Software Articles

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.

Step by Step / Updated 08-10-2022

In PowerPoint 2013, a hyperlink is simply a bit of text or a graphic image that you can click when viewing a slide to summon another slide, another presentation, or perhaps some other type of document, such as a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet. The hyperlink may also lead to a page on the World Wide Web. Adding a hyperlink to a presentation is easy. Just follow these steps:

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.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 08-01-2022

If you are using Microsoft Word 2013, this Cheat Sheet will help you use it more efficiently with a list of handy keyboard shortcuts, special-character shortcuts, and some tips and tricks.

Article / Updated 08-01-2022

Excel’s AutoFilter feature makes filtering out unwanted data in a data list as easy as clicking the AutoFilter button on the column on which you want to filter the data and then choosing the appropriate filtering criteria from that column’s drop-down menu. If you open a worksheet with a data list and you don’t find Excel’s AutoFilter buttons attached to each of the field names at the top of the list, you can display them simply by positioning the cell pointer in one of the cells with the field names and then clicking the Filter command button on the Ribbon’s Data tab or pressing Ctrl+Shift+L or Alt+AT. The filter options on a column’s AutoFilter drop-down menu depend on the type of entries in the field. On the drop-down menu in a column that contains only date entries, the menu contains a Date Filters option to which a submenu of the actual filters is attached. On the drop-down menu in a column that contains only numeric entries (besides dates) or a mixture of dates with other types of numeric entries, the menu contains a Number Filters option. On the drop-down menu in a column that contains only text entries or a mixture of text, date, and other numeric entries, the menu contains a Text Filters option. Doing basic filtering in Excel 2019 by selecting specific field entries In addition to the Date Filters, Text Filters, or Number Filters options (depending on the type of field), the AutoFilter drop-down menu for each field in the data list contains a list box with a complete listing of all entries made in that column, each with its own check box. At the most basic level, you can filter the data list by clearing the check box for all the entries whose records you don’t want to see in the list. This kind of basic filtering works best in fields such as City, State, or Country, which contain many duplicates, so you can see a subset of the data list that contains only the cities, states, or countries you want to work with at the time. The easiest way to perform this basic type of filtering on a field is to first deselect the check box in front of the (Select All) option at the top of the field’s list box to clear the check boxes, and then select each of the check boxes containing the entries for the records you do want displayed in the filtered data list. After you finish selecting the check boxes for all the entries you want to keep, you click OK to close the AutoFilter drop-down menu. Excel then hides rows in the data list for all records except for those that contain the entries you just selected. The program also lets you know which field or fields have been used in the filtering operation by adding a cone filter icon to the column’s AutoFilter button. To restore all the records to the data list, you can remove the filtering by clicking the Clear command button in the Sort & Filter group of the Data tab of the Ribbon or by pressing Alt+AC. When doing this basic kind of list filtering, you can select specific entries from more than one field in this list. The following image illustrates this kind of situation. Here, I want only the employees in the company who work in the Engineering and Information Services departments in the Chicago and Seattle offices. To do this, I selected only the Engineering and Information Services entries in the list box on the Dept field’s AutoFilter drop-down menu and only the Chicago and Seattle entries in the list box on the Location field’s AutoFilter drop-down menu. As you can see above, after filtering the Employee data list so that only the records for employees in either the Engineering or Information Services department in either the Chicago or Seattle office locations are listed, Excel adds the cone filter icon to the AutoFilter buttons on both the Dept and Location fields in the top row, indicating that the list is filtered using criteria involving both fields. Keep in mind that after filtering the data list in this manner, you can then copy remaining records that make up the desired subset of the data list to a new area in the same worksheet or to a new sheet in the workbook. You can then sort the data (by adding AutoFilter buttons with the Filter command button on the Data tab), chart the data, analyze the data, or summarize the data in an Excel pivot table. Using the Text Filters options in Excel 2019 The AutoFilter drop-down menu for a field that contains only text or a combination of text, date, and numeric entries contains a Text Filters option that when you click or highlight displays its submenu containing the following options: Equals: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Equals operator selected in the first condition. Does Not Equal: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Does Not Equal operator selected in the first condition. Begins With: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Begins With operator selected in the first condition. Ends With: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Ends With operator selected in the first condition. Contains: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Contains operator selected in the first condition. Does Not Contain: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Does Not Contain operator selected in the first condition. Custom Filter: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box where you can select your own criteria for applying more complex AND or conditions. Using the Date Filters options in Excel 2019 The AutoFilter drop-down menu for a field that contains only date entries contains a Date Filters option that when you click or highlight displays its submenu containing the following options: Equals: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Equals operator selected in the first condition. Before: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Is Before operator selected in the first condition. After: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Is After operator selected in the first condition. Between: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Is After or Equal To operator selected in the first condition and the Is Before or Equal To operator selected in the second AND condition. Tomorrow: Filters the data list so that only records with tomorrow’s date in this field are displayed in the worksheet. Today: Filters the data list so that only records with the current date in this field are displayed in the worksheet. Yesterday: Filters the data list so that only records with yesterday’s date in this field are displayed in the worksheet. Next Week: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the week ahead in this field are displayed in the worksheet. This