an unconnected edge here we can group this geometry but it still won't work with the solid tools this is also true for hidden geometry so you may need to turn on hidden edges to check for stray geometry you didn't see you can however have multiple entities grouped these four entities for example can all be combined into one group and would work with the solid tools however make sure no geometry is overlapping again they need to have complete services all around and be clean of straight geometry which overlapping geometry creates now we are ready to examine the specific solid tools and how they can enhance your workflow five of these tools are available in Sketchup Pro and the outer shell command is available to all Sketchup users if you are using Sketchup make it's worth remembering that you can ultimately achieve all the same results using the intersect with model command however the solid tools are available for pro users to improve production and speed up your process and workflow let's start by looking at subtract take two separate groups overlap them and subtract we'll remove the intersecting geometry of one group with the other the important thing to remember is the order in which you pick the groups for example look at these two similar sets of groups when using subtract the first object you pick will be cut away from the second object so we can achieve different results based on the order you choose trim operates in the same manner as subtract with the difference that the cutting object is not deleted but still available the importance of this is the ability to use it as the cutting object for multiple groups use this fence as an example and toggling transparent mode will help us see this more clearly select the cutting object first then click on the fence objects in succession to cut that same shape away split works by taking the two groups and making three unique groups the intersecting geometry is cut away from the two original groups and used to make a new third group similarly intersect uses your two original groups and deletes them leaving only the intersecting geometry so just remember split will convert two groups into three and intersect will convert two groups into one Union will work with more than two groups as many as you'd like in fact and combine them all into one intersecting outer geometry and removing the overlapping interior geometry toggling transparent geometry will again help us see this with a number of different groups overlapping select them all and use Union to combine them into one single object with all the interior geometry removed it's useful to remember though that only overlapping geometry is affected for example if I wanted to combine these walls with the ceiling and roof the interior rooms are not overlapped by other geometry therefore Union combines these entities as we'd hope with all the rooms remaining and the walls and ceiling merged correctly outer shell work similarly to Union combining multiple groups together and in many cases acts just the same the difference is that outer shell will try to remove interior geometry that Union would leave alone creating just an outer shell any interior geometry that is intersected with other geometry will be affected

Channel: SketchUp

Views: 218,823

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Keywords: SketchUp, 3D modeling

Id: inwYs-Fs-mM

Length: 4min 16sec (256 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 12 2015