Creating an Exploded Model View in SketchUp – SketchUp Tutorial
In this SketchUp woodworking tutorial video, I’m going to talk about how to create an exploded view of your model in SketchUp.
If you ever look online at websites like Popular woodworking, they often contain exploded views of woodworking projects to give a better idea of what the inner workings of projects look like.
Unfortunately, SketchUp doesn’t at this point contain the functionality to do something like this automatically, but you can do it manually.
Creating and Setting Up a Copy
To start off, we’re going to create a copy of our model. This is because the only way to do this is “destructively,” meaning that you’re going to have to move the parts and pieces around, and obviously you still want to keep a final version of your model for actual use later.
Remember that this only works to the level of detail that you model to.
What we’re going to do is create a copy of the object that we want to explode. You can do this by selecting your object and using the move tool in copy mode.
Put the exploded view model on its own layer
What I’m going to do is create two different layers – one for my exploded view and one for my unexploded model.
This way, I can toggle my different views on and off.
Creating your exploded view with the move tool
Now, what you’re going to do is start selecting objects and moving them out from your model. It’s always a good idea to just move them along one of your axes, so maybe make use of the arrow keys to lock your movement along an axis. Now the tricky part about this is that if you start selecting an object that’s a component, you may accidentally change your base model, so keep an eye on your base model to make sure nothing moves around.
Finalizing Views and Visibilities
Once you’ve gotten everything moved where you want it, there’s a couple of things you can do. First, if you want to, you can toggle perspective mode off. This gives more model more of a technical drawing feel (though this is a total personal preference thing).
The second thing you can do if you want to is add some guides to indicate where your exploded parts and pieces go.
Finally, if you want to, you can create a pair of scenes for easy toggling between unexploded and exploded views.
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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.
