Theory and concepts to understand Sketchup. Sketchup course. Part1

1. Presentation: Hello people and welcome to this class, where we will see theoretical aspects of SketchUp. To be more precise, we will learn about the four main concepts that we really have to know. If we want to understand how a SketchUp things. This way, we will be much more skillful to draw and modify any model in a SketchUp. My name is Manuel Garcia. By that is, I am an architect and I am a specialist in the development of 3D models in SketchUp, as well as rendering of photorealistic images. The first concept that we have to learn about is lines and surfaces. Lines and surfaces are the blocks in which a SketchUp is made off. We have to understand perfectly how both of those entities work here and how we can manipulate them in our favor. The second concept is groups and components. One thing is a group like this cube, and another thing is a component like this three columns. Both of them kind of mechanism of SketchUp for collecting things altogether. And they have their own properties. So muster them is paramount if we don't want our drawing to become a mess. The third concept is reverse faces. Every plane in SketchUp has two phases, the front face and the back face, and its phase has its own color from the color and color. In this case, this color, as you can see, is different than the rest. This a kind of gray instead of white. We will learn why we should reverse faces when we find this kind of situation. Finally, the fourth concept is another tool called outliner. This outliner is what is called the SketchUp a tray. We will find it here. We can expand it and summing up, I would say that it is a kind of map. If you understand this map kind of Treemap, you will be able to understand your drawing just in one glance. To finish the course, you will find on a specific exercise in order to practice all of these theoretical aspects of the software. I hope that you like the course formats and I'll see you in the first episode. 2. Two types of geometry: lines and surfaces: Hello people, welcome to this class in where we're going to talk about the main concepts that we have to muster in order to understand well how SketchUp things. And then we will become experts and we will be able to do any operation, any transformation. We will be able to fix any problem. And we will enjoy much more drawing in. So mainly we have to take in mind that there are two things super-important in a skin cell, lines and surfaces. Here we have a 2D drawing on a 3D model. Both of them are based on lines and surfaces. So let's start with a more simple one, which is of course this rectangle in 2D. I have this woman here for giving you the scale, but we can perfectly delete it, because actually a scale right now is not important. So as I told you, here, we have lines and surfaces. Actually we have just one surface. We know how to select them. We want to select the line. We can do it using our mouse and clicking and adding more and more lines, e.g. that if we click out of the drawing, then we unselect everything. If we want to select the surface, here we are. But the thing that we have to understand is that when we are drawing a sketch up our scope, our purpose is to generate surfaces in order to create 3D models from the surfaces is how we are going to use the Post poll tool to extrude those surfaces and being able to achieve 3D models, e.g. here, once we have the surface, I can use the cost pool tool, one-click and then we have our queue. So imagine that we delayed the surface and we have just lines. In this case. In SketchUp, we can barely do nothing. So we should recover the surface that we have just lost. In order to do that, we better go to line and then we can draw or redraw over any of the lines of this rectangle. Then we recover that surface and we can generate again that 3D model. So the lines are containing that surface. If this time I erased one of the lines instead of the surface, e.g. this one. What is going on? I have lost, of course, the line, but at the same time, I lost the surface because the line are the concerns of the surface. If I lose any of them, then I will lose the surface to tell again for selecting the line tool. And I close again and I recover the surface again. Let's see how this works. When I am working with a 3D model. In a 3D model, it is exactly the same like in a 2D model, but with high, I mean, if I select this surface and I delete it, you will see that the queue is completely empty. Inside the queue, we have just error. It is not a solid figure. So we can think about this Q as different 2D planes pouring all together, right? And of course, all of those 2D planes will work exactly the same as our first 2D drawing. We saw dust before. So here, if we wanted to recover that surface, we should draw any line of its concern, right? E.g. this one. And once we have the surface, we can mark it and extrude it and play with it as we want. Furthermore, if I choose this time, e.g. this line and I delighted what is going on. We have lost, of course, the line selected, but at the same time, we lost two surfaces. The surface on the left side, on the surface on the right side, right? Why? Because that line was holding those two surfaces