Week: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the current week in this field are displayed in the worksheet. Last Week: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the previous week in this field are displayed in the worksheet. Next Month: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the month ahead in this field are displayed in the worksheet. This Month: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the current month in this field are displayed in the worksheet. Last Month: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the previous month in this field are displayed in the worksheet. Next Quarter: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the three-month quarterly period ahead in this field are displayed in the worksheet. This Quarter: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the current three-month quarterly period in this field are displayed in the worksheet. Last Quarter: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the previous three-month quarterly period in this field are displayed in the worksheet. Next Year: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the calendar year ahead in this field are displayed in the worksheet. This Year: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the current calendar year in this field are displayed in the worksheet. Last Year: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the previous calendar year in this field are displayed in the worksheet. Year to Date: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the current year up to the current date in this field are displayed in the worksheet. All Dates in the Period: Filters the data list so that only records with date entries in the quarter (Quarter 1 through Quarter 4) or month (January through December) that you choose from its submenu are displayed in the worksheet. Custom Filter: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box where you can select your own criteria for more complex AND or conditions. When selecting dates for conditions using the Equals, Is Before, Is After, Is Before or Equal To, or Is After or Equal To operator in the Custom AutoFilter dialog box, you can select the date by clicking the Date Picker button (the one with the calendar icon) and then clicking the specific date on the drop-down date palette. When you open the date palette, it shows the current month and the current date selected. To select a date in an earlier month, click the Previous button (the one with the triangle pointing left) until its month is displayed in the palette. To select a date in a later month, click the Next button (the one with the triangle pointing right) until its month is displayed in the palette. Using the Number Filters options in Excel 2019 The AutoFilter drop-down menu for a field that contains only number entries besides dates or a combination of dates and other numeric entries contains a Number Filters option that when you click or highlight it displays its submenu containing the following options: Equals: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Equals operator selected in the first condition. Does Not Equal: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Does Not Equal operator selected in the first condition. Greater Than: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Is Greater Than operator selected in the first condition. Greater Than or Equal To: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Is Greater Than or Equal To operator selected in the first condition. Less Than: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Is Less Than operator selected in the first condition. Less Than or Equal To: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Is Less Than or Equal to operator selected in the first condition. Between: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box with the Is Greater Than or Equal To operator selected in the first condition and the Is Less Than or Equal To operator selected in the second AND condition. Top 10: Opens the Top 10 AutoFilter dialog box so that you can filter the list to just the ten or so top or bottom values or percentages in the field. Above Average: Filters the data list to display only records where the values in the field are greater than the average of the values in this field. Below Average: Filters the data list to display only records where the values in the field are less than the average of the values in this field. Custom Filter: Opens the Custom AutoFilter dialog box where you can select your own criteria for more complex AND or conditions. Making it to the Top Ten! The Top Ten option on the Number Filters option’s submenu enables you to filter out all records except those whose entries in that field are at the top or bottom of the list by a certain number (10 by default) or in a certain top or bottom percent (10 by default). Of course, you can only use the Top Ten item in numerical fields and date fields; this kind of filtering doesn’t make any sense when you’re dealing with entries in a text field. When you click the Top Ten option on the Number Filters option’s submenu, Excel opens the Top 10 AutoFilter dialog box where you can specify your filtering criteria. By default, the Top 10 AutoFilter dialog box is set to filter out all records except those whose entries are among the top ten items in the field by selecting Top in the drop-down list box on the left, 10 in the middle combo box, and Items in the drop-down list box on the right. If you want to use these default criteria, you simply click OK in the Top 10 AutoFilter dialog box. The image below shows you the sample employee data list after using the Top 10 Items AutoFilter to display only the records with the top ten salaries in the data list. You can also change the filtering criteria in the Top 10 AutoFilter dialog box before you filter the data. You can choose between Top and Bottom in the leftmost drop-down list box and between Items and Percent in the rightmost one. You can also change the number in the middle combo box by clicking it and entering a new value or using the spinner buttons to select one. Filtering an Excel data list on a field’s font and fill colors or cell icons Just as you can sort a data list using the font or fill color or cell icons that you’ve assigned with the Conditional Formatting feature to values in the field that are within or outside of certain parameters, you can also filter the list. To filter a data list on a font color, fill color, or cell icon used in a field, you click its AutoFilter button and then select the Filter by Color option from the drop-down menu. Excel then displays a submenu from which you choose the font color, fill color, or cell icon to use in the sort: To filter the data list so that only the records with a particular font color in the selected field — assigned with the Conditional Formatting Highlight Cell Rules or Top/Bottom Rules options — appear in the list, click its color swatch in the Filter by Font Color submenu. To filter the data list so that only the records with a particular fill color in the selected field — assigned with the Conditional Formatting Highlight Cell Rules, Top/Bottom Rules, Data Bars, or Color Scales options — appear in the list, click its color swatch in the Filter by Font Color submenu. To filter the data list so that only the records with a particular cell icon in the selected field — assigned with the Conditional Formatting Icon Sets options — appear in the list, click the icon in the Filter by Cell Icon submenu.

