SketchUp Mastery Foundations: Part Two

1. Introduction & Class Teaser: Welcome to sketch up mastery Foundations Part Two. My name is Victoria Wilson and I am a designer, Digital Creator, and teacher here on Skillshare. I've been working in SketchUp in the design industry for several years now. And I am really excited about sharing my tips and tricks and all the techniques that I've worked out over the years of working in this program. In part two of this sketch at masteries Foundation series, we're gonna be building on the knowledge that we worked on in part one. In this class, we're going to look at using groups and components and talking about some of the differences between the two. As well as working with materials and creating layers to organize your model, as well as creating scenes and using section cuts. Then we'll also take a look at how you can export some of your views of your model to present your projects to clients or to build your portfolio. So I hope you'll get a lot out of this class and I can't wait to see what you do with it. 2. Your Class Project: Okay, So if you go to the project and resources section of this class on Skillshare, you'll see a little more information about what all I would love to see for your class project. And if you see this, See More button. Make sure to click that so you can get all the information. This details, everything I'd like to see for your class project. We're gonna be going over a lot of stuff. We're building a lot on the foundations of your sketch up knowledge from part one in this series. So for your class project, I've laid out the details. Basically, I would like you to either start with the model that I give you or start from scratch, but build something and use the tools and the techniques that I share with you in this class to add materials and organize your model using tags and set up some scenes. And then in the class project, I would like you to share either exported views of your model or if you want to create some screenshots to show how you've used tags and scenes to organize everything. So this is more information about all of that, but I mean, that's pretty much the gist of it. I've also included links for the 3D mouse that I used in part one as well as used in this class. Then there's also a link for the SketchUp 3D Warehouse. And I want to say that if you use that, there's great resources in there, but please be sure to check out the lesson in this class about using components from SketchUp and 3D Warehouse. And pay attention to my best-practices tips for when you find models on there that you want to use. But here's the link for that. And up here you'll find a model that's a basic SketchUp model if you took the part one class, this is essentially the same model that you're going to start with that was in that class. And you won't be able to download this through the Skillshare app. So make sure that you're in a browser, either on your computer or on your tablets to get that. And you can just save it and open it right in SketchUp so that you have the same starting point as an a. And then this is where you would create your project and add your screenshots or add your exported images. Now, the model that I give you looks like this, and this is your starting point. So if you want to start out to have the same starting point as me, this is what you'll get. But hopefully by the end of the class, you might end up with something a little more like this. Not exactly, because obviously these are things that I've made separately and brought into it. But you can see these are some of the things that you'll learn in this class with scenes. And layers are tags if you want to call them that. And I'd love to see what you create as far as your setup for your layers and scenes. So a screenshot for your project is great. But really it's just up to you what you want to show, to show off the skills that you're learning. I can't wait to see what you share. 3. Reminders: Alright, so before we get into the nitty-gritty stuff of this class, I wanted to give you guys a few reminders. First off, I am currently working in SketchUp Pro 2021 on my Windows PC. And I'm using version 21.1.1.332. If you're not sure which version you're currently using, you can go to the top menu to help about SketchUp and then you can see what your version number is if you're working on a different release or on a different platform than me, then you may notice some differences. So if you're working on a Mac, for instance, I believe the toolbars are all floating instead of docked and I'm not sure there's a Default tray. I don't think there's a tray in the Mac version. If you're working in this sketch up online version, this setup is sort of completely different, but the tools are the same for the most part. So you'll still be able to follow along if you're working in that version. So that, that covers that. Next. I want to remind you about part one in this series. So this is part two of this SketchUp mastery foundations. I did a part one. So if you haven't been worked through my part one class in this series, I strongly encourage you to go check that one out before continuing this class. In part one, I covered a lot of basics about how the program is set up, along with the drawing and modifying tools that you'll need for this class, we'll be adding to that foundation to take it even further with your model-building. So there may be some tools that if you haven't taken that first one, I may use some tools are used, some techniques that I don't explain but explained in the first one. So just a reminder. Another thing I showed you in part one of this series that I use a 3D mouse when using SketchUp. This is a staple for me at this point. I will be using it during this class too. There's a link for the 3D mouse in the class description, so you can grab that if you decide you want to use it to. So if you see me moving around the model without using Zoom or orbit, then I'm probably using the 3D mouse. So this is an example of me using the 3D mouse. So you still see the cursor up there for the select tool. But it's not the same as if I was using orbit. I covered this in the first-class, but I just wanted to give you a reminder that I do use the 3D mouse. So, so much and highly recommend it because it just saves you some time and it just makes things so much easier and you can combine it with the orbit tool. It's just very handy. So if you see me moving around and don't see the orbit tool or like how am I doing that? That's what's happening. Another reminder is this model that I'm using here. I've included it in your class resources section. It's the same model that I used in part one. And so this just allows you to open it up and see what I'm seeing. And you're getting the exact same starting point as what I'm working with. So I guess that's it for my reminders. Let's move on to the next lesson. 4. Standard Views: Alright, so we're going to start this lesson off by looking at the standard views that come with SketchUp. And we're going to do that by turning on the Views toolbar so you can right-click on one of your toolbars up here and turn on views. And if it's floating, you can just drag it around to wherever you want. Another way to get this toolbar is going to the top menu to view and toolbars, and then you can check it to turn it on. And just as a little reminder here, under options, I've got the large icons selected just to make it easier for you guys to see larger buttons. For this class. Normally if I'm working not recording a video, I will have that unchecked. So I have smaller buttons to take up less room on my screen. So that's just up to you personal preference on what you want there. But that's where that is. We've got these different standard views that you can use. And typically whenever you open up a SketchUp model, model, you're starting out in the perspective view. And just to refresh your memory from the first-class in this series, you can use the zoom tool and change the viewing angle. So you can see up here it's at 35. You can change the viewing angle to control how your view looks. In this perspective view, I normally like to draw using a 35 or 45-degree viewing angles. So this is 35. If I type in 45 and enter, Here's 45. And if I'm doing a view that an interior room as another example, if I'm like showing a client their space, I will usually switch to a 60 degree viewing angle just because like if you're in a room, it gives you more to look at, then if you're at a 35. So see you can't even like backup of that corner there. So 60 gives you a different look. So that's just another way to customize a somewhat standard view. I'm going to go back to 35 here. But then you have the standard buttons here. The first one on the toolbar is ISO, so it moves the camera into the nearest isometric view of your model. So if I click that, It's, it's pretty much your perspective view, but it's just a little bit different than if you have a scene setup, which if you get lost in your model somewhere and you want to go back to that main view. If you click this working tab, I have it set up just the same as the first-class in this series. And it will take you back out. So if you get zoomed in or out too far and don't know where you're at, just click that tab. The other standard views are, I mean, they're pretty self-explanatory. So let's look at the first one is top, and it shows you the top of your model. Then you have front and you have rights, and then back and then lift. And these are really handy views. If you're trying to look at all sides of your model, you can combine these views with, let's go to front. You can combine these views with a parallel projection. So if you go to View camera, sorry, if you've got a camera and parallel projection, it's going to make it completely flat. So now if you go to any of these other views, as long as you're in that parallel projection, it's a flattened view of your model. So if you turn this on and don't know how to get back out camera, you can switch to perspective. You can always just hit that working tab and it's going to take you back out. So combining the parallel projection with the standard views, these are a great way to show off elevations of a wall or floor plans or things like that. And it's just it's a view that you don't actually have to go in and figure out how to set up because you can get close to it. And if you watch, if I get close enough to the front, sometimes it will pop up on the side while it's gonna be, I say this but it's gonna be tricky sometimes if you get close enough, it will say front on here or one of these flat views. But you can see you can still have perspective and have a standard views. So if you are wanting different looks just like with that field of view thing, I can change the field of view to 60. And I'm still in the top view. And it's giving me like a slightly different perspective than if I was back at 35. So this is just another way to navigate your model. Look at different views of your model and customize what you're actually seeing on the screen. So that's pretty much it for your standard views. Let's move on to the next lesson. 5. Construction Tools and Guides: Okay, Now we're going to turn on the construction toolbar and take a look at those tools. So once again, you can either right-click and choose construction or you can go to the top menu to view and toolbars and turn it on there. So I'm just going to drag this up here and stick it next to the views. First up on this toolbar is the tape measure tool. And if you like keyboard shortcuts, the standard shortcut for this is a T. So the tape measure tool here, it allows you to check measurements and create guidelines which can be really helpful. So you simply start by clicking a starting point and clicking your ending point. Now, if you just hover over the point, you see the measurement. It'll show up next to the cursor as well as up in the measurements bar. If you click, I'm going to start this ever so if you click and then click your ending point, it's going to create a guideline. And these are really handy for if you want to have like a set guide is set and measurement somewhere that you don't have to draw a line. You can use a guideline instead. To give you a practical example of this, I'm going to use the rectangle tool. And I'm just going to draw a wall here and push it up. And four guidelines. Let's say you want to mark out windows on a wall so you can use lines and copy lines over to create your points or you can use guidelines. So I'm going to turn on this. And you can also lock directions with the arrow keys just like what's a lot of other tools. So I'm gonna type in two feet, enter, this is gonna be the bottom of our windows. And then for the top of it, I'm going to do 42 inches. And then I'm going to come in, let's say 30, and come over 30. So now I've got a window location. And I can use the Rectangle tool to trace over these guidelines and then push out the opening. So you can see that I didn't have to draw these extra lines to get this window location. And now I can just delete all of these guidelines at once. You can select them one at a time and delete them. Or you can go to the top menu and go to Edit and Delete guides. And all the guides that you've