The ULTIMATE GUIDE to the SketchUp Follow Me Tool!

what's up guys Justin here with the sketch of essentials calm back with another sketch up quick tutorial for you so it's been a while since I made a video about the follow me tool and I really wanted to make a video just kind of going through some of the features and functions that you can use as well as some great applications for this tool before I get started today is the last day of the schedule potentials 50k subscribers sale so the 50k subscribers sale it's just a sale and celebration of hitting 50,000 subscribers on YouTube as a part of that I'm offering not only the Sketchup essentials course but also a free personalized Sketchup model review so if you purchase that course before 11:59 tonight then I will also give you a review where I take a look at one of your models and I give you some advice for things that you can do to take your modeling the neck next level so if that's something you're interested in you want to check out the course and also get some personalized help make sure you check that out at the sketch of essentials comm slash 50k now let's go ahead and just jump into it so I'm not even really sure what to call this video but basically I just wanted to go through a lot of the things that you can do with the follow me tool so I've made some videos with the follow me tool in the past and you know that it's really a lot more powerful than a lot of people think so I'm the follow me tool but basically the way that it works is it takes an object and it extrudes it along a path so in this case in the simplest possible way you could use the follow me tool in order to extrude something like a pipe along the path now we know that we can use the push/pull tool to do this so when you're doing something along a straight line this doesn't always make sense however it is nice because you can just select a path and use the follow me tool to extrude something to the length of that path however where the follow me tool really starts getting powerful is when you have paths with multiple different lines on it so something like this corner where this pipe would turn the corner what you would do is you would select these two lines activate the follow me tool then you would click on this pipe and the powerful thing about this is Sketchup actually takes this and it actually turns this around this edge and it merges the edges so that you get a nice turn around this edge and this becomes a huge time-saver because you don't have to come in here and try to model the corner and the way that everything comes together or anything like that sketchup does that for you and so one thing i always want to know when I talk about the follow me tool doesn't want to make sure that I tell you that the best way to use it is to select your path activate the tool and then click on your object so what you don't want to do is you don't want to click on your object and then move it along the line like this I mean you can do that but it starts getting pretty ugly pretty quick so let's say for example that this was to turn a corner up here notice to try to use the follow me tool in order to kind of go around this edge you can see how you can do this you can kind of move your mouse along here and it works pretty well it does come in here and create all those corners but the more complex your path gets the more difficult that gets so it's a lot easier to just select your line and then click on your object so that's how you should be using the follow me tool is to select the path and then select your object and so one of the other nice things about the follow me tool is not only does this work along paths that turn a corner it also works along paths that go in a complete circle and so what I mean by that is let's say for example and I'm gonna go ahead and move these over cuz I'm gonna use this example for another thing in a second to of so I'm just gonna create a copy of that but basically what this means is when you come around this corner like this and you select these edges or when you want to create something that comes all the way around this space if you use the follow me tool in order to do this this will actually merge your object together to create a smooth face so you can see I have that profile and all of that turned the corners really well but the other thing that it did is it merged right here where your face started so you get a smooth piece of base or whatever else your profile is as well so and it doesn't really matter what this shape is so let's say for example that this was something a little more let's just say for simplicity's sake something like a half circle and you were to select this and you were to click in here you can see how this merges in here as well so the way that this merges smoothly can be a huge time saver because you don't have to come in here and try to edit all of that yourself so not only does this work by you selecting edges and selecting a path in order to extrude something along if you want to extrude something along a face like this all you have to do is click on the face then activate the follow me tool and click on this profile and it'll extrude all the way around that shape so you don't need to go in there and do a whole bunch of shift-clicking to try to select different things or anything like that it's actually very easy and so in addition to being able to use the follow me tool on ungroup geometry let's say that you have groups like these two circles in here that are basically grouped geometry that you've set up as group geometries you don't want them to merge with everything else in your model you can still use the follow me tool on those objects and so the way that you would do that is you would select your path you would come over and activate the follow me tool then you can right-click on this group and click Edit group what that's going to do is that's going to take you inside this group and then you can click on this face and it remembers the path that you had selected allowing you to extrude things along paths even with group geometry without messing all of that up and so like let's say for example I'm going to come in here and I'm gonna turn perspective off real quick so that I can get my selection right but I'm gonna come in here and I'm gonna select this other path along this sphere and I'm just gonna on soften that so basically what that does is that creates that is a line inside the sphere or that turns this geometry into a line instead of soften geometry so that I can select it and use it as a path I'm gonna go ahead and turn hidden geometry off but now I can just activate the follow me tool right click on this group and