Article / Updated 08-01-2022

You can modify the rights that you assign to a user in QuickBooks Pro or Premier. To do this, choose Company → Set Up Users and Passwords → Set Up Users to display the User List dialog box (not shown). To look at the rights that a particular user has, select the user in the list and then click the View User button. When you do, QuickBooks displays the View User Access dialog box (not shown). This dialog box shows the same information as the final version of the Set Up User Access and Password dialog box, which is the dialog box that you use initially to specify what rights a user should have. Click the Leave button to close the View User Access dialog box. To change a user’s rights after reviewing them, select the user and then click the Edit User button. QuickBooks steps through the same set of dialog boxes that you use to set up the user and describe his rights. You use the Next and Back buttons to do things such as change the username or password, specify whether the user should be limited in his access, and — if necessary — to limit the user’s access to a particular activity within QuickBooks. To remove a user, you also use the User List dialog box. Simply select the user and then click the Delete User button. QuickBooks asks you to confirm your deletion. When you click the Yes button for confirmation, QuickBooks removes the user.

Article / Updated 07-28-2022

After you bring data into SPSS Statistics, the next step is to select a procedure. The Analyze menu contains a list of reporting and statistical analysis categories. Most of the categories are followed by an arrow, which indicates that several analytical procedures are available in the category; these appear on a submenu when the category is selected. To select a procedure, choose Analyze, an analysis category, and then the procedure. The procedure dialog will open. Most data files contain many variables and it's not always easy to remember the properties of each one. You may want to produce documentation, often referred to as a codebook, listing all the information about the variables in the data. SPSS provides the Codebook procedure for viewing variable attributes and reporting summary descriptive tables for each variable. To create a Codebook, choose Analyze→Reports→Codebook, as shown. The following figure shows the Codebook dialog. You’ll need to select the variables of interest and then run the analysis from the procedure dialog. Most procedure dialogs have the same basic components and contain a number of common features. Each procedure dialog contains the following components: Source variables are variables available for the procedure. Target variables are variables used in the procedure. You’ll need to move the source variable(s) to the target variables box Control buttons run, reset, or cancel the procedure. Dialog tabs or buttons control optional specifications. In the source and target variable lists, the variable label is shown, followed by the variable name in square brackets. If a variable doesn't have a label, only the variable name appears. You can resize any SPSS dialog. If you make it larger, it's easier to see the variable list. In addition, right-click any variable in the source list to display a description of that variable. And if you are having trouble finding a variable in the source list, in most dialogs, you can type the first letter of the label to display matching variable labels. Repeatedly typing the letter will allow you to move through the list to each variable label beginning with that letter. If you're a fast typist, you can include multiple letters to better narrow your search for variables. The icons displayed next to variables in the dialog provide information about the variable type and measurement level. Because SPSS procedures provide a great deal of flexibility, the dialog often can't display all possible choices. The main dialog contains the minimum information required to run the procedure. You can make additional optional specifications in subdialogs. The subdialogs are accessed from the buttons located on the right side of the main dialog or tabs at the top of the dialog. The name of subdialog if often similar to the name of the equivalent subcommands in SPSS Syntax. Instead of an OK button, subdialogs have a Continue button, to return to the main dialog. The control buttons that appear along the bottom of the dialog instruct SPSS to perform an action: OK runs the procedure. The OK button is disabled (appears dimmed) until the minimum dialog requirements are completed. Reset resets all specifications made in the dialog and associated subdialogs and keeps the dialog open. Cancel cancels the selections and closes the dialog without running the procedure. Help opens the SPSS Help facility with help relevant to the current dialog. Paste: Pastes SPSS syntax for commands into the Syntax Editor window. In the Codebook procedure, you’ll need to select the variables to display. You can run the codebook on selected variables or on all variables in the file. In the Variables box, click the first variable, hold down the shift key, and click the last variable. Click the arrow to move all the variables to the Codebook Variables box, as shown. Click OK to run the analysis. After you move the variables (Step 2), you can make selections on the Output and Statistics tabs. Optionally on the Output tab, you can select variable attributes to display in each table and the order of the tables. By default, all variable attributes are displayed and the tables are in the order shown in the Codebook Variables list. On the Statistics tab, you can select statistics to display in the tables. By default, counts and percentages are displayed for variables defined as nominal or ordinal measurement level. For scale variables, the mean, standard deviation, and quartiles are displayed.