put in the model have gone. So this can be really handy if you don't want to, like draw all these lines and then erase them all individually. By using guidelines, you get a clean surface, clean lines, and you can delete them all at once. So that's just a really handy way that you can use guides. So remember if you don't click an ending point, then you can just measure and then escape out of it. And you don't have a guideline leftover. So really handy guidelines. So next tool is the dimension tool. This one is that it's self-explanatory there four dimensions. You can also get this From going to Tools and dimensions. You can also get the tape measure up there as well. I don't think I said that, but you can get that there. Did I say that? Anyways, dimensions, these are really simple to. You can click your starting point and your ending point and then lift it up, pull it over, anything like that. And these will snap to other dimensions that you may have. Like, let's say I'm going to put this here. If I draw another one over here, see how it just snaps to that so that they can all be in line. So these are dimension lines are just super handy. This is a great way to quickly show somebody an example of like a wall or casework window openings. If you just need a quick and measurement to share a picture with someone. I've done that before with clients where it's like, can you give me the measurements of this room? I forgot. This is a handy way to do this. You can also change the look of your dimensions. So if you go to Model info. This is either up here in the standard toolbar. You can hit the model info button here, or you can go to the top menu to Window. And model info takes you to the same pop-up window. If you click on dimensions, this gives you a way that you can customize how your dimensions look in this pop-up window. So you can customize the font, the colors, your endpoints, alignment, everything like that. So I'm just going to go through here. I'm going to type in a font. I like to use Oswald. And you'll see that you've got points and height. You can use either one but a point. The point setting reads like a regular font wood, and it's dependent on your view, whereas height is a specific dimensional height that does not change, so it just depends on what you need it for. Typically, I will just go with points, but you can choose whatever you want. So I'm going to change that to Oswald for the font. And I'm going to have two screens, so that popped up on the other screen. That's why why you didn't see that right away. So I'm going to change the color here just to have something different. Hit, Okay? And when you have dimensions already in your model and you make changes to something like this, what you need to do is say select all dimensions and you can see that they highlight. And then you hit Update selected dimensions. And now if I click out of this, you can see that they have now updated to a different font and a different color. So that's, that's another way that you can customize the look on your screen. The next tool is the protractor tool, and it's pretty similar to the tape measure tool. You can also go to Tools and protractor. And it works the same way as the, the tape measure except it does angles. So you can do like this is a 60 degree angle. You can see up in the measurement tool bar up there you can see angles and it will snap to the different parts of the protractor. So you can click on a specific one and it will give you an angle. So if you wanted to, you can use the arrow tools to lock directions as well. So let's say you wanted to know where a 45-degree line on this wall was from this corner. That would be how you can mark that. I'm going to delete this one so that that doesn't get too confusing. But you can see that you've got this 45-degree angled line on this wall. So if you wanted to let's see, let me give you an example of that. If you wanted to do like a pattern or something on this wall, then this is a good way to do that. So I'm going to use the Copy command and go up. And then I'm going to type in six, enter for six times. So now I've got like this lined pattern on this wall at a 45-degree angles. So that's a way that you can use that. And I'm just going to Control Z to undo that. And I'm just going to delete the guides because we don't need that anymore. Alright, so that is your protractor tool. Next up is the text tool. That's this guy here. I've personally set up a keyboard shortcut for that because I end up using it a lot. So my keyboard shortcut for that is j, but that I had to set that up. We'll get into that later in another class. But the text tool that's also up here under tools and text right there. So the Text tool is you see the cursor has turned into like a little litter box. You've got a leader line and a box for text. And that's exactly what it creates. So if you click your starting point of where you want your leader line to go, and then where you want your note to sit. And it comes in with something already in the box and it's highlighted so you can just start typing to replace that if you want. The note can come in with either the square footage of a face or the length of a line. Or it may come in as the name of a component. If you're, if you're clicking on a component to start a note. So if it's a component, you may want that note. If you're wanting this square footage and not having to calculate it, you can do that. But otherwise, this is a good tool for making notes about your project or calling something out to share with the client. Um, it's, it's just, it's a really handy tool. I use this a lot. Sometimes I'll put this on, put notes on my model and put it on a separate layer. We'll get into that and have a note layer so I can just turn off my notes. And these are reminders to come back and do this or Hey, we made this change, we need to update it on the CAD plans or something like that. So if you type your note, you can hit Enter once to go to a second line, or hit enter a second time to close out the note. And let's see if I do this. Let's see this is a components. So you can see when I click on the component, it gives me a component name. You can use this, put multiple ones everywhere and just have like all kinds of different notes in your model. Just like the dimension lines, you can also change the look of these notes as well. So I'm gonna go to model info. Here. You want to go to Text. And we're gonna go to liter text here. And we're gonna change our font. Once again, I like, let's see. Okay, so coffee bean, that's actually a font I created. So I'm just gonna go with that. And I'm gonna hit Okay, and change the color. Make it this color just for something different. And if you make changes, you want to do select leader texts and then update. So you can see that now I've updated, if I click off, you can see that they have all been updated. So this is just a handy way to make notes. You can share views with notes on them if you combine it with a front view for instance. So we talked about that parallel projection. So you can share this view with a client if you need to, with your notes already on it. And the same thing about 0 and height that we talked about in dimensions also applies to this. Next step on our toolbar is axis. This allows you to change the position of the axis in your model. You usually you just want to leave this alone. But if you need to change it, this is how you do it. So you can see you've got your blue, red, and green. If I wanted to change my axis over here, I would click the origin. And then you can see I can change these directions. And then now I've moved my axis. I want to leave my axis the same, so I'm just going to undo that for now, but that's how you would reposition your axis if you wanted to. That's a simple one. Next step, this is a really fun tool. This is 3D texts. And once can, you can find all of these under Tools in the top menu. And so 3D texts. And it's exactly what it says. It creates 3D text. I mean, that's that's just what it does. So when you get this pop-up window, you can type in whatever you want. I'm going to type in Skillshare class just so we have something. They're actually, this is another font that I created. That's kinda weird that it's in here, but you can choose your font in this drop-down menu. And you can choose your alignment. You can choose if it's filled, extruded the height. And this is your extrusion there. So this is your height and this is how thick it's going to be. Now, this, this tool doesn't work like regular texts because literally what you're doing is you're creating texts and turning it into a 3D form. And as we've talked about before in SketchUp, your 3D forms are made up of lines and faces. And so once you create a 3D texts, it becomes a collection of lines and faces. So I'm going to choose the settings and I'm going to say place. And then you can see you can place it on a vertical or a horizontal surface. I'm just going to stick it down here and move around so you can see that. And then does it as a component. So when you have it selected up here and your entity Info, you can see that it's a component and the definition will be whatever's in there. And you can change this. And it's not going to change your text. There's no way to modify the text. Once you've created your 3D letters. And when I say it creates lines and faces, That's exactly what I need. And so you can see these are lines and faces. So you can go in and add materials to these. You can go in and select them and move them around. But they no longer texts. It's a 3D element. So this is fun for if you needed like a large note on a floor plan or something, you can label rooms with this. I'm trying to think of different ways that I've used this in, in practice. The most recent case, oddly enough, of using this 3D text is I was working on a model of a house for a client. And there was a room in their house that was a bourbon lounge. And so I created a sign to go on there, casework of like the name of their lounge. And so that was just a fun way to, to give an example of like they can have a metal sign made that looked like that. And that was one way that I use this 3D texts. So it's a really, really handy tool and I'm just going to leave this in here for later on. Because you can apply materials to this. You can edit it. You can move the letters around. You can move it around and rotate it. If you want to put it on the wall, you can use scale to re-size it like this, but you can't go in and adjust, adjust the height that you originally set because it's no longer editable like regular texts would be. So I'm going to undo this, stick this back on the ground. So that's, that is your 3D text. And that's a wrap for our construction tools and guides. Let's move on to the next lesson. 6. Groups vs Components: Okay, so in this lesson, we're going to talk about some of the differences between groups and components, along with when you might want to use one over the other. I have the same stuck in my head from way back in some grade school class. A teacher once said that square is always a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't always a square. So when I think about the differences between groups and components, for some reason, that's the first thing that comes to mind. By that, I mean that a component is always a group, but a group isn't always a component. So let's compare. I'm going to start out by selecting this cube and I'm going to triple-click to select everything all at once and right-click and make it a group. Then I'm going to use the Move command, so that's M on the keyboard and hit Control to toggle on the copy feature. And I'm going to make a copy of it. Now just to reminder that I'll be using some of the tools and techniques that I showed you in part one in this series in that class. So I may gloss over something like how to create a shape or how to use the Move or Copy command that I covered in the previous class. So if some things like that don't make sense, please pause here, go take a look at that class before you continue on with this one. Okay, so now that I've got a copy of this, I'm actually going to go ahead and do another copy of it. So I've got two copies of this and they are groups. And we're going to look at modifying one but not the others. So I'm gonna double-click to open up this group. And then I can use things like push to adjust parts of it. And you can see that it's only affecting one of these and not the other because it's a group and not a component. So if I were to do the same thing, so I'm going to do copy and I'm going to take this one over here and I'm using my 3D mouse just so I can give us a little more room here. Now, if I were to, I'm going to explode this for a moment. So it's back to just a shape. If I were to right-click on this and say Make Component, then I get this little pop-up window. In this window, you can see where you can name the component by giving it a definition. This is where you can name it. You can give it a description. You can adjust a gluing point axis. You can make it camera facing, give it all kinds of details and replace this selection with the component is checked so that when we hit Create, it's going to become a component. So this is where you can give it