Search this site

 3D Basecamp 2008

▲
 

Lots o' tricks and techniques

 

  • SketchUp and Layout Tips & Tricks  The namesake inspiration for this page is the Session featuring Aidan Chopra, Chris Fullmer, Susan Sorger, Jean (Johnny) Lemire, and Gaieus (Csaba Pozsárkó)
  • YouTube Channel  for all sessions - standard and high quality video options
  • Special After-Site  for all sessions - includes special download handout links
 
 
 

 Nifty Bits

▲
 
  • How do I make SketchUp run faster?  There are enough of these tips to have its own page.
  • Camera > Previous restores your last camera positions.  It's so useful that it deserves to be added as a keyboard shortcut.
    • Use it if the camera gets 'trapped' inside a model while orbiting to go back to the last good location
    • It's also good to set the identical camera position for multiple Scenes.  Adjust the camera and save/update the first Scene in the Scene palette.  Select the next Scene tab.  If the camera moves to some other location, select Camera > Previous to restore the camera position of the first Scene.  And be certain to update the Scene to save.
  • Use Section Cuts to examine the inside of a model for unnecessary geometry to delete.
  • If a text leader needs to be repositioned, select it and switch to the Scale tool.  Tug on the bounding box handles to reposition the leader.
  • While working with any tool, move the tool over any geometry you want in the middle of the workspace and double-click the middle button - the scroll wheel.  
  • PDF  DigitalThumb - Group discussion on making PDFs for the SketchUp free crowd.
  • display issue: burning through  olaf troubleshoots overlapping transparent PNGs burn-through.
  • To soften harsh shading, open the Shadow Setting window and move the Light slider to a darker value and the Dark slider to a light value.
  • Group a Line - You cannot make a group or component by selecting a line, right-clicking and choosing the option on the context menu.  But you can use the Edit menu option or a keyboard shortcut for making a group or component.
    • Make an image, like a landscaping element transparent PNG, a component by selecting a line with the image.  Go into edit the component to remove or hide the line.  An image does not have edges, so this will help lower model geometry.
  • How do I open skb files  Four ways to open the backup file in SketchUp.


"Drafting"

 


Change Thumbnails

 

Add Geographic Locations to Model Info

  • TaffGoch - The default longitude/latitude data is stored in a DAT file in the program directory.  In Windows, open the DAT file in Wordpad (Notepad will not work) to add more default city location data.  In Mac, open the DAT in TextEdit.
    • Windows - C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 6\Resources\en-US\locations.dat
    • Mac - /Applications/Google\ SketchUp\ 7/SketchUp.app/Contents/Resources/
      English.lproj/locations.dat 
  • Sage article  |  Group thread

 Attribute Reporting  

  • Within SketchUp...
    • Note that the report generated by the Model info>Statistics window can be copied and pasted into another program like Excel as a tabbed list.
    • You can check "Components only" to get a list of components - check Show Nested Components, if your items are buried in other components or groups.
  • SketchUp 7 Pro added Dynamic Components, which among other things will allows a variety of attributes to be added to a component.  Along with that is ability to send model attribute to a CSV or HTML file.  Pro users have File > Generate Report.  There are several other ways to write and generate attributes:
  • Attribute Reporting  An introduction to SketchUp's attribute function through the Ruby API - create custom bill of materials, etc
  • AttribReporter  Ashley Joyce web dialog plug-in which allows you to write attributes to selected items.
  • ComponentReporter++  TIG plug-in which sends model info to two CSV files - Instructions are included within the RB file.  Open the file with a plain text editor, like Notepad, to review the instruction text at the top of the file. - Free 
  • dataexporter  Uli Tessel - Exports information about edges. - Free
  • FredoTools::ReportAreaLabel  Fredo6 - Several services about area, exports CSV file. - Free
  • General Locator  Moris Papasmadov -  Link 3D models to Google docs on-line Spreadsheets.
  • model_report  Didier Bur - Export a text file or an Excel sheet with information of the current model. - Free
  • Product Connect  Igloo Studio's designer/builder product plugin for the 3D Warehouse with an easy way to add model attributes.
  • SpaceDesign  Render Plus System add-on - Windows
  • url_link  Didier Bur - Set,Get,Edit and opens URL for any object in SU model. - Free
  • YouTubePlugin  Moris Papasmadov - Associate YouTube video with each selected SketchUp  entity by pasting the "Embed:" text provided by YouTube. - Free
 
