Using a 3D Mouse in SketchUp - Skill Builder

hey guys i'm aaron and today we're going to talk about using a 3d mouse inside of sketchup [Music] okay so before we go any further it's disclaimer time a 3d mouse is not required to use sketchup you don't have to use it inside of sketchup in fact most people use sketchup their entire career using just the scroll wheel right here and that works just fine a lot of people though get to that point where they kind of feel like they've plateaued in sketchup like i'm as good as i can get i've learned everything i can um this is where i'm going to be in sketchup like they're they're they're at the top and they don't see themselves improving that's when you know alternative workflows and maybe some additional hardware can help you get a little bit better the nice thing about a 3d mouse and we'll look at this is it's something that as a designer it can make you a little bit faster it can also take your presentations if you show people sketchup it can give you some some tools to make your presentations even better so uh i we don't sell 3d mice this is from a company called 3d connection you know i personally don't get anything with someone anybody buys anything but i'm an advocate of them because i think as far as hardware goes it's a great way to make yourself quicker better at sketchup and make your presentations look better so i'm not going to go into details or anything like that but i actually have two 3d mice one is this one it's just the just a little puck and it's got like a button or two on the side i use this when i travel this is usually just in my bag and then i have the space mouse enterprise you guys have seen probably on the live streams that's a piece of hardware i use every day when i do modeling so we're going to go through and just i'm just going to hit the high points about why you might want to look into them they are an investment you have to spend some money on them but if sketchup is something you're using every single day like i am uh it's worth it for me to spend a little bit to get just that much more out of my design time or process so that's enough talking let's hop in and take a look at how it works all right so obviously we have a 3d mouse here on the screen but um we're going to have to use a little bit of production here to get boom look at that look at that super fuzzy it's really hard to do a reflective thing on a green screen background because it reflects all the green there's green all around me and it's showing up on the shininess right here but this is the space mass enterprise this is what i was talking about this is what i use every day so we're going to talk about how this works so one of the questions one of the questions we get the most common through the videos is how do i move around so smoothly inside of sketchup so if i was to take this mouse as my standard mouse and just use the scroll wheel on sketchup of course i would get looks like this you know this is this is normal everybody uses sketchups used to this this view this is what happens if i come over here though and put my hand on 3d mouse the the main part is a lot of buttons here we'll talk about that in a second the main part though is this puck in the middle so this puck is set up that as i move it it's going to move the model around so it doesn't take much you can see you can hardly tell that i moved it but if i if i push on the edge here it's going to rotate up if i pull down it's going to rotate that way and same thing i can pan left and right by touching it and then as i rotate the puck it'll rotate around so this just takes a little bit of practice okay this takes a a decent amount of practice but once you get used to it moving through the model is super quick and super easy so i can just kind of buzz around here and i don't even really think about it too much it's like become a hand-eye coordination oh look this is a model i download from 3d warehouse so you can tell the shadow of the person taking the picture with their phone to model this from um that's kind of cool easter egg well it's not easter egg now i just pointed it out so this is one of the big pieces this is what uh one of the things i use the 3d mouse 4 is moving through so one of the nice things is see over here see my cursor is moving around right here as i move with the 3d mouse this cursor is available to do whatever i need to do so if i want to come up here and grab the paint bucket while i'm zooming in on something i can do that i want to close that while i'm zooming out so basically what i ended up doing is i just gave myself two hands inside of sketchup so this hand can run around and grab tools pull up information um i can actually do that while so i can change which which one i want to look at um as i'm spinning in 3d space this is the kind of stuff it's it takes a little bit of practice but you actually kind of end up with like i said two hands inside of sketchup this way the other thing is so this is a sacrifice right here so this this hand right here my left hand is normally the hand that's over here on my keyboard pressing shortcut keys right so this hand my right hand that you can't see is on the mouse obviously that's moving around that's that's i don't ever lose that so this is the hand that's going to actually come in here when i start drawing it's going to you know click and draw these lines that sort of thing it's also going to grab tools up here so i'll put a circle in and go grab that that's still happening but this hand is responsible so i i when