all these features. I'm not gonna go into detail on like a bunch of this because I could do a whole class about creating components and building your own component library. But for now we're just looking at the basics of it. So I'm going to take this name and I'm just going to call it custom box just as an example. And I'm going to hit Create. And then I am going to make a copy of it. And let's take a look at the entity Info for these things. So up here in my entity Info panel, you can see I've got this selected. And it says it's a solid component. It says there's two in the model. It tells me the name. And if I were to select both of these at the same time, you can see that its two components, two in the model. And then if I go back to the groups, you can see that it says a solid group. And you could name it if you wanted to. You could see that there's two of them in there because we've got this one here, that was the first one. And you can see that this one because we changed, it says that there's one group. So even though it shows you that there's two, they're still grouped, so not components. So it does give you that count because they're the exact same thing, but it's not the same thing as a component. Because if I go into one of these components, click a surface, you can see that it's, it's doing the same thing to this other one over here. So if I edit this one, it's going to edit that same one. Now, one thing that's really important about paying attention to if you're using components. Paying attention to this entity Info box here is if you end up using lots of components in your model before you change one, this cannot stress this enough before you change one, make sure that you are aware that one it's a component, and two, that you're aware of how many others that you're gonna be affecting. Because you don't want to accidentally make a change to this component and change 20 other. The same thing in your model. Like if you wanna do that on purpose, great, it's going to save you time because you edit it once and it does it in 20 places. But you don't want to accidentally change the size of one window and change 20 Windows on your house. I mean, not that you would have 21 that is the same size on your house because that would be not not good. It probably wouldn't look good. But you get what I'm saying. Like, you always check how many of this same instance of this component that you have before you go in and edit it. Some of the reasons why using groups and components are great. When elements are grouped, you won't be accidentally messing them up if you were to move a group over top of another group. Whereas if it was individual lines, once you move it into other individual lines, some faces, you can unstick them, okay, So you don't want to accidentally mess something up. So if you group it, you can keep it separate, you can still edit it, you can still move it around. So another point that is amazing actually is using grips and components in your model instead of just loose geometry actually speeds up your model. And if you get into a really complicated model, speed is everything because it's going to help tremendously by grouping and making components. It speeds up your model. It makes things easier to edit and move around and kinda show you that they're, an example would be if you're building a model of a house and trying to work out where you want walls to go. Like if you're just kinda schematic planning for a floor plan, you could use individual walls that are groups and move them around, rotate them, adjust their placement until you get the layout that you want. Then you can always ungroup them and integrate them all together later when you've decided on where you need everything to actually go. So that's one way that I love using groups and working out schematic plans, do that all the time. Some examples of how I use groups versus components. With components, I might use them for roofs, for light fixtures, railings, furniture, windows, doors, cabinets, casein assemblies for doors and windows, things like that. I also use components for entire models of homes or sites. For homes versus groups. I might use groups for floor structures, walls, assigning group porches, size references. If I just need to work out something like that, That's a way I might use scripts. If you want to use a component for a starting point. So let's say, imagine this is a really complicated piece of furniture or something. And you want to use that as a starting point and make a change but not affect the other one that's in the model. So I'm going to make another copy over here was kind of lots of copies. If you right-click, you can make it unique so that you've got that same starting point, but then you can come in here and do something different with it. And it's not going to affect those other ones. And then now you've got a whole other component. You can also do this if you have multiples, like let's say you have like four or five copies of one component. If you select them at one time, you can make all of them unique. So it's just, it's very handy. Components cannot say this enough. Very, very handy. What else? Okay, so the last thing about components, before we move on to the next lesson, if you have a separate SketchUp model you're working on, you can actually import that model into another model and it will automatically come in as a component. So this allows you to make changes to that original model separately and then just reload any changes. So an example from my own personal workflow is I may create a site model so that I have the topo of a lot for Hassan I'm working on and maybe like retaining walls or anything like that, then I might create a separate model in a separate file of the house. So I can combine those two things in another model by just importing those in that way, if the site is going to stay the same no matter what. But I may have like different versions of the house and I can just reload them or maybe it's the same side and I want to reload a different house into it. So to do that, if you want to import a model, I've got an example to show you. I'm going to make sure that I have this up. If you go to File and Import, then you get this. Let's see. I'm going to go to, I'm copying from my other screen here. So just an example here. This is a basic bedroom model. I can click this and say import or double-click it. And it's going to bring this in as a component automatically. So when it comes in, you can see it's, it's basically asking like where do you want to put it so you can put it anywhere? I'm just going to stick it off to the side over here. So you can see that when I click it now it shows that it's a component. It gives me the file name. And if I were to open up this file and make a change. So let me see. I'm going to open that up so you can see what I mean here. If I were to open up this model and let's say I wanted to change out the furniture or change the wall colors, change out the light fixtures. I can reload that and not have to re-import it. I can just right-click on it and say Reload. This is gonna be our example here. So this is, this is this model. Okay? So if I were to come in and let's say I just want one over here and I can hit save or Control S. And that'll, that'll do save for me. And I can go back into this right-click and say reload. And it makes sure you're choosing the right location and say Open. And it's going to give it a minute, but it's going to reload it without me having to re-import it. My changes are already there. So this is a good way to use components. It's automatically a component there. And obviously if I hit undo, we go back to what it was. But so here's, here's how you can use that. Now, like I said before, I could do an entire class on creating your own components and building your own component library. Because it's very handy. I have my own component library, but we're gonna get into that. Next. We'll not the component library, but using other components. And we're going to look at how to pull in components already made for you in the SketchUp Warehouse. So that's gonna be our next lesson. 7. Using Components from SketchUp and the Warehouse: Okay, so now that we've gone over the differences between groups and components, Let's talk about using components from SketchUp and from others through the 3D warehouse. So we're going to start out this discussion by looking at the Components panel. That's this guy over here. And I'm just going to walk you through where everything is and how to use them. So first up is the select tab here and the first button, this allows you to, this is where you select components you want to use, but this first button allows you to change the view of the components of your thumbnails. You could do ListView, you could do details view, anything like that. So this is where this is where you adjust that. The next button is in models. So this shows you, when you click on it, it shows you what components are currently in your model. And next is this little arrow. This is your navigation. So this gives you a list of catalogs or categories to search through and also shows you those that you've chosen as favorites. Now, yours will look different from mine, since I do have my own component library that I've built. And it has several catalogues, so I've customized my favorites list. And your recent show up down here. These first couple here are the components sampler and then dynamic components training. You'll probably see those in your list because those came in from SketchUp. But any of the other ones that SketchUp had here as the favorites, I favorited those because those pull from the warehouse and we'll get into that in a moment. But this is, this is where you can choose different catalogs. So if I go to appliances, these are my catalogs that I've created, so yours will look different, but but this is, this is where you would see stuff like that here. Then next step is your 3D Warehouse Search bar. This is where you can look for components that other people have made and uploaded to the 3D warehouse and add them directly into your model. So if I were to type chandelier, hits, Enter, it's going to search the 3D warehouse for any models that either are a chandelier or have a chandelier that someone has uploaded to the 3D warehouse. Now, I can, I'll go into more detail about the 3D warehouse in just a bit. But for now, I do want to go on the record and really stress that I do not recommend using this search feature for the warehouse unless you're just playing around and not working on a legitimate project. And I'll give you my reasons for that. But later when we talk about the 3D warehouse, but I just wanted you to be aware of what that search bar is. It's pulling from the 3D warehouse. So you can see that these are models that people have made and shared to the warehouse. And it's not going to show you all of them because the 3D warehouse is vast. And so you can see one through 12 of about 4,981. So its vast. The 3D warehouse is vast, so, but I just want to stress that I do not recommend using this search feature for the warehouse. I just don't recommend doing it, but I just want you to know that that's what that is. Then next is the details. So that's this button here. This is where you can open or create a local collection, save a collection, and that's, that's what that is there. And then here is the Edit toolbar or Edit tab. This is where you can edit certain aspects of a component that you've selected and applied to your model. Honestly, have never ever use this. Never used it. But I just want you to know what it is. And then statistics, this is where you can see the statistics of a component and honestly, never use this tab either. Select is the only tab I really use here and all the stuff with it. Then up here you'll notice this top little arrow button. Let me scroll down a little bit so you can see this. I'm going to adjust this. So this pulls up a secondary selection panel and I never use this. It's honestly, it's a little confusing to have this. I don't use a secondary panel, I just use one, but that's what that button is. Now. To place components that you've chosen from the panel. Literally you just click it and pop it in. That's it. That's all you do. If I were to go to another one of my categories, Let's see. Let's go to something random here. Let me say random, but these are all things that I've used. So C is super simple to just select it and you place it. That's it. Now, where it comes in, how the component comes in, where it's lined up in your model when it comes in is all dependent on the insertion point of that component. So side note, when I'm making components, I'm a huge stickler for proper placement of an insertion point. Ideally, you would want to bring in a component, place it where you need it without having to move it multiple times. I mean, moving in once, that's not a big deal, but if you have to move it several times to get it where you want it, it's kind of annoying. So the location of your, of your insertion point is key. Now, an example of that. Let's say I'm gonna go to my cabinets here. Let's just get a bass cabinets. My insertion points for my cabinets are at the, at the back corner. So if I pull in a cabinet here and