Article / Updated 07-28-2022

One of the most groundbreaking features to hit Blender’s modeling community in recent years was the ability to have dynamic topology (Dyntopo for short) while in Sculpt mode. Simply put, when you enable Dyntopo, your sculpting brush can add or remove geometry from your mesh on the fly. Need more detail in just one part of your model? There’s no need to use the Multiresolution modifier and bump up the vertex count for your whole mesh. Just enable Dyntopo and add that detail exactly where you need it. To use Dyntopo, you need to be in Sculpt mode. While in Sculpt mode, look at the Active Tool tab of the Properties editor. A panel there is named, appropriately, Dyntopo. Left-click the check box at the top of the panel and you’re off to the races, sculpting with dynamic topology. Alternatively, you can also enable Dyntopo with Ctrl+D while in Sculpt mode. The image below shows the Dyntopo panel in Active Tool Properties. For such a powerful Blender feature, there are relatively few options specific to Dyntopo. The following is a quick rundown of the options available in the Dyntopo panel: Detail Size: Dyntopo works by modifying edges within the area of your brush cursor. The Detail Size field defines a value that lets Dyntopo decide whether a specific edge gets modified, based on its length. This value can either be in screen pixels or a percentage, depending on the detail type method that you choose. While sculpting, you can adjust this value with the Shift+D hotkey so you don’t have to constantly return to the Active Tool Properties. Refine Method: Dyntopo can subdivide edges in your mesh and collapse them, removing additional detail. The options in this drop-down menu allow you to control which behavior you want your sculpt brush to use: Subdivide Edges: If an edge within your brush cursor is longer than the detail size, it’s subdivided. This refine method is great for fine details, creases, and sharp peaks. Collapse Edges: When you choose the Collapse Edges option, short edges get collapsed into a single edge. In the case of Dyntopo, a short edge is defined as being two-fifths (2/5) the length of the detail size. This option is great for evening out your topology and removing long skinny triangles that may render weirdly. However, the trade-off is that it also removes any fine details smaller than the detail size. Subdivide Collapse: The Subdivide Collapse option is the default. With this refine method, edges within the area of your brush cursor are subdivided and collapsed, relative to the detail size. This behavior makes the Subdivide Collapse option well-suited for quickly roughing the general forms of your sculpt. Detailing: When sculpting, it’s common for artists to arbitrarily navigate around their model as they work, orbiting, panning, and zooming to get the best view of the section that they’re sculpting. Zooming specifically presents an interesting challenge for Dyntopo because sometimes you want the detail size to remain the same regardless of how much you zoom in or out from your model; other times, you want to do more detailed work as you zoom closer. The options in this drop-down menu let you choose: Relative Detail: This is the default setting. Choose this option to define detail size relative to the pixels on your screen. If you zoom out far enough, all the edges in your mesh become smaller than the detail size. If you zoom in, you only subdivide smaller edges. Constant Detail: Choose the Constant Detail option if you want the detail size to remain the same, regardless of how much you zoom in or out from your model. With this option, detail size is defined as a percentage of the base unit you define in the Scene tab of the Properties editor (the default is 1 meter). Additionally, the Detail Size field at the top of the Dyntopo panel gets an eyedropper button. Left-click that button to sample the geometry in your mesh. This means that you can click the eyedropper on a part of your mesh and the Detail Size field is set to match the edge lengths in that region. Brush Detail: If you pick Brush Detail, then the Detail Size is determined by the percentage of your brush cursor. Increase the radius of your brush cursor and you increase the edge length. Reduce the brush radius and you generate more detailed topology. Manual Detail: Choose this value and edge length is fixed based on the Resolution value you set at the top of the Dyntopo panel. Higher Resolution values mean you sculpt with more detail, regardless of brush size or how close you’re zoomed in on your mesh. Smooth Shading: The Smooth Shading check box toggles between smooth shading and flat shading for your entire mesh while