 
 

 Back to the Basics

▲
 
 
 
 

 Modeling Methods

▲

Dynamic Components

 

Face Me Components

Shadow Studies

Determine building height from Google Earth satellite images
  • Highness of Buildings  Determine building height from images. 
  • If your region is available through the Building Maker tool, save some time and use the newly integrated Building Maker tool in SketchUp 8 to model the building (which in turn will give you the building's height).  Watch the video.  The energy analysis plug-in OpenStudio has a tool to help calculate the effect of shadows from surrounding buildings. 

Depicting Shadows
  • Exporting just shadows from 3d city  Anssi goes over some internal SU settings in order to export only shadows.
  • Exporting shadows without lines
  • Another method is to paint the model with a completely transparent material. Make a model with default colors. Paint only the faces you want to see, like the building footprint, a color. Make the model a group. Paint the group with the completely transparent material. To turn off edges: toggle off Display edges and Profiles in the Styles palette, Window (SketchUp in Mac) > Styles > Edit > Edges.

Dynamic components
  • SunTracker  Requires the plugin scenes.rb to see the component change orientation during scene changes.  (Open a plain text file, on Windows use a text editor like Notepad, and paste in the text.  Call the plugin scenes.rb.)
  • True dynamic sun tracker  Also requires the plug-in scenes.rb to react to scene changes.

Plugins
  • 1001SkyRatio  Goh Chun Hee
  • 1001Shadows  Goh Chun Hee
  • Ambient Occlusion  qpik - raycasting plugin to add soft shadows.
  • camera_parameters  Bakbek - Set camera parameters using viewpoint, target, elevation.
  • Chronolux for SketchUp  kirill2008 - Tests insolation duration and SVF (sky view factor.)
  • Face Sun  thomthom - Set faces in a selection to face the sun.
  • LightUp  Integrated renderer which can perform realtime solar analysis. City Solar Analysis video.
  • map_sun  Jim Foltz - Plots sun position over a 24-hour period.
  • Modelur  Parametric urban design tool with a sun illumination simulation - pre-beta - Windows, Mac
  • param_camera   Didier Bur - Exports camera information to an external file.  Original forum thread.
  • Position_shadows  honoluludesktop - Fine tune shadow position.
  • Rotate to Altitude and Azimuth  Gabriel - Rotate either an object or a face to match the user's selected altitude and azimuth
  • Shade Analysis Tool  Martin - A plug-in
  • SHADING Tools Plugin  Abraham Yezioro and Tali Gutman - Calculates the (Geometrical) Shading Coefficient of any selected surface.
  • Shadow Analysis  Tomasz Janiak - Simple tool for analyzing daylight conditions. Demo, Fee - Windows, Mac
  • ShadowProjector  TIG - Shows shadows cast on selected faces by objects and other shadow display options.
  • Skelion  Insert solar panels on roofs quickly and find out tilt and azimuth.  Windows
  • sunposition  Gabriel - A plugin that draws the sun path over the course of one day.
  • suntoolpreview  Jim Foltz - A plugin
  • Trnsys3D  TransSolar - Open/save Trnsys3d file to work with TRNSYS 17 simulations. 
  • Architectural plugins  More related links on the SketchUp Sage's Resources page
Sun path - Geo explains how to set the correct sun path in his SketchUp Sage Article.
The Shadow knows...
 

There's actually a 0% opacity, transparent PNG inside the square.  Right-click on the image to save it you your hard drive or use the drag and drop method to drag the image into an open SketchUp session.