then I grab another one, It's going to come in at that back corners so I can snap it and insert it right next to another cabinet. And it's just that simple. I can just pull them into a whole row of cabinets. Obviously, if I need to move them, I can. But it's just really simple to just pop them in because that's where the insertion point is. Now, if the insertion point was in the middle at the top or in the middle at the back, then I would have to bring it in and then move it again to line it up so the insertion point is key. Another example of the insertion point being a key thing that I cannot stress enough is super important. Let's say I want to bring in a chandelier. Obviously, your chandelier is going on the ceiling and it usually is centered over a table in the dining room or it's centered in the room like you see this one here. So I would want, if I'm bringing a chandelier, I want to click it where it needs to go and be done with it, right? So I might, if I, let's use this room as an example. If I'm bringing in a chandelier, I want it to center in this room. Then I might start out with drawing a line here. Actually, let's go ahead and make this a group so I'm not affecting that. And I might draw a line so that I now have a midpoint. So you can see I've got a midpoint to snap to. And if I go to my lighting and pick out a chandelier, let's just go with this one. When I pull it in, my insertion point, you can see is the center point of that canopy. So that when I pull it in, I can just snap it to the midpoint there of that line. And there you go. There it is. Now obviously this is not tall enough to be an actual room. But you get what I'm saying. When I pull it in, I can put it on that midpoint and I'm done. I don't have to move it. Move it again. Now, obviously, you could also do if you are going center point, the center point, you could do a center point of this wall and then click like this to move it to the center. Either way, the insertion point is here. If the insertion point was, let's say like down here and off to the side somewhere, then you would have to place it. And then zoom in and find your center point and then line it up. So if your insertion point is already in the center of that canopy, you place it and you're done. So I could do, I think I mentioned this in the last lesson, but I could do an entire class on creating your own components and building your own component library because it's a game changer, It's amazing. Now, let's look at the 3D warehouse. So I mentioned that you can type something in here and we looked up. Let's spell things correctly. We looked up chandelier so you can search things here. Now, I've included the link to the 3D warehouse website in the class resources section. So this is where you'll find tons of components made by individuals and by companies. More and more companies are getting on that bandwagon and making them. But let's look at. The 3D warehouse. So this is the 3D warehouse. You can search anything up here and look for it. So sometimes you'll see a component by c. This says from SketchUp and nano wall. If you recognize some names, more and more vendors are getting on this bandwagon, like I said. But you can search in anyone can upload. Anyone can create a model that will be a component. Anyone can create an uploaded if you have a SketchUp account. So I just did a search for chandelier just to give you an example. And you can see there's lots of stuff in here. But most of the components that I use are ones that I've personally made or and saved into my own component library that I've built. I do still use the warehouse when I'm looking for maybe appliances from vendors or for a component that's close to what I need if I just need like a representation. And it doesn't necessarily have to be exact. And I can just edit it that I showed you the search bar. And I like I said, I'll say I'll say it again. If you ask me later on, I'll tell you again. I don't recommend using that search bar in SketchUp in your model. Now, it may seem like extra work to go to the 3D warehouse website and do a search and save it. Because he you can download it and it's going to, you can choose what version to download it and save it to your computer so that you can open it and check it. And it may seem like extra work, but here's the reason. Some people share models that are really good. If you find a person that creates really good models consistently, save their page. You can save these into collections and you're on your own profile so you can go back and reference them. But if you find someone good, save them so you can use it again. But there's gonna be like they'll, they'll do models that maybe are to scale and have great insertion points and they're built functionally and they look legit. But then you're going to find some people who are just having fun with SketchUp. And that's great, Have fun with it. And they'll build things proportionally instead of two scales. So that chair that looks great that you bring into your model may be the size of a house. And you may think of like I say this because it's happened. Or you see what what may look like a single light fixture on the 3D warehouse and you're like, Oh, it's a great chandelier. But when you bring in that component, there's some weird image reference of the product off to the side. And the model itself is a million miles away from the insertion point. And there's all kinds of extra layers and materials and things like that in the model. So these are just examples of things that I've come across. And if you're using the SketchUp Warehouse and you download the model, that gives you the opportunity to open it up, clear out any extra weird things, check the size, check the units, so it matches your model. Move it around so the insertion point works for you. And then you can put into your model or just copy it and paste it in there. But if you bring it in directly from here, you can't do that and you may be bringing in all kinds of weird stuff. So for example, like this, it most likely this one right here is going to have some 3D model in it, but then also a picture. So you just don't know. Like I was trying to way back in the early days of SketchUp, trying to show my dad and example of, Oh, look at all these cool things you can bring in. And I brought it in a motorcycle because he was a big motorcycle guy. It was the size of a house. It was huge. It was like ten feet tall. So then you have to resize it and it's a whole thing. So I loved the 3D warehouse. It's a great, great tool, highly recommended, especially if you're just starting out because there's some really great models on here. There's some not-so-good ones that I would never use, but there's others that are really amazing. So it's a great thing. But just go to the website and seller of pulling it directly in. So it gives you that opportunity to check it because you don't want to accidentally bring something that you don't want directly into your model. So that is a wrap for hours, SketchUp, Warehouse components lessons. So let's move on to the next topic. 8. Working with Materials: Okay, so now let's have some fun using materials. So there are a few different ways to bring up the material option. You can use the paint bucket up here from the principal toolbar. Or you can go to the top menu to tools and paint bucket. And either one of those is going to bring up the materials panel. So I keep the materials panel in my Default tray because I use it all the time. And yours may look different from mine because I do have my own material library built in. But let's take a look at what all is on the panel and how to use it. So first up is this large icon here is going to show you whatever material is currently selected. Most likely you're going to start out with the default material, which you can see is white on top and this blue color on the bottom unless you go in and change that. That is your standard default material. Here is the select tab. This may look fairly similar to the Components panel that we've already looked at. But with the select tab, you guys sit, this is where you select a material to using your model. Now, next up, you've got a force and back button. These may be grayed out if you haven't looked at material collections at all. But if you have gone through and selected a collection of materials than these may highlights. So you can go forwards and backwards depending on what you've previously looked at. And this is your end model button or your home button. So this will show you any materials that are either currently in your model or have been putting your model at some point and haven't been removed. So that's, that's what this is. Next is your Selection Drop-down. Client's head, yours may look different, but a lot of these are built-in to sketch up. So you can select one of these. If you've added one of your own, then they'll show up down here at the bottom under this line. But this is your, your favorites list of collections. And when you click on one, it's going to bring up whatever materials are in that collection. So you can see there are several that's automatically built into SketchUp. Next step is the Details button. So this gives you options for changing your thumbnail view or into a list view, as well as opening and creating collections and adjusting your favorites. Then you've got the Edit tab. So this is where you can edit some of the properties of a material that you've selected and have applied to your model. And just like with the Components panel, there is a secondary panel option up here at the top. I never use this. This might be good for sampling other materials, but that's what that is up there, this secondary panel. Then this button is for creating a material. And when you click this, it's going to start with whatever material is currently selected over here as your starting point. So if your default material is selected, when you hit this button, it's going to bring up this little pop-up box that shows you what the material is. You can name it, you can change your colors, you can add a source image. You can adjust the scale, the opacity, all of that. And this is if you start with the default material, if you're creating a material on your own and using a separate image as a reference, then typically this is what you want to start with. But if you were to select any other material and hit the Create Material button, then you're using that material as your starting point. So then you could go in and adjust that and play around with some of the settings and get something different. So that's, that's what, that is. Next step. You've got this button, this sets your material back to the default. You always have that default option to go back to there. This is your sample button, your eye dropper. This allows you to click on the material in your model or on a piece of furniture on the floor in a component, anything like that. And when you click on it, it samples it and makes it your selected material so that you can see what it is there, That's your sample. So to apply a material, you simply click on the material you want to use. And I'm going to sample this one. You click on the material you want to use, and then you click where you want to apply it. So I've grouped these so that the cabinets are altogether so you can see one-click. Does them all. Now, if I were to undo, I can explode this group so their individual components. So I can click one and change the color of that. You can apply materials to single faces if you want, instead of a group so that you can see, I'm going to move around here. You can see that it's just uncertain sides. So depending on what you're going for, May 1 be better over the other. Typically, I like to apply things to groups as necessary. So for cabinets, here's an example. When I go back to the default material, if I have a kitchen full of casework and all the cabinets are going to be the same color, then I'll typically group those cabinets and then apply that to the groups. So I don't have to go in and click and click and click on every individual cabinet. That way if I wanted to change the color again some time, let me go to my pink catalog. Let's say I want to change the color to this with one click. I can do an entire room full of casework instead of individual walls. So applying to a group is very handy. It saves you time. It saves you hassle, as opposed to applying to individual phases. Now sometimes you need to apply to an individual face, but you can just determine which you want to do. And if you select a group, you can see in our Entity Info that the group has this color applied to it. And if I select a face, you can see that the top here is this pink color and then the bottom is the default color. If I were to make this a group, keeping in mind that some have material and some don't. Some sides. If I were to make this a group, then I get this. So the group itself has the default material. But if I go inside the group, I can see that I've got individual phases. So just like in this, if I click on inside the group, I can see that these cabinets have the default material applied to it, which allows us to change the color of the whole group of cabinets at once. If I came in here and did this one cabinet in this