SketchUp Tutorial for Beginners – Part 1 – Basic Functions
This video will introduce new users to Sketchup to the basics of modeling.
We’ll start off with a quick orientation to your workspace.
The menu bar contains links to just about everything, from opening and saving models, to drawing and camera tools. You can manage most everything from the menu bar.
Your toolbars contain quick links to most of your drawing tools, as well as any extensions you have loaded. Extensions are add-ons you install in SketchUp to expand its functionality.
The tray contains different sections for adjusting the way your model looks, as well as some sections that contain some information about your objects.
The status bar contains instructions for using the currently active tool, as well as the measurements box, which will tell you things like lengths and other information about that tool.
Finally, the workspace is where you actually draw your models.
We’re going to start off by noting that SketchUp is a face modeler, meaning that SketchUp draws a face any time you have 3 or more intersecting co-planar lines.
All of your tools in SketchUp allow different inputs.
For example, if you activate the line tool, you can see how there is an instruction in the status bar telling you to select your start point. Once you select your start point (the point where you want to start your line), you can pick a second point to draw a line between those two points. You can do this either by clicking a second time, or by moving your mouse in the direction you’d like your line to go and typing a length, then hitting the enter key.
Some tools in SketchUp draw full faces at once. For example, if you select the rectangle tool, you can click once to set your first point, then click again to set a second, and SketchUp will draw the perimeter of a shape and fill it in. You can see how in the corner in this tool, it has 2 inputs – length and width. To create a precise rectangle, you’d simply type in one length, then a comma, then the other length.
Now let’s look at extruding our object.
There’s a tool called the push/pull tool that will extrude a flat object to 3D quickly.
Simply activate the tool, click once on a face, then click again to extrude it to 3D. You can see how this creates a 3D box very quickly.
You can also use the push pull tool to cut holes and remove material. For example, if I draw a circle on this face, then push pull it, you can see how it cuts a circular hole through the box.
In the same way, if I draw an arc along the edge of this box, I can push pull the resulting face to remove material from my box.
It’s worth noting that this won’t work on curved faces. Here’s why.
If you go up to the view window, and check the box for hidden geometry, you can see that curved faces aren’t actually curved in SketchUp – instead, they’re made up of a series of segmented flat faces – this means that when you try to extrude a curved face, you’re actually trying to extrude multiple flat faces at once, which SketchUp won’t do (unless you download an extension).
That’s where we’re going to wrap up part one. In the next video, we’re going to talk about using these tools to model your first house.
About Justin Geis
Hi, I'm Justin Geis, and I'm the founder of The SketchUp Essentials. I started using SketchUp as part of my work as a general contractor in 2008. I quickly realized the power of the software and started using it for personal projects. I started The SketchUp Essentials as a place to share easy to follow SketchUp tutorials and tips to help everyone harness the power of 3D Modeling in their lives. When not working with SketchUp, I enjoy playing soccer and spending time with my wife and our two dogs.
