Design Software Articles

Article / Updated 08-14-2023

The days of sending drawings are largely gone and, just as AutoCAD provides new tools for modern design, the web gives you options for sharing your drawings. Now remember, the web is changing so quickly that it’s almost impossible to spell out exactly how everything works and what’s best for you when it comes to sharing your AutoCAD files. The following features are ones that are widely used to transfer AutoCAD files to and fro. This is known as the CYA (Cover Your bAckside) paragraph. Here, you will find certain Internet features as they are known to exist at the time this content was created, but things are subject to change without notice. There is no warranty, expressed or implied, that everything will be the same when you try to use it. For example, one function changed names four times in six years. Sending AutoCAD files via email Email and the cloud have largely replaced blueline prints and overnight delivery as the standard means of exchanging drawings. Snail mail is dead for envelopes but is otherwise rapidly growing because of online shopping. Sending and receiving AutoCAD drawing files doesn’t differ much from sending and receiving other kinds of files, except that DWG files tend to be bigger than word processing documents and spreadsheets. Consequently, you may need to invest in a faster Internet connection, and you can easily run up against email attachment size limits. You can easily forget to include all dependent files. An AutoCAD file may not be an island unto itself, but it can also require other files to go with it. It’s often not completely obvious how to plot what you receive. Solving plotting puzzles is a frequent punchline among seasoned AutoCAD users. Whenever you send DWG files, ask the recipients to open the drawings you’ve sent as soon as they receive them so that you both have more time to respond if there’s a problem. Prepare it with AutoCAD’s eTransmit Many people naively assume that an AutoCAD drawing is always contained in a single DWG file, but that’s often not the case. Each drawing file created in AutoCAD can contain references to more than a dozen other kinds of files, the most important of which are described in the following table. Thus, before you start exchanging drawings via the Internet, you need to assemble the drawings with all their dependent files. Kinds of Files That DWG Files Commonly Reference Description File Types Consequence If Missing Custom font files SHX, TTF AutoCAD substitutes another font Other drawings (xrefs) DWG, DGN, DWF, DWFx, PDF Stuff in the main drawing disappears Raster graphics files JPG, PCX, TIFF, and others Stuff in the drawing disappears Plot style tables CTB, STB Lineweights and other plotted effects don’t look right when the drawing is plotted The table above doesn’t exhaust the types of files that your DWG files might refer to. Custom plotter settings (such as custom paper sizes) may reside in PC3 or PMP files. If you use sheet sets, DST files contain information about the sheet structure. An FMP file controls some aspects of font mapping. Look up sheet sets and the FONTALT and FONTMAP system variables in the AutoCAD online help system for detailed information. Using AutoCAD’s rapid eTransmit Fortunately, AutoCAD’s ETRANSMIT command pulls together all files that the main DWG file depends on. Follow these steps to assemble a drawing with all its dependent files by using ETRANSMIT: Open the drawing on which you want to run ETRANSMIT. If the drawing is already open, save it. You have to save the file just before using ETRANSMIT. Click the Application button and choose Publish→eTransmit from the Application menu. The Create Transmittal dialog box appears. On the Files Tree tab or the Files Table tab, remove the check mark next to any file that you want ETRANSMIT not to copy with the main drawing. Unless you have assigned custom font mapping, you can omit the Acad.fmp file (in AutoCAD) or acadlt.fmp (in AutoCAD LT). Select a transmittal setup from the list. Transmittal setups contain settings that control how ETRANSMIT processes the drawings and creates the transmittal package. Click the Transmittal Setups button to create new setups or modify existing setups. The default Standard transmittal setup works fine for most purposes. In any case, you should view the settings (click the Modify button) just to see what options you can change if you need to later. If you want AutoCAD to include SHX and TTF font files, including any custom fonts that you’re using, you must turn on the Include Fonts setting in the transmittal setup. However, many custom fonts work like licensed software. Sending them to others is just like sharing your AutoCAD program installation media with others: illegal and unethical. Don’t share licensed text fonts outside your organization. Click the View Report button. You see a report listing the files that ETRANSMIT will copy, along with warnings about any files that it can’t locate. Review the report and make sure that ETRANSMIT was able to find all the files. If files are missing, find them and move or copy them to the location where ETRANSMIT expects to find them. Click OK. Specify the name and location of the transmittal package. Click Save. ETRANSMIT creates the transmittal package (which is a ZIP file by default). Zipping creates a single, tidy, compact package of all your DWG, DGN, DWF, PDF, raster image, plot style table, and font files — all ready to be emailed. FTP for you and me: Sharing your AutoCAD files File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a system for sharing files over the Internet. A computer that’s connected to the Internet can act as an FTP server, which means that part of its hard drive is accessible over the Internet. The person who configures the FTP server can place restrictions so that only people who enter a particular logon name and password can see and download files. FTP overcomes the file size limitations that often occur with email. Because of all these FTP benefits, people at larger companies commonly place drawing files on their company’s FTP sites and tell you to get the files. This approach relieves them of having to email you the files, and it relieves you of having to wait for that 19.9MB email download when you least expected it. The person making the files available to you via FTP usually sends you a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that looks like a web page address, except that it starts with ftp:// instead of http://. Simply enter the FTP URL into the address field of your web browser and follow any instructions regarding the login name, password, filename that may appear. Increasing cloudiness: Using cloud services to swap AutoCAD files The trend these days is away from private FTP sites due to the proliferation of free or inexpensive services such as Google Drive and Dropbox. These services work on pretty much the same principle. You upload a file or files and assign access rights. The intended recipient or recipients then receive an invitation email that grants access to the specified file or files. Okay, here’s a change already. Until recently, A360 was called Autodesk 360. Subject to change … … Oops, it changed again. Bad reception? If you are on the receiving end of incoming drawings, as soon as you receive them (zipped, hopefully), copy the file to a new folder on your hard drive or a network disk and then unzip the files. Check at least a few drawings in the package to make sure that all the xrefs and other reference files, fonts, and raster image files are included. Open each main drawing in the folder, press F2 to view the AutoCAD text window, and look for missing font and xref error messages, like this example: Substituting [simplex.shx] for [helv.shx]. Resolve Xref “GRID”: C:\Here\There\Nowhere\grid.dwg Can’t find C:\Here\There\Nowhere\grid.dwg Write down each missing file and then tell the sender to get on the ball (in a nice way, of course) and send you the missing pieces. If you receive drawings with custom TrueType font files (files whose extensions are TTF), you must install those files in Windows\Fonts folder (not in one of AutoCAD’s support folders) before Windows and AutoCAD will recognize them. All you need to do is to right-click the TTF file name, and then choose Install. If you move project folders around or transfer drawings to or from somewhere else, AutoCAD may not be able to locate any raster image files and DWF/DWFx, DGN, PDF underlays and font files. The ETRANSMIT command does a good job of gathering dependent reference files, raster files, and font files, but it can’t gather what AutoCAD can’t locate. The AutoCAD Reference Manager utility (not included with AutoCAD LT) is a real lifesaver if you’re suffering from file-path perils, whether they occur in your own company or when sending files to, or receiving them from, others. Reference Manager is a separate program, not a command inside AutoCAD. Follow these steps to launch the utility from the Windows desktop: Start Reference Manager. The process depends on your version of Windows and how you have set it up. The bottom line is that Reference Manager is a separate program, so it must be started accordingly. The Reference Manager program opens. Click the Add Drawings button to add one or more DWG files to the Drawings pane on the left. Navigate to the folder that contains the drawings you want to send, select them, and then click Open. In the Reference Manager – Add Xrefs dialog box, choose Add All Xrefs Automatically Regardless of Nesting Level. The Reference Manager processes the drawings and displays all referenced objects in its right pane. Click Export Report to create a text report listing all dependent files and their paths, or click Edit Selected Paths to modify the paths of selected reference files. If you choose to modify any selected paths, click Apply Changes. When you’re finished exporting reports and repathing reference files (or finding reference files that you may never have suspected you had if you hadn’t run the Reference Manager), close the Reference Manager window. Click the Help button in the Reference Manager to find out more about the utility’s capabilities. If you always store parent and child DWG files in the same folder, which is the simplest approach to dealing with xref paths, you probably don’t need to use the Reference Manager. AutoCAD can also save files in the ubiquitous PDF (Portable Document Format) from Adobe Systems. Files can be opened, viewed, and printed from virtually any type and model of computing or communicating device. This format can be particularly useful when you want to show drawing information to people who aren’t particularly CAD literate (that is, they aren’t fellow geeks).