color, and then wanted to change the whole group. It's only going to change the ones that have the default color applied. And it's going to ignore this one because it has its own material applied. So hopefully that makes sense. If you're going to apply to a group, usually you want everything inside that group to be the default material. Unless you purposely want that to be different. I like that color. We're gonna go with that one. Next up, let's look at editing materials. And I'm going to explode this group so I can show you something fun with editing materials if you use your eyedropper. And this will be a good example because we have wood here. I'm going to choose this one. This is my selected material and I'm going to apply it to a couple of different faces. Now you can use the same technique of selecting everything and changing the color all at once if you want so that you get all the sides. But it's just up to you as to how what your needs are for applying materials. But I'm going to select this and apply it here just so we can look at editing. So when you want to edit the color, this is the color that's selected. It's in our model, which means now we have the opportunity to edit. So if you click on the Edit tab, you can change different settings on it. And you can see that because this material is applied in different places, it's changing everywhere. Now, if I wanted to use this as a starting point, then I could do create material. And we're just, we'll just leave the name alone for now. And I'm going to adjust this and apply it to our shapes so we can see that now this is a material and this is a different one. They started out the same just like if you have components, which talks about this in a previous lesson, you can have one component as a starting point. And adjust it. So here's, here's another way you can do that with materials. And you can change the materials source, the image source, the scale if you want. So if I wanted to adjust this, you can see that the scale changes. And you can, you can adjust the opacity if you want to. You can. Sometimes this colorized feature helps, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it makes it really weird. You can play around with that. One thing to keep in mind is if you scale an object with a material, applied, it, if it's a group, it's going to scale the material. But see, this is loose geometry, so the material is just flowing with it. If I were to group this and scale it, it scales the material in obviously a weird way. So keep that in mind when you're applying material. I'm going to undo that, so it's back to normal. Another really fun way to edit materials. And it only works if it's applied to an individual face, not to a group like in this instance. But you can right-click and say texture. And you can do position. And you can actually come in here and adjust the scale and positioning. And this allows you to snap so you don't accidentally get weird with your material and make it a weird dimension. But you can play around with that. And see now I've turn these wood boards on an angle as opposed to straight. So you can you can play around with materials that way and you can if you mess it up, you can always hit Reset position. But that's a really fun way to change your material to. You can just rotate it if you want to. You can change your origin point for this. You can tweak it, do all kinds of stuff with it. So that's really fun. But this option only works if it's a, if it's applied to an individual face. So if I were to use this same material on this group, you don't get that option to edit the materials. So if you needed to have the majority of the group in one material and maybe like one face, like let's say you wanted the wood grain on these cabinets to go this way, but on this face you wanted to rotate it. You would just go into that component or that group and apply that material to that face so you could edit it. So that is just a fun way that you can play with materials. And I can do an entire class just like with components, I could do an entire class on creating your own materials and building your own material library because it's extremely handy. And if you're doing lots of models, lots of projects, it's very good to have. So that's a wrap for our materials lesson. Let's move on to something else. 9. Creating and Using Tags: Alright, so next we're going to talk about tags. And depending on how long you've been working in SketchUp, you may also call these layers. That's what they used to be called anyways, so if you hear me slip up and say layers instead of tags, That's what I'm referring to because since I've been using SketchUp since 2006 up until the end of, I believe, 2021. That's what they were called layers. So now they're tags. You can either turn on the tag toolbar or use the tag panel in your tray. So you can right-click on your toolbars and choose tags. And I'm going to stick this right up here under measurements here. Or you can go to the top menu and view toolbars and turn on tags here. And then for your Default tray, just as a reminder, if you don't know how to customize your Default tray, you can right-click managed tries and choose what you want to show up or go to the top menu to Window, Default tray and tags. So that's how you get those. This is our tray here and our tag panels. So let, before we get into what makes up the tag panel, Let's talk about reasons for using layers or tags, whatever you want to call them. Tags are an important way to keep your model organized and more manageable. They allow you to separate different groups and elements in an organized way. You can turn tags on and off as needed without moving things out of the way or getting rid of parts of your model only to bring them back in when you need them. So keeping in mind that I'm coming at this from an interior design and home design mindframe. Some examples for tags could be walls, floors, furniture, lighting, decor, casework, notes, windows, doors, roofs. You get where I'm going with this. So having parts of your model on different tags that can be turned on and off as needed, can sometimes speed up your model performance. So for example, components with a lot of geometry. A good example of that would be like plants that have lots of leaves and polygons and just lots of shapes or ornate casework might actually slow down viewing and working in your model. So if you can turn those off with one click when you don't need them, then you can speed up the process. Sometimes you may have elements of your model that get in the way of something that you're trying to work on or getting in the way of seeing something else. So if you can temporarily turn those off instead of moving them off to the side or hiding them in a different way than it can be really helpful. So an example of that could be you, you're trying to lay out a furniture plan for a family room, but you have a vaulted ceiling with beams overhead. So if you create a tag for sealing details and put that ceiling structure and the beams on that tag, you can turn it off and it's out of the way. You can still see your walls to their full height. You can still see, you know, where to put the furniture. So that's a, that's another example there. So let's look at the tags panel here. First off, let's talk about the lists. Now yours. Feel like I say this with every feature that we talked about, yours may look different from mine. Typically you'll come in with just the untagged layer. This is your default layer. And I'm going to say layer here because it feels weird to say your untagged tag. That just feels weird to me. So your untagged layer is what we're going to call this. That's your default thing, that, that may be the only layer you have now, because I've started pulling in some examples to share with you. You can see that I've got a couple here. So D for me stands for detail, and that is the fire that's in this little fireplace. And then this stands for line work for doors and windows swings. So that would be these dashed lines you see here on my cabinets. So that's your list here. Now, your list is made up of several different things. First, you see these eyes. This controls your visibility. I already mentioned that this layer, the door swing is for these dashed lines on the cabinet. So with the eye, if I turn that on and off, you can see that those things are on that tag and they disappear. Now you'll see if I turn on this visibility, this is sort of a side note thing. I think this is a bug in SketchUp right now that they just haven't fixed. Sometimes, when you adjust the visibility, you'll see that your layer name highlights. If you're not careful, you will accidentally changed the name of your layers. So just keep an eye out for when it does that. I think it's a current bug, but I just want to point that out because I've almost accidentally change the name of my tags several times while working on models because of this bug, because it highlights it. And then if you use a keyboard shortcut to go to your next command, It's going to want to override that. So just want to point that out so that if that happens and you're like, Why is my tag say, Oh, it's because you turn off the visibility and then hit over orbit. I guarantee you that's what happened. I say that because it's happened to me. So just want to give you that little heads up to be on the lookout. So the eyeball here, that's your visibility. Next up is the name. That's pretty obvious, it's the name of your tag. And then this is a color that is automatically generated by SketchUp for that layer. Honestly, I don't, I can't think of a time that I've ever use this. You can change this color if you want to. But honestly, I don't think I've ever use it. Then dashes, this is kinda like your line type or your lines style. This is still fairly new feature to sketch up. I feel like it came out in 2021. Maybe. Still feels fairly new, I guess. But it allows you to set a line style. You can see I mentioned this as dashed lines over here. If I change that to dotted, you can see that these lines turn to dotted. And let's go back to dashes because I like that. Now, this is not like a materials, so don't think of it like a material. Um, because it's, it's only for lines. So you can apply a line type or line style here to a layer. And it's not going to take away your material on that layer. It's not going to change anything like that as far as what's going on and you can't apply it to individual lines like a material. So if I were to take this group and put this whole group on this layer, and I'll show you more about assigning layers. But you can see that now all of my lines have turned into this dashed line style. So I just want to point out, it doesn't function like a material. It's literally just for the lines on that layer. So I'm going to hit Undo so that you don't get confused there. Then next up is your pencil. So you can see this little pencil icon here that shows that that is your current layer that you are drawing on. So this is, this is important to know. I, my way of working is that I draw everything on this untagged layer. Then if I'm going to assign layers, I'll assign them to groups or components, but I don't draw in any other layer. And the reason for that is because you don't want to accidentally be drawing on your window layer. And then you go to turn it off and half of your wall disappears. So I give you that as an example because I've seen it happen to someone else who accidentally change their current layer to their window layer and drew a wall, just one side of it before they realize. So keep that in mind. My pro tip here, if you want to Call me a pro here, is that I draw in the untagged layer and then just assign layers, two groups and components. That's, that's my tip on like the best process here. So you can sort your layers by name. And that's what this little arrow is. So you can sort up or down and it does it alphabetically. So keep that in mind when you're naming your layers. That's why you see the asterisk here on these because I might create a layer that says interior or exterior or furniture or something. And those are going to go below any of these layers that I like to refer to as like notes and extras. So those types of layers, I put it with a little asterix, so they always are at the top of the list. That's just what works for me. Doesn't mean it has to work for you, but that's just a tip there. Then of course you've got all of these have a Details options. So this allows you to delete tags, purge, color by tag, select things, expand and collapse. Those come into account when you're talking about tagged folders. We'll get into that in just a moment, but that's what those are. So this button here, this L plus sign, that is obviously to add a tag. So you can create a tag and call it casework, hit Enter to set that. And you can see that it automatically comes in with a randomly generated color and then the default line type until you assign it one. And then a tag folder allows you to create a folder for grouping layers together. So if you had a tag folder for details, then you can hit this little arrow and collapse them. And so within it, you've got casework. Examples of the reason why that automatically went in there is