 
Some uses for this include architectural shadow studies and special shadow faces for low-poly 2.5D landscape components.
 
TIP: Image-misers can resave the image down to 1 pixel.
 

Creating Terrain

 

Helical forms - spirals, screw threads and more

Cars - and other fast stuff

   

Woodsy Stuff

 

Buildings

 

Google Earth

 

Organic - Sculpture

 


Odds and Ends

 
 
 

 LayOut

▲
 

 

 Printing

▲


Print to Scale

  • CutePDF to 'print' a PDF using parallel Camera and check "Use high accuracy HLR" setting in SketchUp's Print menu. Davereap goes into detail (beginning with post #893) about getting a scaled PDF file with CutePDF with SketchUp for radio-controlled planes.  Then Inkscape, an Open Source vector graphics editor, can save a DXF or SVG for other applications.
  • Print to Scale  Chiefwoodworker's Blog topic
  • Printing to Scale  Jean Lemire instructs how to set-up printing to scale
  • How to print to scale without losing scale  Look for the "fit to page margins" option in PDF.  Set "Page Scaling" in Adobe Reader to none. 
  • Print to Scale  George Knowles - SketchUp Sage artlicle
  • QuickScale  Program which scales PDFs. - Fee
 

 

 Watercolor, Painterly and Rendered Effects

▲

Textures

 

Post-modeling pretty stuff

Tip:  Photoshop CS4 can import a KMZ file from SketchUp.  The model surface can be painted in Photoshop, then returned to SketchUp as a KMZ import.  In Photoshop CS4, export the file through 3D > Export 3D Layer.

 

Renderers

Renderers  Rendering options listed on the Resources page
 
 

SketchUp Styles



Sky

Note:  Some of the techniques listed below using skydomes and cylinders mapped with a sky image became a bit dated since SketchUp introduced image watermark styles in version 6.  But the techniques may still be useful in the right context.

Plugins

  • JS Background color  Plugin which adds a horizon color to the sky.
  • NightSky  Smustard - Adds sunrise and sunset effects to the Shadow Info slider.
  • SketchUV  Dale Martens (Whaat) - The Pro version of UVTools - Fee
  • UV Toolkit  thomthom
  • UVTools  Dale Martens (Whaat) - A SU plugin for simple image mapping
  • UVTools Pro  Dale Martens (Whaat) - Public beta


Quick and Dirty

Sites with styles ready to go - but you still need to find what you want...  There's no such thing as a free lunch...
 
 

 

 Artificial Lighting

▲

Playing with transparency and shadow 


Fake spotlight test model by Daniel81
These tutorials detail some lighting tricks that can be done with basic SketchUp settings.
 
 
 
 
 

Rendering Plug-ins & Add-ons

More realistic lighting effects need to be done with ray tracing renderers.  There are several renderers that work inside of SketchUp and other external rendering programs can import models made with SketchUp.

  • Renderers  Resources page listing of renderers.
 
 
 

 Audio-Video Animation & Web Animation

▲

Exporting

 
 


Plugins and Programs

Presentation  sub-section on the Resources page
Renderers  As time goes on, renderers have been adding real-time animation. 
 
 
 

 Scene Animation Round-Up

▲

Scene Animation Set-Up

Open the Layers browser (and/or Entity Info and the other control panels like Shadows and Outliner) while reviewing the scene animation tutorials below in order to study the changing visibility of different elements in the model.  Slideshow animation settings are located at Window > Model Info > Animation.  Post-processing in an animation program (Camtasia Studio, for example) can adjust animation speeds of select scenes or try some of the plugins listed below.

Tips: Anyone who may want to set up a scene animation will end up loving the plugin Add Hidden Layer by Jim Foltz.  The plugin lets you add content to a new layer which will be invisible by default on existing Scenes - a big time-saver on files with many scenes as you will not have to update Scene layer visibilty every time a new layer is added.