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-04-2023

Building information modeling (BIM) is the beginning of a major shift in the way the built environment is designed, constructed, and operated, and you can be part of that revolution without needing to pay someone to do it for you. With some key changes to the way you work, you can walk the BIM walk as well as talking the BIM talk. This Cheat Sheet helps you set some fundamental goals for your BIM journey so you can get a hold of the information to start and to make progress with BIM implementation. BIM has many acronyms and it may feel as if BIM has a language of its own. After you know what they mean, you can be speak “BIM-ese” in no time!

Article / Updated 08-10-2022

The bad news is that every new SketchUp user encounters certain problems, usually in the first couple hours of using the software. You can call these problems growing pains. The good news is that, because these SketchUp problems are common, you can anticipate a lot of the bad stuff you’ll go through. This article offers you SketchUp tips and tricks to help you work around those issues. SketchUp won’t create a face where you want it to You’ve dutifully traced all around where you want SketchUp to create a face, but nothing’s happening. If you follow along in the image below, which was inspired by a visit to the M.C. Escher museum in Amsterdam, you see the top-left image seems to show a cube beside a rectangle, but the rectangle didn’t produce a face. In the top-right image, a diagonal line was drawn between diagonally opposite corners of the rectangle, producing two triangular faces, but something still doesn’t look right. Changing the camera position to standard front (lower-left image) and right side (lower-right image) reveals the source of the problem. It turns out that the upper-right corner of the rectangle doesn’t lie on the red-blue plane but is actually to the right of the blue-green plane, and to the right of the blue-red plane. The upper-left image isn’t really an optical illusion; it just looks like one. Ninety percent of the time, when SketchUp doesn’t create a face where you think it should, an edge isn’t on the plane you think it’s on. To check whether your edges are coplanar, draw an edge that cuts diagonally across the area where you want a face to appear. If a face appears now, your edges aren’t all on the same plane. To fix the problem, you have to figure out which edge is the culprit, and the Color By Axis option may help you see this information at a glance. Here’s how Color By Axis works: In the Styles panel, change your edge color from All Same to By Axis.SketchUp draws the edges in your model using the color of the axis to which they’re parallel; edges parallel to the red axis are red, and so on. Look carefully at the edges that you wanted to define your desired face.Are all the edges the color they’re supposed to be? If they’re not all supposed to be parallel to the drawing axes, this technique doesn’t do much good. But if they are, and one (or more) of them is black (instead of red or green or blue), that edge (or those edges) is your problem child. Fix it and switch back to All Same when you’re done. If the plane isn’t the problem with your edges, then check whether one edge is part of a separate group or component. To check whether you have a component problem, try hiding groups or components and checking the edges to make sure that they’re all in the group or component you think they’re in. A common source of this problem is SketchUp’s inferences. As you slide the mouse over a face you may unwittingly be latching on to an unintended inference, such as the edge of a surface that is part of a cylinder. Watch those inference prompts, and use Undo when you complete a face but no face appears. Your SketchUp faces are two different colors In SketchUp, faces have two sides: a front and a back. By default, these two sides are different colors. When you use certain tools, such as Push/Pull or Follow Me, on a face, sometimes the faces on the resulting geometry are “inside out.” For some people, the issue is just bothersome. If you want to 3D-print your model, you need to fix the issue so that your model will print correctly. To fix this issue, right-click the faces you want to flip and choose Reverse Faces from the context menu. If you have lots of faces to flip, you can select them all and then choose Reverse Faces to flip them all at once. In 3D printing, this process is called checking your model’s normals. The plan for the structure you see below was for all the outside walls to be wood siding and the interior walls to be painted yellow. But the top two images show that somehow the left wall got reversed. The bottom two images show that the problem has been solved by selecting the yellow face and reversing it. Edges on a face won’t sink in Edges on a face tend not to sink in when you’re trying to draw a rectangle (or another geometric figure) on a face with one of SketchUp’s shape-drawing tools. Ordinarily, the Rectangle tool creates a new face on top of any face you use it on; after that, you can use Push/Pull to create a hole, if you want. When the edges you just drew don’t seem to cut through the face you drew them on, try these approaches: Retrace one of the edges. Sometimes that works — you’d be surprised how often. Select Hidden Geometry from the View menu. You’re checking to make sure that the face you just drew isn’t crossing any hidden or smoothed edges; if it is, the face you thought was flat may not be. Make sure that the face you drew on isn’t part of a group or component. If it is, undo a few steps and then redraw your shape while you edit the group or component. Select the face + edges, right-click, and choose Intersect Faces→With Selection. This approach is often needed when you are working with one or more curved surfaces. SketchUp crashed, and you lost your model Unfortunately, SketchUp crashes happen sometimes. The good news is that SketchUp automatically saves a copy of your file every five minutes. In the web version, these autosaves are captured in Trimble Connect as revisions. You can always view the revision history for a file by navigating to it in the Trimble Connect tab (by clicking Open in the menu at the top of the screen to access Trimble Connect). For any file, you can choose to view or restore an older version. In desktop versions, the file that SketchUp autosaves is actually a separate file, AutoSave_yourfilename.skp. If your file ever gets corrupted in a crash, an intact file is ready for you. The problem is that most people don’t even know that the autosaved file is there. Where do you find it? If you’ve ever saved your file, the autosaved file is in the same folder as the original; therefore, it’s very important that you save your file almost immediately after starting it. Simple, right? Not so fast. On a Mac, you may need to change your Library folder from hidden to visible. In the Finder app, hold down the Option key while you choose Go→Library. If you don’t hold down the Option key, Library may not appear on the menu. When you close your model, SketchUp typically assumes nothing untoward has happened and usually cleans up after itself by deleting the autosaved file. The really good news is that every time you save a file, SketchUp proactively saves two identical files, one with the normal file extension .SKP and the other with the file extension .SKB. You continue working on the .SKP file. If something goes really wrong with your model, you can always go back to how it was an instant before the last time you saved it. But you can’t find it in the Open File dialog box. Here’s the secret: In the Open File dialog box, go to the end of the File Name window, click the down arrow beside Sketchup Models (.SKP), and click All Files. Now the .SKB files show, and you can open them. (web: The same basic principles apply, but read more details on SketchUp's website.) To minimize the amount of work you lose when software (or hardware) goes south, always do two things: Save often — compulsively, even. Use