because it was selected when I chose that. So if I hold down the Control key and select two layers at a time, I can hit a tag folder and call this notes and extras. That's just kinda wanna think of for these. So you can, unlike layers which sort by name, you can also sort by name, but you can move things around in here a little bit. You can move things from different layers. So you can move this up to here. You can move this out. So you can't really do that with layers, but you can do that with folders to move those into different folders. I hope that makes sense. So I said I put the asterisk there so it goes to the top. So I'm going to do that so you can see what I mean by that. So that's your tag folders. So some examples of how you could use that is, you could do a tag folder for exterior, one, for interior one foresight. And you can have those different folders grouping things together and then you can have your individual layers underneath it. So if you had an interior group or folder, then you could have underneath that, you can have walls, floors. If you had a decor folder, if you wanted to separate your decor and have pillows on one curtains on it, however you want to organize your model. This gives you that extra, extra layer, if you will, of organization. Pun totally intended there. One thing that I've noticed about these tag folders that I feel like is important to point out is that they only apply to this specific model that you're working on. So in a previous lesson, I showed you about how you could import another model into your file and it becomes a component. So when it comes to these tag folders, if you import, if you import that model into another model, then your tags will appear. Those all transfer and they're fine. But the tag folders don't transfer. So if you still wanting to use them, then you would need to set those up again because for some reason they don't transfer the layers do the tags do, but the folders don't. So those were more of this model only type of thing. But I felt like that that was important to mention. The tag folders are a good way if you end up with 50 tags in your model. If you have ten tags for exterior, ten tags for interior, then you've got five tags for your site. And then you've got a whole grouping of references for floor plans and elevations or anything like that that you've pulled in from CAD. So the folders can be really handy. But just just remember that they don't transfer to other drawings. That to me sound, it seemed important to mention you can delete a layer by right-clicking it. And you can say delete tag. You can delete an entire tag folder if you were to right-click on that. And since I'm using this door swing layer as an example, I've told you that it's over here. If you were to right-click on something that has been assigned to, something that's been assigned to that layer. If I say delete tag, I'm going to get this pop-up box that asked me what I wanna do with the stuff that's on that layer. So you can automatically assign it to another layer, either untagged or something else, or you can delete those entities along with that layer so that, that lets you know if you go to delete something by accident and you're like, Oh, I didn't realize that that light fixture was on the wrong layer. This helps you figure that out. So that's something to remember. So I mentioned this a few minutes go, but I'll say it again. I don't draw in tags other than the untagged layer unless there is a specific reason. I always draw in the untagged layer and then organize my models by assigning tags to groups, or as I like to call them families of groups. So when I say families have groups, so what I mean is, and I've, I've used this example for years and I hope it makes sense, but we'll use this cabinet little group here. So to me, this would be a family that's made up of these individual groups. So that's what I mean when I say that this family group gets the tag and this family group gets the material. And that's just the system that's worked best for me. That doesn't mean that you have to do it. It doesn't mean that it works best for you if that's too confusing. But for me it speeds up my process so that I don't accidentally assigned one cabinet to the wrong layer or give one cabinet the wrong color. So that's if you hear me say that, that's what I mean. So let's take a look at, I'm creating some tags and organizing this model just to give you some examples of how I might do it and how you could do it. So first step, what I would do is I would make sure that everything in here is a group so that nothing can accidentally intersect with something else. So most of these I've already assigned to, I've already turned into groups, but some of these shapes I have not. So I'm going to start by doing that. If I were to organize my model, this is obviously a component soft worry about that. I've already done this one. So I've got this ball and then I've got this shape. And because they go together, I might hold down the Shift key or Control key and select them both and make those groups so that they stay together and don't get separated. Then we have this one. So now I have my groups. So let's say I want to put all of those shapes on a layer. So I'm going to create one that's called shapes. And then I've got one that, let's say thins sudden, we're going to create one room just to give you some examples. So the room, I am going to assign this to that room layer. So in the entity Info, I can come up here to tag and I can say room. So now when I select it, I can see that this is on the room. If I were to get all of my little groups here, all my little shapes, I'm just holding down the Shift key so I can select those. And I'm going to say make group. And then I'm going to assign those two shapes. And then this one, I mean, I'm sure you can guess. Let's go to fence. I'm going to assign this one to a room because I mean, that's what it is. And then this one I can assign to casework. I'm gonna go ahead and group this guy because I forgot that. And let's just, let's just assign that to shapes as well. And we're just going to Norse it. Well, I can put this on the fire layer just because we already have that fire layer, technically that fire layers inside there. I can create a people group. And put these two ladies on the people group. You could do a wall group and even a dimension group. So if I do a dimension group, I'm going to put a little asterisk. And I will probably go ahead and put that under notes. So it goes in there. Then while we're in here, I'm going to do another one for notes. So I'm going to select our notes and we're going to put that on the notes layer. And then let's zoom in here and get our dimensions. And we're gonna put that on the dimensions layer and group our wall so it can go on the wall layer. Oh, look, we've got lighting too. So let's do a whole line. Okay. We're going to throw that on lighting. So I guess we're going to put this one on notes just so that everything is assigned. Now one thing you one way you can check and see if you miss something is if you come in here and I'm going to hold down the Shift key to select all of these and turn them off. And so now everything is turned off so I can see that everything has been assigned to a layer. Nothing has been left out. So that's just a fun way that you can well, I mean, fun to me. That's just the way that you can check things. So yeah, there you go. And you know what? Since these dimensions are connected to this wall, I might want to group them. And then also group them what that wall so that they're there. So technically this is on the untagged layer, but that way if I were to move this, I don't risk losing my dimension. So it's all up to you how you want to organize things, but that's just some examples of how you can do it. You can also assign things, layers within groups. Show, let's say, we know that our shapes here on the shapes layer. So if I were to create a layer for ball, I could still go in here and assign this to the ball layer so that I can turn that off. And it doesn't affect that, that other group. But if I turn off shapes, it's going to go to because it's all about how it's layered and grouped. Those are just some examples of how you can create layers and assign layers. And the last thing I'm going to talk about for this tag lesson is the tag toolbar. So there's some differences between the entity Info information and the tag toolbar. So let's take a look at that. So here's the tag toolbar. Now, you can see, just like the pencil icon in the panel here that shows the current layer, you can see that we have the checkmark here for that representing your current layer. And I also want to point out that you can notice that this is white. And that's very important to notice because if I have something selected, that little icon there turns into a cursor and this turns yellow. So this visual difference is important to recognize because you don't want to accidentally change something to where you're assigning something to a different layer or accidentally drawing in the wrong layer. Because if you come up here and choose lighting, for example, you can see that now I have made the lighting tag be my current layer. When really I meant to change this to the lighting tag. So it's very important to recognize the difference between the cursor with yellow versus the checkmark and white. So if you think that you can't remember that and recognize, like keep that as something that you don't want to accidentally mess up. Then you can always ignore this toolbar and just deal with tags through the entity Info box. Because I say this and I want to point this out because once again, back to that example I gave you earlier. You don't want to accidentally be drawing on your window layer. And when you're drawing the faces of a wall, and then you go to turn off that layer and half of your wall disappears because it's on the wrong layer. So if this is if this is too confusing with the white and the yellow and the check mark, and then just ignore this toolbar. Don't use this toolbar if that's too confusing to you. Because you always want to draw in the untagged layer and you only want to assign layers, two things that you're selecting. You can do that through the entity Info and ignore this toolbar completely. So if this white, yellow thing is too confusing, my tip, don't use the toolbar. Use the entity Info so that I feel like I can't stress that enough. So that is it for our tag lesson. So let's move on to the next topic. 10. Creating and Using Scenes: In this lesson, we're going to take a look at creating scenes of your models. So I have the scenes panel and turned on in my Default tray. You can turn this on by going to right-clicking on your Default tray and say manage trays and turn it on from the list of options. Or you can go up to the top menu, go to Window and Default tray and get the same pop-up. So this is the scenes panel here. And before we dig into the scenes panel and creating scenes on it gives you a little example of what you can use scenes for. Scenes are great way to quickly navigate through your model by using the saved views. So if you have a really complicated model, you don't have to navigate to different areas over and over again. Each time you need to go there, you can set up pre saved views by using scenes. I always like to have one quote unquote working scene, which you can see in the model I gave you in the resource section of this class. And the purpose of creating a working scene is to have that one overall basic view that you can quickly come back to if you've moved around in your model and you zoom in and out, or go too far away or gets stuck in a piece of furniture or something. If you have a working scene, you can click it and go back to that same basic original point of view. Scenes are also great for creating views of your model that you want to share with someone like your client, for example, if you have a view set up ready to go, you can quickly go to it whenever you need it. If you have a client meeting and you want to set up scenes ahead of time to go over certain aspects of the design. That's one way you can use scenes. They're handy when you need to look at different parts of your model in perspective view versus looking at flat on elevations or in a parallel projection view. So if you set up the view once as a scene, then you won't have to recreate it every time you need it. Now let's look at the scenes panel. You should have if you're working with the model that I gave you in the resource section, then you should have one view already set up and showing here. And this is the thumbnail view here. This is where all your scenes will live, I guess. You could say in, in a thumbnail or list view. And if you've changed that viewpoint at some point you've created a scene, you change the viewpoint. This first button here is going to allow you to update that scene. Now, I'm going to encourage you not to update the working scene. If you, in the model I gave you, if you want to be able to come back to that same view. But if you create another scene and change it, that's what this update button is for. So obviously next you've got Addison and remove a scene. So when you create a scene, let me just go