i'm using three mouse i rarely go into orbit occasionally as i'm doing this i'll get impatient and one things you can do while you're in using a 3d mouse is you can still use the scroll wheel so i can shoot in real quick so there is a speed at which it zooms and i can just kind of do a jump quick jump by scrolling in or out as i'm using the 3d mouse also so i do that a little bit but most of the animation mostly orbiting is done using the 3d mouse so that's that's nice one of the things i said i lose is this hand comes off the keyboard so where i was over there typing in you know hitting the hotkeys my shortcut keys for different commands um that's gone because i'm over here and this is where something like this the larger mouse as opposed to the smaller mouth so i do still this is still here so if i'm traveling i can still you know i can just plug this in this takes up no room in my bag um but for regular workflow the nice thing here is that i can program all these keys there's something like i don't know each of these keys can be programmed twice versus a tap and a tap and hold so i end up with like 40 or 50 short more shortcut keys and more shortcut functions than i can actually use but here i can do stuff like um i want to grab the uh circle tool here i actually have a shortcut key so if i hit this key right here it brings up the shortcut key for circle pretty cool um so if i want to bring up the measure tool i can click right there bring up the measure tool so tools that i use a lot are on here the other thing that's on here which is kind of nice is my arrow keys so again this is custom programmed when you get a 3d mouse you have driver software you run and you can program these buttons even a little tiny one that's just the puck has a button or two on the side that can be programmed but this is nice because as i start drawing a line right here again my hand's not on the keyboard to hit the up left and right buttons but uh i've programmed them here so i can actually oh that was the wrong button so i can actually switch between those toggles just using these buttons here so the other one nice on here it does have over on the left side i have the modifier key so shift control uh option or alt uh spacebar escape delete enter all those buttons are here so if i ever want to like lock into an angle i can hit the shift key here really cool really simple again escape so i can get out of a command right here on the keyboard so that's kind of the reason for again if if you're going to be modeling and you're spending a large amount of time modeling it's worthwhile investment because there's another like i said the other thing is this animating in 3d moving around your model orbiting is something that you know we get used to as as sketchup users we're used to this and it is quick it is easy it's simpler than a lot of other tools where i have to use a combination of you know mouse buttons and clicks and holds and that kind of stuff moving with just this middle mouse button the scroll wheel is super easy but this can be a little jarring to someone who doesn't know what they're seeing this on the other hand well that's a good pun the other hand my left hand is nice and smooth it's much less i don't say upsetting but it's less jarring it's a little bit easier to take in as you move around in 3d space so something to consider if you do a lot of presentations that kind of thing i think it's something that pays for itself pretty quick if you're showing your your client your designs it makes your designs look better because they're moving through in a way that's easier to understand and it's a little bit smoother and less i mean you don't want to show somebody you know a job you've been working out for them and have that be jarring and like upsetting as they move through it so just wanted to hit a high level we get so many questions about 3d mouse and like i said i am an advocate for it we personally trimble doesn't sell 3d mice we don't make 3d mice we don't make any money off anybody who buys 3d mice this is purely me coming at you saying if you use sketchup a lot it may be worth it to look into a 3d mouse so if you watch our live streams on fridays um i use it just about every time i've done a couple times where i don't or if we use like the with the web version that doesn't have plug-ins extensions yet then then you know them to stick with the normal ones if i'm traveling sometimes i will you know just use the mouse or use the touchpad but if i'm really serious about designing something it's pretty hard to beat that control that you get with it and then adding on top of that the shortcut keys are programmed in there worth checking out so a lot of people ask questions that's why we made the videos to answer as many of those questions as we possibly could i hope you liked that video if you liked it click like down below and if you don't already please subscribe we create several videos a week and you'll be notified of any of those videos that come out if you subscribe most importantly though please leave us a comment do you use a 3d mouse what do you like about it you have questions about it is there other hardware you'd like to hear about we like making these videos a lot but we like them even more when they're showing something you want to see thank you you

Channel: SketchUp

Views: 6,737

Rating: 4.9673471 out of 5

Keywords: SketchUp, 3D modeling, Mouse, 3D Mouse, Spacemouse, 3DConneexion

Id: p2yvhY3JULw

Length: 11min 5sec (665 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 24 2021