the Save a Copy As command on the File menu. When you’re working on a big project, the following steps can help ensure you don’t lose any work: Save the original version of your file as yourfilename_Master.skp.That’s the file you’ll always be working on. Create a folder that lives in the same place as your Master file; call the folder something like Your file’s name Archive. Every half-hour or so, choose File→Save a Copy As, and save a sequentially numbered version of your file to the Archive folder.When you’re building a big model, it’s not uncommon for your Archive folder to contain 40 or 50 saved versions of the model dating back to when the project first started. Back up regularly.At least at the end of every work session, such as when you head to a coffee or lunch break, back up your files to a low-cost, high-capacity, high-speed portable USB drive, then remove it and keep it separate from your computer. At the end of your shift, take it to a different location. You don’t need to keep it in a bank vault, just in a separate building. Take it home at night, for example. You can always buy new hardware and software, but you can’t buy your personal files. SketchUp is sooooo slooooooooow The bigger your SketchUp model, the worse your computer’s performance. What makes a model big? In a nutshell, faces. Do everything in your power to keep your model as small as you can. Here are some tips for doing that: Reduce the number of sides on your extruded circles and arcs. Use 2D people and trees instead of 3D ones. 3D plants and people have hundreds of faces each. Consider using 2D ones instead, especially if your model won’t be seen much from overhead. Use search filters in 3D Warehouse. When you’re searching for models in 3D Warehouse, you can restrict your search result to show only models of a certain file size or polygon (face) complexity. Especially if your model is more than 10 MB, it makes sense to keep your 3D Warehouse downloads small! Some models are just big, and you can’t do much about it. Here are some tricks for working with very large SketchUp models: Make liberal use of the Outliner and tags. These SketchUp features were specifically designed to let you organize your model into manageable chunks. Hide everything you’re not working on at the moment; doing so gives your computer a fighting chance. Substitute simple forms for large numbers of complex components. For example, insert sticks as placeholders for big sets of 3D trees, cars, and other big components. Turn off shadows and switch to a simple style, such as Shaded in the Default Styles collection. It takes a lot of computer horsepower to display shadows, edge effects, and textures in real time on your monitor. When you’re working, turn off all that stuff. Use scenes to navigate between views. Scenes aren’t just for presenting your model; they’re also great for working with it. If you create scenes for the different views you commonly use and with different combinations of hidden geometry, then you don’t have to orbit, pan, and zoom around your gigantic model. To speed up things even more, deselect Enable Scene Transitions in the Animation panel of the Model Info dialog box. (web: Animation settings are in the Scenes panel.) You can’t get a good view of the inside of your SketchUp model It’s not always easy to work on the inside of something in SketchUp. You can do these things to make it easier, though: Cut into your model with section SketchUp’s Sections feature lets you cut away parts of your model — temporarily, of course — so that you can get a better view of what’s inside. Widen your field of view. Field of view is the part of your model you can see onscreen at one time. A wider FOV is like having better peripheral vision. You can change the field of view only when in Perspective view mode, but the setting will be remembered if you then switch to Parallel view mode. The image below shows the plan view of a room. If you zoom or walk in through the door — oops, tunnel vision. Increase peripheral vision by changing your field of view. Ah, that’s better! Now you can see that the picture hanging on the wall is the floor plan of this room. A face flashes when you orbit in SketchUp If you have two faces in the same spot — maybe one is in a separate group or component — you see a Z-fighting effect. SketchUp is deciding which face to display by switching back and forth between them; it’s not a good solution, but certainly a logical one — at least for a piece of software. The image below attempts to portray this effect in a single image. The only way to get rid of Z-fighting is to delete or hide one of the faces. You can’t move your SketchUp component the way you want When you insert some components into your model, the components by default glue to faces. A glued component instance isn’t actually glued in one place. Instead, it’s glued to the plane of the face you originally placed (or created) it on. For example, if you place a sofa component on the floor of your living room, you can move it around only on that plane — not up and down. This gluing behavior comes in handy when you deal with things like furniture; it allows you to rearrange things with the Move tool without accidentally picking them up. If you can’t move your component the way you want to, right-click it to see whether Unglue is an option; if it is, choose it. Now you can move your component around however you want. Bad stuff happens almost every time you use SketchUp’s Eraser When you use the Eraser tool, it’s pretty easy to delete stuff accidentally. Worse, you usually don’t notice what’s missing until it’s too late. Here are some tips for erasing more accurately: Orbit around. Try to make sure that nothing is behind whatever you’re erasing; use SketchUp’s navigation tools to get a view of your model that puts you out of danger. Switch on Back Edges. When you’re doing a lot of erasing, choose View→Edge Style→Back Edges. That way, you can see every edge in your model, and you’re less likely to erase the wrong ones. Use the Undo modifier of the eraser. Follow along starting in the upper-left image you see below. The intent is to erase the four edges in the center to create a single face. While erasing, you can select multiple objects by holding down the left mouse button while dragging the eraser over them. Oh, great googly moogly (or words to that effect) — you selected some things you didn’t want to erase. No problem: Don’t release the mouse button, but press and hold down the keyboard Alt key (Mac: ⌘). Now anything you drag the eraser over will be unselected. You can switch back and forth as desired, but nothing actually gets erased until you release the mouse button. Double-check. After you do a lot of erasing, give your model a quick once-over with the Orbit tool, just to make sure that you didn’t get rid of anything important. Put a sticky note on your computer monitor that says something like Check after Erase! just to remind you. All your edges and faces have different tags Using Tags in SketchUp can be a dangerous business. Here’s the short version of some good advice: Always build everything on Untagged, and assign whole groups or components to other tags only if you really need to. If you used tags in SketchUp and now things are messed up, here’s what you can do to recover: Make sure that everything is visible.Select Hidden Geometry on the View menu; then (in the Tags panel) make all your tags visible. Just make sure that you can see everything in your model. Choose Edit→Select All. In the Entity Info panel, move everything to Layer0. In the Tags panel, delete your other tags. When you’re prompted, tell SketchUp to move anything remaining on them to Untagged. Create new tags and follow best practices to avoid problems. If you’ve downloaded 3D Warehouse models, you’ll probably find that they have some tags that you don’t understand and might want to get rid of. They may have had significance to the original creator, but they can become clutter in your file, so they should be removed. Want to learn more? Check out our SketchUp Cheat Sheet.