Edit > Paste In Place
The SketchUp option of Edit > Paste In Place is quite useful for people want to scene animate grouped (or componentized) bits and pieces of geometry as it is easy to see and judge the relative position of the copy to the original as the copy is move.  Copy a group then use Paste In Place.  Move that copy into a new, secondary position.  Then adjust the visibilty of each copy on different Scenes by putting the copies on different Layers (and changing Layer visibility) or simply hiding the groups you don't want to see on specific Scenes (be sure to refresh the Scene each time a Scene change is made.)
 

Section Cut Animation

 


Plugins

Presentation sub-section on the Resources page
Renderers  As time goes on, renderers have been adding real-time animation.  
  • Add Hidden Layers  Jim Foltz
  • Animated textures
  • BZ_Animation  Fredo6 - Customize the segment intervals on a polyline flightpath.
  • Create image  sahi - Save a series of images of selected rotating parts to assemble into an animation.  Upload the image series into a Picasa web album to make a swiveling image, like the preview image in the 3D Warehouse. 
  • PresenationBundle  RickW - Plugin Suite to control scene transition speed and camera location.  Plugins can be obtained individually.  Fee - version 1 of FlightPath is Free
  • Keyframe Animation  regular polygon - Add movement to any number of objects in your model. - Fee - Windows Mac
  • proper_animation  Moris Papasmadov - Free
  • SketchyPhysics  A video capture program is needed to record the animation
  • Soap Skin & Bubble  Reverse some SSB skin faces and run the plug-in for 'water' effect, rotor blade and more.  Hunt through attachments by PavAks (Juri), catamountain and others in this Pro forum thread.
  • SU Animate  Fee - Windows Mac
 
 
 

 2D & 3D Text and Fonts

▲

2D

  • Title Block  Pro thread covering the use of custom-made fonts.
  • Text component  Pro thread on using the Dimension tool to make editable text components that glue to any surface.
    • 2D_text dimension | more  Using the Dimension tool to make text components that glue to any surface.
  • TextTag1.4   TIG - Plugin to create 2D, editable, geometric text components - which can be extruded. 
    • Instructions are at the top of the script.  Open the script in a plain text editor like Notepad to avoid the possibility of adding bad formating.
    • Windows-users can add the code \n (do not add a space before or after the code) to add line breaks in the plug-in's single line text field.  Mac-users try Control+Enter to add a line break.  The plug-in does have left, center and right text alignment options
  • Funny Dimensions  Wo3Dan's tutorial SKP on dimension text tips and more, like replacing the dimension value with <> if you edited the dimension and you want the dimension to return to the actual value.  Group thread.
  • Problems in the marking of TExt  Wo3Dan labeling tip with the Dimension tool.
  • Tips for Dimensioning in SketchUp  Tutorial video on hiding dimensions and adding text.
  • Driving Dimensions  Plug-in to make parametric, dimensional changes to the model.  Fee - Windows, Mac  
On a Mac, for multi-lined dimension text, use Ctrl+Enter to create a new line and <> where you want the dimension to appear in the text area.


Programs

  • High-Logic Win | FontLab  Win Mac - Font creation programs - also they allow you to insert special symbols into existing fonts, add signatures, etc.
  • Elefont and Spiralizer  Before 3D Text tool was added to SketchUp 6 and the other text plugins were developed, these were the favored programs among SketchUpper to create 3D text.  Elefont converts system fonts to 3D DWF.  Spiralizer spirals fonts - Free
  • Font managers  Allows for better font management (like temporarily loading fonts and more viewing options) than the built-in system utility.  In XP, the system font viewer is hiding at Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map.
  • WhatTheFont  Web resource which identifies font from an uploaded image.
 

3D

  • 2D text  Effects with the 3D Text tool    
  • 3DTextTool  Smustard plugin - editable 3D text.
 

 
 

 SketchUp File Management

▲


Page View Layout

  • Multiple Views  Wo3Dan - 3D Warehouse file.  Multiple plan view, technical drawing style, within SketchUp..
 