sculpting. This is mostly a personal preference, though some sculptors claim to have a more responsive 3D Viewport with Smooth Shading disabled. Remesh: The Remesh sub-panel within the Dyntopo panel should not be confused with the main Remesh panel in Active Tool Properties. This sub-panel is the one you use while working in Dyntopo to tweak the topology of your sculpt as you work, according to the detail settings you configure in the Dyntopo panel. Symmetrize: With Dyntopo, you can take geometry that you’ve sculpted on one half of your mesh and mirror it to the opposite side. For example, if you did some sculpting without using the features in the Symmetry panel, you may want to mirror that geometry to at least give you a detailed starting point for the other side of your mesh. Left-click the Symmetrize button to do exactly that, based on the direction (such as “from the negative X-axis side of the mesh to the positive X-axis side”) defined in the Direction drop-down menu above the buttons in the Remesh sub-panel. Optimize: As you sculpt with Dyntopo enabled, your brush may become less responsive, with strokes lagging behind your brush cursor as you work. If you run into that, try clicking the Optimize button. When you click, Blender recalculates and rebuilds the underlying data structure that Dyntopo uses to speedily edit the edges on your mesh, often alleviating some sculpting performance slowdowns. Detail Flood Fill: The Detail Flood Fill button is visible only if you have your detail type set to Constant Detail or Manual Detail. Assuming that you have chosen either of those, you can click the Detail Flood Fill button to subdivide (and/or collapse, depending on your chosen detail refine method) every edge in your mesh to match your desired detail size. This is a pretty useful tool for uniformly changing the detail in your mesh (increasing or decreasing it) all at once. Currently, the Symmetrize feature of Dyntopo does not respect any masking that you’ve painted on your mesh. So if you’ve painted a mask in the hope that Symmetrize will only have an effect on the unmasked vertices of your mesh, you’re a bit out of luck. Symmetrize will happily mirror your mesh regardless of the mask, removing or changing those vertices that you wanted to preserve. Of course, the power that a feature like Dyntopo presents also necessarily comes with a few caveats: You can’t have both Dyntopo and a multires mesh at the same time. It’s kind of difficult to have fixed subdivision levels if the underlying topology is constantly changing. Because Dyntopo dramatically changes your mesh topology, it will not preserve additional mesh data like vertex groups, UV coordinates, or vertex colors. Also, if you have some faces on your mesh set to smooth shading and others to flat shading, that also gets changed so all faces are either one or the other, depending on whether you toggle the Smooth Shading check box in the Dyntopo panel. Although you can reduce vertices using Dyntopo, it’s not currently possible to sculpt a hole in your mesh. Unless your model is being used in a still image and never rigged for animation, it almost always will be necessary to retopologize a mesh that’s been sculpted with Dyntopo enabled. Caveats and trade-offs aside, Dyntopo is an extremely powerful tool for modern 3D modeler. Most of the complex models you see on films, television, and the Internet are made with sculpting techniques rather than traditional modeling techniques. In terms of workflow, it goes something like this: Start with a base mesh.Depending on what you’re modeling, the base mesh could be as simple as a sphere like you get in the default Sculpting workspace, or a somewhat more complex rough form for the model, such as a 3D stick figure to start a character model. In the ideal case, whatever your base mesh is, it should have evenly distributed faces (that is, all the faces on your base mesh should be roughly the same size). Sculpt with Dyntopo.With Dyntopo enabled, use the various sculpting tools to produce your impressive 3D sculpt. From Object mode, create a new mesh.It doesn’t much matter what kind of mesh it is. When you get into Edit mode, you’ll need to initially delete all the geometry in it so you can start the next step. Retopologize the sculpt using the newly created mesh.At this point, you’re basically using the sculpt as a 3D reference model to which you can snap your clean topology vertices. Finalize and polish the retopologized mesh.This is where details are re-added using traditional modeling techniques. In this step, you may also bake some of that additional detail from the high resolution sculpt into a texture that you apply to your retopologized mesh.