Article / Updated 08-10-2022

Need to take a brief 10-minute SketchUp tour: a rundown of the layout, tools, and utilities you’ll interact with on a regular basis? Check out this brief walkthrough to see what you can expect from SketchUp and SketchUp for Web. Modeling window: See the big area in the middle of your computer screen? That’s your modeling window. You build your model here, and your modeling window always shows a 3D view of your model, even if you’re looking at it from the top or side. Key features of the modeling window are the model axes: three green, red, and blue lines that help define the directional space of your model. Menu bar (Desktop only): If you’ve used a computer in the past 30 years, the menu bar is nothing new. Each menu contains a long list of options, commands, tools, settings, and other goodies that pertain to just about everything you do in SketchUp. You should generally refrain from using the menu bar to find things, because that requires that you remember the name of a tool, the menu it lives on, and where on the menu it is. Menu (web only): In SketchUp for Web, you will be using the menu a lot less to find tools but just as much to open files, save copies using Save As, and change settings. Search (web only): A recent addition to the SketchUp interface is this quick way to find and activate tools and look up shortcuts. If you’re using the web version (it’s not available in SketchUp Pro yet), you’ll find this really handy when you start learning tools and utility settings that you don’t use that often or have a hard time remembering. Toolbar: Click a toolbar button to activate a tool or command. You’ll start to use tool icons naturally while using SketchUp. In desktop versions, you can customize your SketchUp toolbar setup to show tools you use most often, or to not show those tools whose shortcuts you’ve remembered. In the web version, similar tools are nested together in the toolbar. So when you click the Rectangle tool icon, you’ll switch to the Rectangle tool but also see the other shape-drawing tools available to you. Similarly, the Tape Measure tool contains other tools for measuring and labeling things. Large toolset (desktop only): Usually, it’s better to turn off the Large Toolset and attempt to use core commands by shortcuts. But if you prefer a visual reference for tool icons, you may prefer leaving the Large Toolset on to have all the tools handy all the time. You can can control its visibility by choosing View→Toolbars (Mac: View→Tool Palettes). Status bar: Consider this your SketchUp dashboard. The status bar provides helpful information about the SketchUp tool you are currently using. It’s important to check the status bar for reminders about modifier keys: keystrokes that you use in combination with certain tools to perform additional functions. Soon enough, you’ll know how to copy by using the Move tool with a modifier key. You’ll definitely forget this key, and when you do, the place to look is the status bar. The status bar also relays step-by-step instructions for the tool’s operation, but you may be better off using the Instructor. Utility panels desktop only): Before long you’ll start to interact with utilities — things like colors and display settings — that are generally organized on the right side of your SketchUp window. In desktop versions, you control which utility settings are visible via the Window menu. In more recent PC versions of SketchUp Pro, you can manage the default tray of utilities: Choose Window→Manage Trays, and use the Manage Trays dialog box to reconfigure what you do (or don’t) see here. On a Mac, utilities look like dialogs except that they’re neatly collapsible, and you can stack them aside in tidy trays when you are not using them. Utility panels (web only): In the web version, all utility panels — for stuff like saving model views or libraries of model textures — are organized on the right side of the screen, accessible by their icons. Opening a utility panel slides open a larger interface where you can access one or multiple panels. Use the X next to a panel name to close it, or use the arrow icon at the top right of the panel to hide the utilities you are currently using. Measurements box: You use this box all the time as you model in SketchUp, but you’ll never need to touch it. Depending on what you’re doing, this box displays information about what you’re modeling or enables you to specify a precise length, angle, or other measurement while modeling. Context (right-click) menus: Whenever you have something selected in SketchUp, you can right-click your selection to reveal a shortcut menu of commands and options. These are always relevant to whatever you right-clicked, so the contents of each menu are different. If you decided to proceed without a mouse, you can still right-click a trackpad, usually by using two separated fingers. Want to learn more? Check out our SketchUp Cheat Sheet.

Article / Updated 08-10-2022

In some cases, you may want your prints to reflect the scale of your SketchUp design. In SketchUp for Web, scaled printing is available with a paid subscription (or as part of SketchUp for Schools). Here’s how printing to scale works in SketchUp for Web: Before entering the print preview, create orthographic views of your model and save them as a SketchUp scene.Scale is a notion that cannot be applied to model views in SketchUp’s perspective camera mode. To create an orthographic view, use the Search tool and type Ortho to activate the Parallel Projection camera mode. Then use view commands (and search queries) like Front, Top, or Align View to orient your camera as desired. When you have the orthographic view you want, create a new scene. Using Search, type Print to activate the print preview canvas. Click the Print Mode drop-down menu to the right of the canvas, select Scenes, and then choose the orthographic scene you just made. Click the Print Mode drop-down menu again, and choose Print to Scale.Notice that the view of your SketchUp model changes slightly. When you switch into this scaled printing mode, SketchUp resizes your model slightly and derives an arbitrary scale just below your list of scenes (see below). Set your desired drawing scale, and choose whether to display that scale on your printed page.You can assign any scale you want, but you probably want to pick one that will aptly display your SketchUp model view on the page you’re printing. You can type any units you like in the In Drawing and In Model fields, but the scale displayed in the canvas respects the unit settings in your model. You can change these in the Model Info panel, near the bottom of the utility tray on the right. Last, you can click the Print Scale check box to display the scale of your drawing on the printed page. Want to learn more? Check out our SketchUp Cheat Sheet.