 
 

 Working with CAD and Other Programs

▲

CAD-ish

When you import a DWG or DXF into SketchUp Pro, you should check in the import options (Options button on the Import File dialog box) that the import unit is set to the same unit that was used when creating the file. The default import unit is Feet. SketchUp does not read the unit from the file automatically, and the import unit is set independently of the unit you use when modelling. Also, when importing DWG/DXF files exported from SketchUp into some other application, note that the SketchUp exporter has a small bug that leaves the unit factors that are embedded in the file to wrong values (except if you are using inches) so also in other applications the import unit should be set "manually".

When you export 2D views from SketchUp to DWG/DXF, note that you can only define a scale if the view you are exporting uses Parallel projection (Camera menu) instead of Perspective. A scale relation to reality is impossible and irrelevant to a perspective view.

Anssi
 

Bypass - or co-ordinate with - CAD applications by using LayOut (included with SketchUp Pro)
  • What is LayOut  Official Google SketchUp video
  • Building a Presentation from Start to Finish with LayOut  2008 SketchUp Basecamp video using LayOut beta from SketchUp 6 Pro (LayOut 2 from SketchUp 7 Pro is MUCH better than this dated, but useful, but instructive video indicates.)
  • SketchUp and AutoCAD  2008 SketchUp Basecamp video.  Sexy LayOut techy, schematic drawings with some 3D detailed callouts by Mitchel Stangl around minute 53 in the video - High Quality version.  A case study by Mitchel Stangl with more LayOut drawings.  The other case studies accessed through the link at page top also may be useful.
  • Construction Drawings  viewsion - Projects draw with SketchUp and LayOut, hosted on Picasa (note: the viewer may need to sign in to Picasa to view images.)

'Other' Modelers  A sub-section on the Sage Resources page which lists some CAD programs that play nice with SketchUp.



ArcGIS

ArcGIS to SketchUp and Back  New workflow on working with ArcGIS 10 and SketchUp.

 


Adobe Stuff

  

Spreadsheets

 

 
 

 Navigation Devices

▲
 
 

Not all mice are created equal...

  • Logitech Performance Mouse MX  This mouse has a cordless laser engine with "programmable" buttons.  In other words, you can assign several keyboard shortcuts to the mouse - like Undo and Redo to the Forward and Back thumb buttons.  It even has a plugin called uberOptions to expand the functionality of its SetPoint software. 
    • One of the noteable advantages of going to the bother of installing uberOptions is that it will save your mouse button preferences when updating the mouseware.  Follow the upgrading instructions on the uberOptions web site.
    • The batteries are built-in, no swapping with your own rechargeable batteries.  Maintenance has meant dusting the laser lens and connection terminals in the recharger for continued good performance. 
    • Shop around for best price and good rebate.  Other multiple button mice are out there too.
  • 3Dconnexion has several navigators for the left hand.  It lets you pan, orbit and zoom with one hand while using another SU tool with the right mouse.  Go-2-School has a video demonstrating some uses of the Space Navigator.
  • CadRemote  Maide - iPhone / iPad app which will act as a navigator for SketchUp on Mac and Windows.
  • Got a tablet? Here's a complete set!  Dany0 shares his Macro Key manager for Genius tablets - Optimized for F610.
  • Remotix  VNC remote access tool for iPhone and iPad to touch/control your SketchUp model on Mac, Windows and Linux.
  • Sandiotech  3D mouse with drivers for Goggle SketchUp and Google Earth (but you still only do one thing at a time).
  • Wiimote  Used for presentation - Alex Schreyer


Remap apps

  • AutoHotKey  Remaps keyboard and mouse keys.
  • xpadder  Reconfigures a gamepad.
  • GlovePIE  Reconfigures joysticks, gamepad, 3Dconnexion navigators, Wiimotes, etc. to work in many programs.  A SketchUp Group discussion by Patrick on what he accomplished with this program to-date.
  • JoyToKey  Converts joystick input into keyboard input (and mouse input).
  • X-Mouse Button Control  Remap mouse buttons.


Mac Stuff

 

 
 

 General Computer and Network Management
 

▲

Sister Sites