to a different area. I'm just gonna go here. And I'm going to click the button to add a scene. You will see that it shows up here in a thumbnail view. And it shows up here in the bar at the top. And the name is automatically generated From Sketch Up until you go in and change it. And you can change it by right-clicking and renaming or you can change it down here in this bottom panel. The remove seen, I mean, that's that's obvious. Move scene up and down. So this allows you to move scenes and your lineup. So if you have multiple scenes, like if I were to come here and create this scene, then I could use this button to move up or down in the lineup. That's what those buttons are. The next one is your view options. This allows you to go with small thumbnails or large thumbnails or details or lists. So that's that view is up to you. I personally like the large thumbnails. That's just me. Then you've got this, this is your hide details or show details. This is where you can check this button. This is include an animation and we'll talk about that in a minute. But what basically what the animation is, if you have several scenes, SketchUp can automatically generate a simple animation that cycles through those scenes. So if you don't want something to show up in that You uncheck it and it will put these little parentheses around your scene name up here on the bar. So that's what that is. You can also name it, give it a description, toggle these settings on and off of what those properties you are, you want that you want to keep or ignore. That's what that is. And then you've got the menu button, which basically gives you a lot of those same options just in a more condensed format. So let's take a look at these scenes bar up here at the top. The way it works is when you click on the scene, it takes you to that scene. And so this is just a quick and easy way that you can navigate. I'm going to use my 3D mouse. And I can zoom in a little bit here and create another scene by right-clicking and adding a scene. So now I've got this view and this view. And you can see that when I added that scene that popped up down here, this is your scenes bar here. You can move things around the same way you can in the panel by moving left and right, adding updating. So for updating, you saw me just create this scene. If I were to move around. And I'm going to combine the if you move too fast before it's done, it'll snap you back. I'm going to combine the zoom feature that I told you about before and change the viewing angle to 60 so that I get a different view of this room. And I am going to right-click and say Update instead. So now in instead of adding another scene, I just updated and existing one. So that's just another thing you can do it do with it there. So you can also play the animation that you're seeing create. So we've got a few scenes here. So what I'll do is I'll start at the beginning. And I can right-click and say Play Animation. And so all the animation is, It's a very simple cycle through your scenes. You can set up many, many scenes if you want it to flow a little bit differently. And it's just going to repeat until you tell it to stop. If you like the animation feature. And you want to adjust some of those settings, you can go to the top menu, view, animation and then Settings. So this allows you to do transitions, delays, anything like that. You can adjust this and get some settings. Like I said, the basic, basic animation feature. But if you set up many, many scenes to go step by step, you can walk through a space if you wanted to and play a simple animation. So that is our animation feature. Now, earlier in the last lesson, we talked about layers and tags. So in this lesson, I want to mention how those can work with scenes. So when you set up scenes, you can control what does and doesn't show up in those scenes from the layers panel. So if I have, let's see, let's zoom out really far. So if I have this scene and I want to add this scene, then I want to do this same exact scene. I'm not going to change places or anything, but I want to turn off my shapes. I can add another scene. And so you have one view with the shapes and one view without. This is a way you can use layers and scenes together. But I do want to mention something tricky when it comes to layers and scenes. If you set up some scenes and then later on in your process, add some new layers, new tags. You'll need to determine whether or not that shows up in, in some of your scenes or all of your scenes that you've already created. So if you, if you're fine with those new layers showing up in the scenes, you don't have to do anything. But if it's a layer that you only want to show up in one scene or show up and half of your scenes. You'll need to go back to anything you've created and don't want those layers. Turn the layers off and update your scenes. Don't forget to update your scenes. I'm one fun way that I've used. The same exact scene with some layers turned on and turned off is sliding doors out to a pool deck. So I set up a scene from inside someone's living room. And in one scene, the doors are closed. And I copied that same scene, but open the doors by using a different layer. So I had a version of the door on one layer for doors closed, a version of that door on another layer with them open. And so I was able to use layers and scenes to get together to create different options for the client to see. So that's a fun way that you can use layers and scenes together. Now, I'm not gonna go into styles in this class, but you may, if you get into this and start playing around. There are different styles that come with SketchUp that you may want to play with. And you can play with those and create scenes using different styles. We won't get into that in this class, but we will in the next class in this series. But I did just want to throw those out there in case you do feel like playing around with some styles. And you can create the same scene in different styles if you want. That's something fun to play with. I've thought before we wrap this lesson up on scenes, I would give you a real-world example using scenes and materials for a kitchen project that I worked on. So I've got this pulled up. This is a very simple kitchen renovation. So I ended up not modeling the entire space. They just wanted a new option for their kitchens. So this was a model for them. And you can see I've got a whole series of scenes. In this particular instance, I didn't even name these scenes, but it was, having the scenes was an easy way that I could go through and discuss their project with them without having to move around the model. I could just go scene to scene and discuss things with them. So I thought this would be a good real-world example to show you of ways that you could use scenes and different views and viewing angles. And I think I even have some where I have certain layers turned on and turned off. So just to give you some ideas of how you can play around with scenes and have fun with it, and how handy they can be so you don't have to navigate in different areas. I mean, yes, you can. But this is a good way that you can see here in this view, I turned off the countertops and turn off the lighting so that you can see the actual structure of the cabinets. So this is just a way that you can play with scenes and enjoy your model and show it off. So that is a wrap for our lesson on scenes. 11. Creating and Using Section Planes: Okay, so now that we've looked at scenes, the next thing I want to show you is section cuts. And what are some of the things that you can use sections for? They're really handy when you're working on a detailed model and need to cut part of it away to get a better look at an area. So for example, if you're working on a two-story home and want to see a cut of just the first floor. They're also perfect for when you need an elevation of a wall or a detail when paired with a parallel projection view. And that gets you that flat elevation. So there's different ways that you can do a section cut. We're going to start by turning on the section toolbar. So you can either right-click and turn on section here, which I've got that I've already placed it right up here. You can see that or you can go to View Toolbars and turn it on from there just like the other ones. Or if you want to jump straight into a section cut, you can go to Tools and section plane. So let's look at the toolbar here. The first button is Section Plane. Obviously this is the button you use to actually place a section plane in your drawing. And it's really simple. You click the button and you get this little tool here that shows you where you can place a section. And you can see it automatically attaches to the different colored axis. But you can also toggle through the arrow keys to lock in certain directions. And then you just click whatever surface you want it to go on. So I'm going to click the top of this ceiling. When you click it to place that section, you get this little pop-up box that allows you to name the section and give it a symbol. Both of these will show up in the entity Info Panel whenever that section plane is selected. And this symbol will show up over here in the little symbol on the actual plane in your model. So I'm going to name this plan cut. And the symbol is only three letters max. So I'm going to call it F1 for floor plan one. That's what I'm going to call this one. And you hit, Okay? And you can see that it's popped up here. And if I select this, then you can see in the entity Info that you've got, it's not assigned to a tag. I don't typically assign these to a tag, but you can change the name and change the symbol anytime you want. By going here. You can also move a section cut when it's selected and just move it around to adjust the placement. So sometimes if you can't see the exact place you want it to go, you can always put the section and then move it. So I'm just going to stick this one right here. Alright, so the next button on our toolbar is the display section planes. So if I click off of this, you can see that the section plane, which is outlined in orange, is just sitting in our model. This button allows you to turn that on and off. That's a really handy button whenever you're setting up scenes. Because there is this sort of like gray film that is in your section plane. I'll try to see if I can move around. So you can see here on the cabinet, you can see there's a little bit of color difference here. So typically, after you set up your section cut, you want to turn off the plane. And I'm just going to go, we're going to look at some of our other tools that we've already reviewed. I'm going to choose a top view. And I'm going to zoom in over this room and just set up a scene. These are all things that we have talked about. So I'm going to set up a scene. And there you go. Now, the next button here is display the section cut. The section plane is that orange outlined plane. It is the actual plane, whereas this is the section cut. So this actually turns on and off whether the cut is active. So that's the difference there. So I'm going to go back to this same. You can see one is active and one is not. The Next button that I wanted to talk about is the display section fill. And I have to say that this feature is so handy and it was a long time coming. It did not come about till years and years and years later after SketchUp first came out. And what it does is it. Fills in a color wherever your section cut cuts through your model. That's kind of a weird way to say that. But if I turn this off, you can see that our walls are hollow. And when I turn it on, it fills that section with a color. You used to have to do this by either going in and coloring in the material inside the walls. So they appeared like they were filled in or you just had to deal with it not being filled in. So this is, this is a really handy, handy feature that game changer. But some important things to know about this feature is that it only works on closed shapes. So to give you an example of that, I'm gonna go back to this scene. You can see in this same, the section cut is turned off. And I'm going to draw a cube here and we're just going to make it the same height. And we'll go back to the scene. Just so the cut is active, I'm going to zoom out so you can see this. I'll go ahead and create another scene here so you can see the way this fill feature works is if it's a solid form, meaning it's all closed in, then it will get a fill. If I turn this off and remove one line, so now it's not closed in and turn that cut back on. You can see that it doesn't fill that in. It doesn't automatically assume that there should be a side there. So just keep that in mind when you're building something. Now one other thing I want to point out because this will happen to you if you are working on a model and setup section cuts, set up scenes, and then you just continue working. And you realize at some point when you go back to look at a section cut, that suddenly the mask isn't filled in. Suddenly it's just gone. It was there before, you know, because you made it. But now she's gone. There's no need to panic. No need to panic. What you need to do is go through and check all the connections of your lines and see