click Edit group and I can extrude that along this path as well and then I'm just going to reverse all of the faces I will unhide the other object and you can see how both of these are in their own groups in addition to this sphere so you can use this to extrude group geometry really quickly as well and so one of the other things that you should know about the follow me tool is it your objects don't have to be touching the path that you're extruding along so let's say for example that you wanted to extrude these objects around this circle or in a circular path that's basically based on this circle well you don't need these circles to be touching this line in order for that to work you can just select your circle activate the follow me tool and then click on each one of these lines and you do have to go back in here and select that path every time or that shape but you can see how you can extrude these along that path without having to have those touching this object and then let's say for example that you wanted to extrude all of these at once along this path this is a tip that comes from Aaron Dietzen at Sketchup and I think also from box on Facebook so you can use what's called a negative extrusion in order to extrude all of these at once so basically the way this works is these are each drawn on this face as individual faces or these are just drawn inside this boxes individual faces you can see how these all share the same face well now instead of having to come in here and select each one of these individually what you can do is you can click on this circle activate the follow me tool and then click on this box you can see how when you click on this box initially it doesn't quite look like what you need it doesn't look like it extruded all of these shapes but actually if you come in here and double-click on the top of this box and you delete the top and also the bottom you can see how each one of these got extruded in a circle based on that face so this extruded this 360 degrees but it left those shapes on the inside and then you can still lead out that extra another great use for extruding things around a path like this is you can also use them to create things like cabinet doors so let's say for example that I wanted to create a cabinet door that's the size of this face all I would have to do in that case is I could just come in here and draw the profile of the cabinet door so let's say well make this very simple let's say that this cabinet door just had a series of grooves in it so something very simple like this all you would have to do is just click on this face then activate the follow me tool and click on this object and you can see how you can create that cabinet door profile really easily and you could also use things like arcs in order to get more of a curved look and you could also have profiles that go out in addition to in so you can see how once you figure out how to do this you can create very complex casework really easily and so not only can you use the follow me tool to add material you can also use it to remove material so let's say that I was to click on this face then activate the follow me tool you can see how where this you can see how I have this edge in here and if I was to click on this there's already a face along here however if you click on this and there's already a face it's gonna remove material instead of adding material and so you can use this to create some fairly complex things so if you wanted to create grooves or something like that inside this object you could use the follow me tool in order to do that so in addition the follow me tool is also great for creating lathe shapes so shapes that you extrude basically along a circle so we've talked about extruding things kind of along a path that closes like this one you can also use this on something like this circle in order to lathe something in a circle so you can see I can use this to create something like a wine glass really easily inside my Sketchup model and you can do this with other things too I think I've talked about a fountain in the past and there's some other things as well you can also adjust the kind of shape that's created by adjusting the number of segments in your path when you're doing this so I have three triangles in here and I'm gonna lay them all around the circles so in Sketchup spine these are all circles on the base of each one of these so you can see how I can come in here and adjust the number of segments inside these circles because that's the way Sketchup views circles is basically just a series of segments that go in a circular path so the first one is fairly obvious this is just a twenty four sided circle that I created you can use the follow me tool in order to extrude this and create a cone shape however if you take this and you extrude it along something like gaya' like a hexagon you're gonna get a similar shape but a different look so in this case if I look at my hidden geometry in here you can see how this is more triangular and less smooth so you can use that to create a different kind of look inside your model and in the same way you could also do this with a 4 or a 3 sided circle and you can see how this gives you a completely different more triangular shape instead of a cone so once you kind of have an idea of the way that the geometry works and also the way the follow me tool works you can use this to create very different objects inside of Sketchup so that's where I'm going in this video leave a comment below let me know what you thought do you use the follow me tool I just love having that Sketchup conversation it to you guys if you like this video please remember to click that like button down below if you're new around here remember to click that subscribe button for new Sketchup content every week if you like what I'm doing on this channel please consider supporting me on patreon every little bit helps even if it's only a dollar a month so make sure you check out that link in the notes down below but in any case thank you so much for taking the time to watch this I really appreciate it not we'll catch you in the next video thanks guys

Channel: TheSketchUpEssentials

Views: 84,460

Rating: 4.9583521 out of 5

Keywords: thesketchupessentials, the sketchup essentials, thesketchupessentials.com, sketchup tutorials, sketchup lessons, sketchup modeling, sketchup 2018, architecture, sketchup 2017, sketchup tutorial, justin geis, sketchup, follow me tool, follow me, sketchup follow me tool, sketchup follow me tool tutorial, sketchup follow me circle, sketchup follow me roof, sketchup follow me pipe

Id: WA-WSV8954c

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 31 2018