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59K views 49 replies 24 participants last post by  BrianLuntz 
#1 ·
Zoom-Zoom (and Keeping it dialed in)

I see a lot of great Sketchup tutorials online (here and there), and while they do discuss different techniques, tools and what not - you really have to follow through from start to end, and go along a somewhat complex path to get the hang of things. one more thing - while on that road - one's eyes are focused on the end result, and sometimes one can miss the fantastic little tips along the way.

This tutorial is one of many short - tip/tool specific - tutorials that can help people get around Sketchup and have an easier time around.

Zoom and Center ALL

Sometimes you add a new component to your model (or you're working inside a small part (zoomed in)) and want to see the "whole picture" zoomed across the entire screen, and centered.


This is possible using the 'camera-zoom-extent' feature. click the zoom-extents button
or press SHIFT+Z (this is the default hotkey) and Sketchup will zoom and fit everything in your model into view and center it across your screen:


Zooming and Centering Specific Parts in your Model

Sometimes you want to zoom and center on a specific piece in your model (a specific component, or a specific surface/line/arc/circle/etc). Sketchup can do that too.

Select the part you want to zoom and center upon (in this example, it's the circle for the hole):


right(ctrl for mac)-click on it, and select "zoom-extent", it will zoom and fit that part in the center of your screen:


The later zooming technique is referred to as 'edit-zoom-extent' and can be assigned to a hotkey of your liking- more about that in a later tutorial.
 
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#2 ·
DaveR- that is true there is a button in the default toolbar for Zoom Extent.

I find that using hotkeys is the way to go (Photoshop, Maya, Final Cut, Sketchup, you name it) I dont like searching around with my pen/mouse for buttons to click when I can blindly click a hotkey instantly - or better yet - a sequence of hotkeys. this is the equivalent of creating a rectangle in Sketchup by clicking, dragging to the exact sizes in both dimensions, clicking - OR - clicking, typing dimensions, and pressing Enter :) gotta love speed.

I personally hardly ever have toolbars visible on screen (this tutorial wasn't done on MY computer) I find that they take off too much of the real estate that can be used to see more of the actual work surface. I use hotkeys religiously.
 
#5 ·
Doubthead - yes I have. I've also used FormZ, and SolidWorks, but was favoring Maya for my models since I was using it anyways for animation work, and was extremely comfortable with it's environment and controls - I find that Maya is far from being Woodworker friendly, but it was just what I was used to.

When Google bought Sketchup and made it free, I gave it a try, and instantly dumped everything else I was using for woodworking… compared to them all, Sketchup is lightweight, easy to use, inch/metric friendly I like the auto-glue-to-geometry, and is becoming very popular which equals more users sharing more knowledge and models being readily available to cut down on design time.

PS. nice new Avatar ;o)
 
#7 ·
Great article, though I am keen for my staff to gain knowledge of program through face to face training. This approach will ensure that they can use the tools properly. Your guidance may used as a prompt in the future. Well done!
 
#11 ·
Outliner - Component Selection - Anywhere, Anytime

Is there an easier way to select components/groups that are behind another geometry? or inside one?
Is there a way to transfer a component from one group to another?

Yes there is. Welcome the Outliner window.

This tutorial refers to components in your model, but in this case, groups behave in the exact same manner.

If not yet visible, click "Window → Outliner" to see this window in Sketchup.

The Outliner window shows you a list of all components and groups in your model in a tree view - meaning, each sub component is shown within it's container (parent) component/group so that it's easy to make the parts that make the whole (think legs and top components within a table component/group)



One thing that is convenient with using the Outliner window, is that you can select components and sub components directly - without having to visually "aim" and clicking them - simply click the component name in the Outliner window, and it will be selected - even if it's inside a different component/group. Double click it in the Outliner Window - and you're in Component Edit mode! in a Snap!

Another powerful usage of the Outliner window is the ability to move sub-components from one group to another.

As shown in the following picture, the label on this model is a component within the model's parent component. if you move the model, the label moves with it (as it is contained within it and is part of it):


By selecting the label sub-component and dragging it outside the model's component in the Outliner Window we are literally taking it out of the model's component, and making it a free stand-alone component, if we will now move the model's component - the label will not move with it as it is no longer part of the model's component:


This way you can easily navigate through your components (another great excuse/reason to use components in Sketchup) and sub components, without having to rely on your angle of view, hiding other components that are in the way, or having to "copy-paste" with exact positioning to move components from one container to another.
 
#15 ·
Going to the Lumberyard - Virtually

so you wanted to use specific materials in your Sketchup project? exotic/local lumber? metals? leather? other?

I saw this subject raised in one of DaveR's latest blogs, and it's a fairly simple thing to do in Sketchup. You can use any material you so desire in sketchup, but first, we need to 'make' that material.

Creating new Materials in Sketchup (Using live materials as source)

1. get your material 'source' - this can be any photo - either from your digital camera, or do an online search for your desired material and look for a photo that resembles what you want it to look like, in this example, I've googled 'birdseye maple':


I copied the one that I liked (I dragged it to my desktop, but you could also right(ctrl for mac)-click and do "save as") to my desktop. and then opened Sketchup.

In Sketchup I made a simple box for this example, and opened the paint palette window (paint bucket tool). I then selected my wood folder (or any other folder you might want to place your material into for organization purposes) and selected color->new Texture:



A window will open asking you for the source image/photo for this new material:



simply browse and select the material photo you've downloaded to your desktop.

Sketchup will ask you to confirm/modify the size of the new texture - you could leave this as is, or modify it and resize it as you see fit (experience will tell you what and how you'd want to modify this) and also prompt you for the name of the material - in this case, I'll call it Birdseye Maple … seems so fit.

you can now select a face, and use the new material to paint it with:



As Simple As That.