Article / Updated 08-04-2022

As you set off on your modeling adventure, you’re can be prepared with ten SketchUp quick wins — techniques or extended workflows that upgrade the 3D superpowers you’ve been reading about in this book. You’ll find that these SketchUp tips and tricks are pretty quick to pick up. Moreover, many of these techniques are designed to speed the core mechanics of your 3D modeling. In fact, quick wins like these are available in every project you’ll do in SketchUp — hidden gems you’ll discover when you think “There’s got to be a quicker way to do this.” When you’re struggling, step back and realize that there is indeed a smarter way. Set your click style in SketchUp to click-move-click It’s tough to say out loud, but it’s possible that you’ve gotten pretty far in your SketchUp career while click-dragging your mouse for many SketchUp operations. If for some reason you just haven’t picked up the technique that lets you move your mouse freely between the beginning and end of most operations, you can force yourself to learn On the Window menu, choose Preferences (Mac: the SketchUp menu; web: app settings). In the Drawing section of the resulting dialog box, change from Auto Detect to Click-Move-Click. Click-move-click is what SketchUp calls click-release, click. But you don’t even have to think about what it’s called, because after you change that preference, it’ll be the only way SketchUp works. Customize your SketchUp shortcuts When you know the default SketchUp shortcuts, you should customize and use another dozen helpful shortcuts. You can choose your own shortcuts, of course; our suggestions are based on personal preferences and thumb wars. In desktop versions of SketchUp, you create or edit shortcut customizations by choosing Window→Preferences (Mac: SketchUp→Preferences). To assign shortcuts, look up the name of the command you want to customize and then click the input field to type a custom shortcut key. In SketchUp for web, use Search to look up the commands. When you mouse over a command name, you see a little empty rectangle to the right of its description. Click that rectangle to assign or reassign a shortcut. Here are ten SketchUp shortcuts to customize right now: X-ray (X): The X-ray face style toggles the transparency of faces in a model. This shortcut is super-handy if you’re designing pieces that fit together and working with solid tools. X-ray is also great when you’re making complex selections; it helps you understand whether you’ve selected more than you want. If you use the shortcut, you can toggle X-ray on demand. Hide Rest of Model (Shift+M): As your model becomes complex, you’ll want to get a better view of the groups and components that you need to edit. This display command turns off everything outside the context of a group and component so that you can orbit around and see what you need to see. SketchUp also operates considerably faster when you hide the rest of the model while editing a piece of it. Color by Axis (Shift+X): It’s possible that you might slip an inference with the Line tool and create a mysterious missing face. This mistake happens often enough that it’s handy to have the Color by Axis style toggle at your fingertips to identify edges that have strayed off course. Like the X-ray shortcut, it a helps you spot important details. View Hidden Geometry (Shift+H): Whether you hide edges and faces yourself, SketchUp hides them all the time. Whenever you extrude arcs or circles, SketchUp creates hidden edges. As your modeling skills improve, you’ll often need to see this hidden geometry to grab better inferences, so this shortcut comes in handy. Perspective or Parallel Projection (Shift+P): For some reason, these two camera settings do the same thing: toggle between a perspective and orthographic view of your model. If you’re setting up a model to create plans or elevations, you’ll find yourself using this shortcut (which you need to assign to only one of the commands) to switch your world view back and forth. Create Scene (+):Scenes are really useful for saving a view or a design scenario. You can create them on the fly with this simple shortcut. Previous & Next Scene (< and >): If you’re considering presenting from SketchUp, it’s a good idea to set up this simple pair of shortcuts to reverse or advance a scene-by-scene narrative. The people you’re presenting to will think you’re a wizard. Shadows (Shift+S): Let’s face it: Shadows make your SketchUp model look cooler. But they can slow SketchUp as your project grows in size. Slip shadows on and off occasionally. Most users find that intermittent shadow feedback to be visceral and pleasing, like a free bottle of sparkling water. Make Group (G) and Make Component (Shift+G): Let’s go rogue here: you should overwrite the default shortcut for the important Make Component command and instead assign G to Make Group. You don’t always know what an object is when you start creating it, and making a component costs you a few extra clicks. So keep G on your trigger finger to create a group immediately, drawing objects in their own modeling context right away. Then, after you’ve made a group, press Shift+G if the group needs to be a component. Paste in Place (Shift+V): You’re going to be using Paste in Place all the time — more often than normal pasty Paste but not so much that you can break your Ctrl+V muscle memory. Bring Shift+V into your 3D lexicon to move geometry in and out of groups or components (or across modeling files) efficiently. Use SketchUp’s inference locking force Inferencing is like the way of the Jedi. You must trust the inferencing force and know that it is always with you in SketchUp — and can be invoked with arrow keys. Here are two inferencing techniques that will significantly speed your work: Use the arrow keys to lock orientation for the Move tool. When you want to raise or lower something in SketchUp, activate the Move tool, click your selection on its bottom corner, and press the up arrow key. Now your cursor is free to roam the screen, and you can to pick an exact finishing height for your move. Inference locking with the arrow keys is accurate as any other technique but requires less mental effort. Use the Get Down inference to operate