maybe there's a line missing that somehow accidentally got deleted and you just need to fill in one line somewhere. Or maybe you need to trace over line to get SketchUp to recognize it again. Then your section fill, we'll come back. So don't panic if this happens because trust me, when I say this, at some point it will, it just will. So don't freak out. You can fix it. Okay, so next, I know I said in the last lesson on scenes that we weren't gonna look into styles in this class. But I did want to give you some tips for adjusting the look of your sections because I think it's just really important. So we're gonna go to the Styles panel. And I have mine set up. I have two different panels setup, one for the default and one for documents. So wherever you have your styles panel, We're gonna go to it. And if you click the home button, the setup is pretty similar to materials and components and all that. So click on the Home button and you will see different different scenes are different styles that are set up in your models. So when you click on one of these, you can see that it's highlighted or whatever style you're in. And we're gonna go to the Edit bar, the Edit tab. And there's some different things you can play around with. There's different things in your model you can play around with. But let's just go to this last button. It's the model settings button. And I'm just gonna go over just a couple things that are going to make a difference in your sections. So if I go to section fill, my go-to setting for this is under the HLS picker under L, I change this to 24. And you can see how much of a difference I'm going to hit this Update. You can see how much of a difference that makes. It's not straight black, it's not too dark, it's not too light. You can see your section lines here. That's the other setting I want to change. So if you go to section line width, it's automatically set to three. If you change that to one, you can see how you get a softer view. And so your lines for your section cut match the rest of the lines for your model. It's a really subtle change, but it's just like the look of that you can play around with it, go for whatever. But three is what it was to get this kind of like fat profile. And I honestly just like the look of it at one, but that's personal preference. You go with whatever you like best if you want your section field to be read, you can do it. This is, this is your model. So that's just a little. Bonus about changing the look of your section cuts. The next sort of bonus thing I want to talk about for sections is that this comes from personal experience. There may come a time when you create a section plane and forget to make a scene with it. So then you click out into another scene and now you can't get it back. So let's say if I hadn't made this scene here, I've set up my section cut, But then I clicked here. Well, my section cuts gone, where to go? There's two different ways of finding it. So the first way is to just turn on your section planes so that you can see, hey, there is the section cut. It's gray because it's not active. So if you double-click on that section plane, it becomes active. So now that it's active, you can turn the plane off and you can go to the view that you want and create a scene. So that's how you can find your section if it gets lost. Now, if you end up creating several scenes, like let's just throw another one here at the window. And I'm going to call this side cut. And we're just going to say w1 for window because that's just where it goes. That's just a random, random little title there. So if you come up with several sections and you lose one and you need to, you need to get it back. There's another way that you can find it. If you've lost it, if you've clicked out on another scene, your sections gone, you didn't make a scene for it. If you end up with if you just have two scenes, it's not two cuts, it's not too bad to find the one you want to set up the scene that you want. That's not too bad if you just have to. But if you get into a situation where you have 20 section cuts because you're setting up elevations to show to your client, may get a little confusing with 20 different cuts on there. So another way to find your section cut is if you have the outline or panel turned on. And we've already talked about how to turn on different panels and your Default tray. But if you have your outline or panel turn on, you can see any sections that appear in your model. So if I go back to this scene here, you can click on these and see where they are. You can also right-click and say active cut. And it will make it active. And then that allows you to set up the scene that you wanted by finding your sections in here. And you can also click on these to rename them. You can right-click and rename here, but that's just another way that you can find sections. If you've placed them and then lost them because it happens. Trust me, it happens. So now I thought I'd give you a real-world example of using scenes and sections. And you may recognize this kitchen from the last lesson where we talked about scenes. This is actually my construction document version of the models, so it's all gray scale. And I've set up different scenes using different section cuts that I can turn it into documents. So I thought I'd give you a little look of different ways that you can use section cuts in different views to work with your model and create different looks. So there are some other techniques apply, like I've turned on some fog settings and things like that, but we'll get into that in the next class when we talk about styles. I thought this would be a good example to show you four scenes and section cuts, so that you can go through your model and show off different parts of it. Just as just another way to look at your model and display your project to a client. So I hope this all makes sense and that is a wrap for our sections. Let's move on to something else. 12. Exporting Scenes as Images and Animations: Alright, so I've shown you how to add materials. You now know how to create tags and turn them on and off. I've showed you how to create scenes for different views of your model. And I've shown you how to create section cuts and even modify them a little bit. Next, I want to show you how to pull all those things together and share your scenes as images. Exporting your scenes as images is a great way to create client presentations, as well as build your portfolio of work. You can also use those images if you want to build a SketchUp model, but then hand render a scene either on paper or digitally in a program like Photoshop or Procreate for a different aesthetic. So let's pick out a scene that you've set up or go ahead and set up a new one. I'm just going to choose this one. And this is gonna be the scene I want to save as an image. So we need to go to File and Export in 2D graphic. Here is where you would navigate to somewhere on your system of where you want to save the image and give it a name. And then you can choose a different file type. Either JPEG or image is what I'm going to suggest for this purpose. Then before you hit Export, Let's look at some of the other options that are available. So with this, you can change to do just the viewing size, or you can upgrade to a larger scale by adjusting your width or a smaller one. If you want something simpler, the line scale multiplier is still a pretty new feature. And typically you're going to leave it at a one because it's just the standard one. But if you've played around with different styles and have something that maybe has more of like a sketchy line look. Then you might want to play around with the scale multiplier to make sure you're getting the exact look that you want. Especially if you change your export to be a really higher resolution. So if you're dealing with a larger file type, depending on what you're doing. Anti-alias for rendering, I usually leave that checked, don't bother it. And then jpeg compression just keep it up at better quality. Once you have those settings, then just hit export and save it wherever you've chosen on your computer. Remember where you saved it. Then once you've done that, then you have this image that was your scene. It's now an image that you can use for whatever purpose you need. So it's really handy. You can also export your animations. So if you talk about turning your scenes into an animation just by setting up your scenes and then hitting play animation. So you can, if you've played around with different scenes and setup, something that works for what you need depending on what that is and you want to export that animation, then you can totally do that. It's just as simple as exporting a scene as an image. You can do the same thing with your animation. I'm just going to let this cycle through to the last one before we look at that. And that's it, that's gonna go back to the beginning. So to export your scenes as an animation, you're going to go to File Export and animation. Just like what we did with the image, you're going to choose where you want to save it. And for the file type, you have some other options. You can export it as is as a video file, or you can do it as a set of images. If you do this seven images, then that allows you to put those images into some sort of video editing software if you wanna do other things with it. So you'll get a large package of images. Either way, you have a few options to work with. If you want to adjust some things. And it may take a little bit to play around with figuring out what you want with the frame rate, with the size, anything like this. But this is how you would do that if you're doing an animation. That's, that's as simple as it is. You also have the option to print certain things, but this doesn't always work out the way you want it to if you just try to print straight from a scene. So my suggestion is instead of trying to print a scene and get it just right, because nine times out of ten, honestly, it's not going to work the way you want it to. Just from personal experience. My suggestion is to set up a scene and export that seen as an image. You can also export of use an image without doing like without doing an actual scene. So if you just wanted to export this, you don't necessarily have to set up a scene to export an image that just, that just allows you to have saved scenes so you can export anything. It doesn't have to be a scene. It can just be the view that you're looking at. And that's a wrap for this. Our next lesson is just gonna be a review over some of the things we've talked about and a little recap of what I'd like to see for your class project. 13. Review and What's Next: Okay, So that's a wrap for this class. I really hope that you've enjoyed this part too. And my SketchUp mastery Foundation series, I feel like I've given you a lot of building blocks to help you expand your SketchUp knowledge. I'd love to see how you put all these tips and tricks into practice. So don't forget to add a project to this class where you can share some of your scene exports like what we talked about in the last lesson. Or you can show screenshots of how you've set up your model and you've set up scenes and tags. I thought I'd give you a tip. I've already given you a tip about exporting your scenes and different views of your model. But what if you want a screenshot? There's so many different ways to do screenshot, but one of my favorite ways is to use this tool. It's called the snipping tool. If you select it is. So Snip and Sketch is actually what it's called. But you can say new. And then just draw over the area that you want to create a screenshot of. And then you can save this somewhere on your computer and upload it to your class project. And this is a fun way to show off how you've set up your toolbars and your scenes, and the tags that you've created. So this is just an idea for your class project, but really it's up to you. I just want to see how you're using these tools and creating things on your own. You can use this model that I've given you in the class projects resources section as a starting point. Or if you want to start completely from scratch and just really show off the skills that you've learned. Either way, I just wanted to see that I'm helping you and inspiring some creativity. If you have any questions about this class or anything we've learned in this series so far, please reach out to me. I'm always open to requests for new classes and projects that you'd like to see. So you can always send me a message through Skillshare or Instagram or through my website or email, anything like that. Reach out. I'm happy to hear from you guys. And for additional resources and different ideas, check out my website and my Instagram. There's links in my Skillshare profile for all of those things. I'd love to hang out with you guys on social media. So let's do that. Let's talk about what's next. So this is a series. There will be a Part three coming out sooner rather than later. And in part three, we're going to talk about shadows and styles and keyboard shortcuts and some different time-saving techniques to really just round out this series. So I hope that you will come back for that class and I will see you next time. Bye guys.