In this video, we go through the top tips and skills that you should have for modeling in SketchUp in 2018. You should probably watch this video before you start modeling in SketchUp – it could save you a lot of time!!!!
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Top tips for Modeling in SketchUp in 2018
1. Use a 3 Button Mouse
The easiest way to speed up navigation in your model is still to use a 3 Button mouse. A 3 button mouse allows you to move around your model more quickly by scrolling your mouse wheel to zoom in and out, clicking and holding your center mouse button down to orbit, and holding the shift and center mouse button to pan.
2. Use Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts allow you to activate various tools in SketchUp without having to hunt down icons in your menus to activate tools. This can result in a significant time savings.
3. Groups
One of the most important things you can do when modeling something in SketchUp is to use groups and components. One of the most important features from groups is that they keep things in your models from merging. In addition, you can use them to organize your models (more on this later).
4. Components
While groups can be important for keeping geometry from merging, components are more useful basically any time you have an object that’s going to repeat in your models. This is because when you make a copy of a component, every change you make to one copy of an object occurs to every other instance of the object in a model at the same time.
5. Organize Your Models Using the Outliner
Once you’ve started using groups and components in your models, you can use the outliner tab to keep your models organized. You can name and organize both groups and components, as well as grouping and nesting objects to keep them organized.
6. Inference Locking with Arrow Keys
One of the biggest problems you can have, especially as a beginner, can be creating off-axis geometry. This can lead to tons of problems – faces not closing, etc. You can press the up, down, left, or right arrows to lock to the various axes.
7. Copy with Move Tool
However, one of the biggest shortcuts you can use is to create copies using the move tool by tapping the control key. This will activate copy mode, and then you can create a copy of an object either by clicking or by typing in a distance and moving your cursor in a direction. One of the bonuses of this is the ability to create arrays, or multiple copies with the same tools.
8. Soften/Smooth Slider
As you start working with more advanced tools, like Flowify or Curviloft, you’ll often end up creating geometry with a lot of unhidden geometry. You can use the soften/smooth slider to hide and smooth geometry in your model to smooth it back out.
9. Use 3D Warehouse models
The 3D warehouse has thousands of models that you can download for free into your model. When populating the background models, spend your time working on your model, not background models.
10. Save Camera Views with Scenes
Rather than trying to navigate back to the perfect camera view each time, simply save your camera view by going to up to “View,” “Animation,” “Add Scene.” This will store your scene for future use. You can access this view by clicking on the tab at the top of the screen.
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