off axis. This is the best inference name ever, right? Seriously, our new favorite inference technique is to hover over an over a face or an edge and then press the down-arrow key to lock a tool orientation (the magenta inference). The Get Down inference lets you treat the orientation of any edge or face as if it were a 4th axis, along with red, green, and blue. That’s why it’s so hip, man. To get off the down-arrow inference, first, click the down key again. The magenta inference will run perpendicular to your reference. Click the down key a third time and you’ll unlock the inference. Transport yourself across space and time Okay, the title is a slight exaggeration, but some camera tools help you warp through a SketchUp model with much less effort than orbiting and zooming across a model. Integrate them, and your perceived effort of modeling goes down. That’s a big deal! Try these camera techniques in SketchUp to see whether any of them sticks for you: Use the Orbit tool to center your screen on an object. If you’re modeling an interior, this tool is a handy way to skip your view across a room. With Orbit activated, double-click any geometry on the screen. SketchUp jumps to center your screen on the focus of the double-click. Use Zoom Window to jump to a nearby selection. With Zoom Window (choose Camera →Zoom Window), you can use a selection window to jump your view closer to a specific area. It’s recommended that you not use Zoom Window to jump to areas that are very far away. Use Zoom Selection to jump right to a selection. If you wanted to remember one more keyboard shortcut, this one might be it. With the Select tool activated, you can right-click an object and choose Zoom Selection from the shortcut menu to warp right to it. Round off edges with SketchUp’s Arc Tool The following technique for rounding corners around a series of edges is just too cool to leave out of this book. This fillet — or rounding — method works on flat faces only. Follow these steps and reference the images below to round edges: With a flat face, activate the two-point Arc tool. Near one of the junctures between two edges, click to start drawing an arc. Hover your cursor over the adjacent edge to find the magenta tangent inference. Double-click to finish your arc.The face and edges on the outside of your arc disappear. But wait, there’s more. Move your cursor close to another corner or intersection, and double-click the face (not the edges). The round-off repeats and will keep repeating if you continue to another intersection of edges. Without changing from the Arc tool, you can continue to apply the same rounding to as many edge intersections as you want as long they’re on a flat, nonextruded face. This method of rounding edges is also configurable. When you’re done rounding, use the Select tool to select an arc, then open the Entity Info panel to redefine the arc’s radius or segments. Pretty smooth — or at least as smooth as you want it. Use SketchUp’s Scale Tool to set length for simple objects Here’s a quick alternative for simple extrusion when you know exactly how long a simple, uniform object (such as a 2×4) needs to be: Select the object you want to scale. Make the object a group, if it’s not one already. Using the Scale tool, click one of the middle grips that define the length of the object. Scale the object in one direction.If you chose the right grips, the object extrudes as though you ‘re push/pulling it. If you grabbed the wrong grip, press the Esc key and try again. Click to finish your scaling.Click anywhere at all. Type how long you want that object to be and press Enter to set the length.Just like telling SketchUp, the length of an extrusion after using the Push/Pull tool, you can define the dimensions of a Scale operation by typing an input right after finishing the operation. Remember, this technique works only with simple, uniform objects — such as dimensional lumber — but it’s very useful when you need to redefine the length of a piece without a few extra clicks of the Tape Measure tool. 10 extensions for Dummies Truth be told, there is soooo much to be said about SketchUp extensions — the add-on apps that you can install to access more modeling tools. Think of extensions as being like gems you find in a dungeon, unlocking new powers in SketchUp. But SketchUp extensions can give you superpowers — and they’re incredibly fun — so they’re worth exploring. Extensions are available only in desktop versions of SketchUp. You have to have a Pro subscription to use them. The quickest way to find and install extensions is to use Extension Warehouse(choose Window→Extension Warehouse). Extension Warehouse works just like an app store on your smartphone: You search for extensions, browse them by category, and install them in SketchUp. You can install many extensions for free; others cost a little bit of money. After you’ve installed an extension, use Extension Manager to check its status or deactivate it. Choose Window→Extension Manager to find a few extensions that come installed in SketchUp Pro. Deactivating extensions that you don’t use is a good idea, especially as you start collecting them. Fewer enabled extensions usually means faster and more stable modeling. When will you need extensions? That’s the question! To help you start thinking more three-dimensionally about your modeling, in the table below you discover ten add-ons that are worth checking out — and teaching yourself — as you get into the wild world of SketchUp extensions. Ten SketchUp Extensions Extension What to Use It For Get It From Weld By Smustard Singe edges together. Ideal for welding tangent arcs for smooth extrusions. Weld is free, and it’s almost essential for a good Follow Me. Extension Warehouse Bézier Curve By SketchUp You can use this extension to get 3D curves. This extension is also very useful for tracing over hand sketches or imported images. Extension Warehouse Soap Skin Bubble By Josef L. Create complex mesh faces between noncoplanar edges (like a loop of whacky Bézier curves). Extension Warehouse Joint PushPull By Fredo6 Give almost anything thickness with this 3D extruder, including that wacky shape you made from Bézier curves. SketchUcation Plugin Store RoundCorner By Fredo6 Precise