PS you can also reposition the texture after you've applied it to a face/geometry, and resize it per face.
 
#16 ·
it actually scales up with the piece. from my experience, this is how the rest of (default) materials behave…

I rarely use materials- I mostly use sketchup for roughing up and detailing dimensions and joinery my woodworking models are usually left unpainted (unfinished if you would). I do however paint models that I want to present to someone else, or models that are published.

out of curiosity - what do your materials look like when you scale the box?
 
#24 ·
Virtual Materials II - Tiling it Seamlessly

So a point was raised in my previous installment of this blog regarding tiling appearance of materials (once you assign your custom material to your model and scale it up you'd see the same material pattern repeat over and over again with distinct horizontal and vertical lines (the seams) that separate those repetitions.

This tutorial will show you how to eliminate those seams from your materials, and make it possible to seamlessly tile your material over larger areas. I will show you how to do this using Photoshop, but any other photo editing application will do as the concepts are the same.

Note: Although we will eliminate the seams in this turorial, the material will still show repetitive tiles - this is due to the nature of this material which has very distinctive grain patterns that are hard to blunt out. This is actually on purpose for this totorial since it will make it easier to see the seams, and their elimination.

On we go…

This is the original material (made new material with a photo I got online for birdseye maple (see my previous installment on this blog which explains how to do this). you can clearly see the seams between the tiles and the repetitive look of the material:


We'll fix that source image in Photoshop and recreate the material later.

1. First , I opened the source image (birdseyemaple) in Photoshop. I clicked on Image->Image Size, and noted what the image size was, in this case - it is 360×270 (we'll need that in the next step).

2. I then clicked on Filters->Others->Offset :


Which opens a window with several options. Here, I entered HALF the HEIGHT, and HALF the WIDTH of the image in the offset values , I marked Warp Around (if you have preview selected you can already see the effect on the image - see how all the seams are centered on the image) :



This basically shifts the edges of the image to the center , and the center of the image to the edges - now we know that the original center of the image has no seams - so the new edges will tile nicely, all we have to do is clean the seams in the new center of the image and we're good to go.

Note: I entered HALF the HEIGHT and HALF the WIDTH of the image- but the exact number is not crucial - the important thing here is the shift the seamed edges away from the edges toward the center of the image where we can see them, and clean them.

3. Next, Select the History Brush Tool (Hotkey Y), this brush is unique - instead of a specific 'color' it paints with the original part of the image. :



4. Use the History Brush to paint over the seams. do not paint straight lines, try to fade off those seams in an artistic way (waves, blotches..) - after all we're woodworkers, we should be able to be a bit creative right? :



5. Save the modified image. Back in sketchup create a new texture with the new image as the source. you can see that the seams are no longer visible, and you get a material that tiles nicely and cleanly. you can still see the repetitions since this particular material has a very distinctive grain pattern and shades of colors, but the seams are gone:



Go Experiment!
 
#31 ·
Dimensioning Lumber - Virtually

OK, I just updated my Dovetails plugin video, and had it relinked on my other post. since I don't want this post to be a plug for my plugin (dope) I'm not going to link to it here, if you are so inclined, I'm sure you can find it.

now that we have that out of the day, the following is the updated video, which although focuses on the simplicity and efficiency of the dovetails plugin, also carries with it some other neat capabilities of SketchUp which I use all the time - Precise Dimensioning of parts, without bothering to hold the cursor perfectly steady.

In order to create precise parts in Sketchup, I use the keyboard to type the dimensions directly, and don't try to position the cursor exactly where those dimensions are supposed to be. in the following video, there are 3 different dimensioning that are being demonstrated:

1. Basic Dimensioning: After a rectangle tool is selected, and the first point is clicked (although there are several variations to this, a rectangle is generally created in SU by clicking a corner point, and then positioning the cursor at the opposite point and clicking a 2nd time) the dimensions can then be entered by typing the width, and length of the rectangle separated by a comma, then click ENTER to create the rectangle.

2. PushPull Dimensioning: after the pushpull tool is selected and a face is clicked to be pushed, the amount of the push can be simply typed, click ENTER to make the push operation

3. Relational Dimensioning: To match a rectangle size to another shape in the model (either width,or length) click the first point of the rectangle, then position the cursor at the point to which you want to reference your width or height to, and type in the remaining dimension (if you want to match height, type the width, and vice versa). this technique is different from Basic dimensioning in that you leave the dimension you want to reference to empty, so instead of typing both dimension like this: 6",4" you leave one empty like this: ,4" this will make a rectangle 4" in width, and the length will be assigned based on the cursors position.

another tidbit in the video is the use of components, and mirrored components which keep the left side of a component on the left side, the right on the right, the inside on the inside, and the outside on the outside, but still allow for the use of components and all the efficiency that they enable.

Enjoy:

 
#43 ·
Compound Angle Cuts

I just posted this as a comment/response on another thread but figured this might be something that others could find useful. so here goes.

This short tutorial shows one way to create a compound angle cut on an edge of a 2×4. this can translate to any other situation where a compound angle is needed:

I started with a 2×4, used the protractor tool, and made a guideline from one corner at a 10 degree angle:


I then selected the opposite EDGE of the 'board' and using the MOVE tool, moved it down (select move tool, click on the edge, then press on the UP arrow key on the keyboard to lock the move to only the up-down (blue axis) direction) to the guideline:


I then created the compound angle on the other face of the 2×4, at 10 degrees:


And selected the adjacent EDGE to the one I moved earlier, and MOVED this new EDGE down to the NEW guideline:


All done!
Since this is a component, you can see the original 2×4 bounding box with the newly created compound 'cut' end:
 
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