chamfering and filleting — basically, edge magic. SketchUcation Plugin Store Skimp By Mindsight Studios You’ll find lots of models on the Internet that are too big to load into your project. Skimp simplifies these behemoths to a noncrippling size for composition in SketchUp. Extension Warehouse Open Cut List By L’Air du Bois Designate objects as a certain kind of wood and then use this extension, which spits out a list of pieces and a cutting diagram that accounts for kerf, clearance, and the dimensional lumber you’re working with. Make some sawdust! Extension Warehouse Mirror By TIG If you use other CAD programs, you’ve probably spent some time looking for this extension, which quickly copies and inverts a selection across a defined plane. SketchUcation Plugin Store True Bend By ThomThom Lots of extensions that bend and distort models, but the best one to start with is True Bend, which bends an object around a 360-degree radius. Extension Warehouse Eneroth Random Selection By Eneroth3 Variety can do wonders for your model. Use this extension to randomly select objects in a uniform array. Then move, scale, or replace them to inject chaos into SketchUp. SketchUcation Plugin Store Get SketchUp on your smartphone Okay, it’s true: You can’t use SketchUp to draw 3D models on your smartphone. But you can get the free SketchUp app on a smartphone or tablet to view and reference your models. Think about walking around a hardware store with an exploded view of your model or a scene in which you’ve saved a parts list or cutting layout. Here’s how to get your models on a phone or tablet: Install SketchUp Viewer from an app store.This part is pretty simple. Go to the app store for your device, and search for SketchUp Viewer. Open the app, and access models stored in Trimble Connect, 3D Warehouse, Dropbox, or on your device.If you use SketchUp for web, the models you’ve saved are already stored in Trimble Connect. If you use SketchUp Pro, you can store your models in Trimble Connect (choose File→Trimble Connect→Publish Model) or upload models to 3D Warehouse. Models that you’ve stored in any of these places are available by clicking the cloud icon in the top-right corner of the screen. Additionally, you can load models from Dropbox or from device storage. Now that you have your models on your phone or tablet, what are you going to do with them? Well, you’re going to use them. Isn’t that the beauty of making models in the first place? Here are a few ways to use your models with the SketchUp Viewer. Use Styles and Scenes to deliver 3D presentations. Almost everything about styling and composing models for 3D presentation in Part 3 applies in the SketchUp Viewer, because all the scenes you create in SketchUp are available in the Viewer. Your saved model views — with hidden groups and components (or tags), dimensions and labels, section planes, shadows, or styles — are at your fingertips on your device. In addition to jumping between scenes you’ve saved, you can use the Position Camera tool to jump your camera to first-person view. (Find it by clicking the Orbit icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen.) Reference project plans while building something. Wouldn’t you know, the model views that you make to build a project — orthographic plan and elevations, section views that show construction details, dimensions, and label callouts — are pretty useful to reference while building a project. Why wouldn’t you want all this information on your workbench, caked in sawdust? Take measurements on the fly. Need to double-check the dimensions of your design? After you’ve made a note with your real-life tape measure, pull out the 3D Tape Measure tool (the second icon from the top) in SketchUp Viewer. Now place a finger on your screen. You’ll see a little magnified view of your model with an inference cursor. Move your finger to snap to the inference you want; then remove your finger from the screen. Repeat to set the end of your measurement. SketchUp spits out a model dimension. Do you think it will fit? Preview models in real space with augmented reality. Okay, here’s the fun part: You can use the SketchUp Viewer to preview your models in the context of real-world space, using the augmented reality tools available on many smartphones and tablets. The SketchUp Viewer activates the camera on your device and then projects a scaled 3D model onscreen. The result is a scaled preview of your model, set in the frame of the real space you may be designing it for. This feature comes in very handy for evaluating room layouts, previewing custom built-in projects, and catching Pokémon at will. Turn off your SketchUp profiles It’s the nature of computers: At some point, you’ll make a SketchUp model that slows down. When that happens, you can lessen the processing load of SketchUp in many ways. The simplest (and quickest) method to try to speed up SketchUp is to turn off edge profiles. This display setting removes the extra line thickness applied to edges that define the outline of your geometry. You can turn off profiles by changing or editing a style, but it’s much faster to set a customized keyboard shortcut. Now you can toggle in and out of edge profiles. Just like toggling shadows on and off, toggling profiles is a nice way to throttle the demand on your computer while keeping the sketchy look and feel a keystroke away. Connect with the SketchUp community The Internet is an infinite resource of highly specialized SketchUp knowledge. People across the world, in many languages, have uploaded detailed YouTube videos in which they explain how to do something very specific in SketchUp. Generate a cut list, draw with subdivisions to create organic shapes, model videogame levels, import GIS data — you can do it all in SketchUp, because a community of SketchUp people (we call them SketchUppers) are inspired to share and teach those who are willing to learn. You’ll find them in the SketchUp Forums, SketchUcation, and YouTube. Almost anywhere you can ask a question, a SketchUpper will answer it. One last tip: Ask a friendly question, and you’ll get a helpful answer. With that, you are now in the good hands of SketchUppers everywhere. Want to learn more? Check out SketchUp Cheat Sheet.

Article / Updated 07-15-2022

SketchUp offers keyboard shortcuts for the tools you use most often as you create models. To select the tool you want, simply press the letter that's indicated in the following table. Tool Shortcut Key Line L Eraser E Select Spacebar Move M Circle C Arc A Rectangle R Push/Pull P Offset O Rotate Q Scale S Zoom Extents Shift+Z Paint Bucket B

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-25-2022

Like any 3-D modeling program, SketchUp offers different ways to do common tasks. In this Cheat Sheet, you'll find tips on the best way to use SketchUp tools and to boost your productivity. Keyboard shortcuts also enable you to work quickly and easily in SketchUp, so you'll uncover keyboard shortcuts for common tools.

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It's not enough to draw nice-looking lines anymore. If you want to compete in the AutoCAD realm, you need to carefully organize the objects you draw, their properties, and the files in which they reside. This guide provides basic information and tools for the AutoCAD drawing setup, keyboard shortcuts in AutoCAD, and the AutoCAD drawing scale and limits—without putting a T-square through your computer screen in frustration.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-14-2021

Tinkercad is a superb cloud-based 3D design platform, which enables you to design 3D prototypes and those 3D “wow” projects that you want to show off to your friends and colleagues (and your mum and dad). Tinkercad For Dummies gives you a great grounding in how to use Tinkercad, but what about all those little shortcuts and tips and tricks that will take you from being a Tinkercad Jedi padawan to a Tinkercad Jedi master? Well, you will find them all in this Cheat Sheet; everything from keyboard shortcuts to how to find what you want in the online Tinkercad libraries. It’s all here!