the same as here in the 2D drawing. When I select this line and I delete it, we said that this line was holding the surface in the 3D model. That line was holding knot one surface, but two of them according to this logic, if I select the line and I draw again from this point to this end point, I will recover both surfaces. Here we are. This is one of the most interesting and fun things about SketchUp because if we are able to understand these concepts in a very deep way, we will be able to enjoy a lot and draw it in SketchUp because it's not just about the lighting and recovering surfaces. But e.g. if I select this line and instead of deleting it, I move it using the Move tool. Look what is going on. That line is holding either the surface on the top and the surface on the front. So if I move e.g. that line following the set X, both surfaces are changing this way. And if I go till the ground floor, I could become easily my shape into a triangle 3D model, right? We will go deeper into this, Let's say, reshape and resize figures when we see these Move tool. But at this very moment, I just want you to understand how lines, surfaces are connected to each other. How lines are the concern of the surfaces here? How surfaces are the key for creating 3D models. And how those 3D models are totally empty inside. So we can understand them as different to d, draw wins joint altogether creating that shape. So let's finish the class here. In the next class we will talk about another very important concept in SketchUp, as it is the groups and components. 3. Two types of structures: groups and components: Hello everybody. In this class we will talk about another important concept in SketchUp as groups and components. So first of all, you can see on the screen that we have a rectangle and a circle. We know that both of them are based on surfaces and lines as concerns. So let's just start choosing e.g. this circle and moving it following the red X for keeping that cycle on the ground floor. And eventually I will place that cycle on the rectangle. Both of them will be occupying the same plane. Here we are. And what is going on here? We have an intersection between both sets. So now we have an independent surface here, another one in the middle, and the last one here, the three of them are independent, so we can choose it and create 3D models from each one. The same thing happens with the lines. All of them have been cut and now are independent. Okay? This is something that sometimes will be helpful for us, but other times could be very annoying and we will not want that to happen. So the question here is, how can avoid these to happen? If I click Control set for undo this movement, and then I select the cycle and I say right button make group. Then you will see this box around the figure, which means that, that geometry has been placed inside a kind of transparent box. We have to think about groups as boxes, transparent boxes in where our geometry is protected to blue with the rest of the geometry in our drawing. So now, once the circle is selected, I click M for moving this entity. One-click here, I move the cycle along the red X tilde the corner exactly the same as I did before. Another click here. Here we have the cycle placed on the same plane as the rectangle. But now if I select the selection tool and I try to select those surfaces and lines. As you can see, the result now is completely different because the cycle is protected and then it is not blue with a rectangle. So I can move that charcoal independently without the fear about create intersections between the different geometry. Our cycle is independent inside that box and our rectangle remains untouched. So this is the main purpose about creating groups. Furthermore, if we wanted to apply changes inside our groups, we should go to the group selected. You will see how our box is now made by a dotted line, which means that we are already inside the box, inside the group. So we can touch our geometry and we can work use while making the transformation or the changes that we want. E.g. here I stood that cycle in order to create a cylinder. And then the box is adapting to that new geometry. If I wanted to go out from this box, from this group, then I would go to the selection tool and I click out of the group. And here we are. What about components? Components is like a group with more properties. So our geometry will be protected by a box as well. But it will have, as I said, more properties. Let's create a polygon, e.g. this hexagon. I will click on the surface right button river faces because I want this white side towards me. We will talk about this in another class, and then I will place this geometry inside a component or say it in another way. I will transform this geometry into a component. For doing this, I will select my geometry right button. And instead of saying make group, we can say make components. We have this option here as well. The main toolbar, which is exactly the same Make Component. Then we have this menu create components in where we can write a definition, name, description, and we have more different options. We will see all of them in a specific class about components. But now I will say just create. Once the component is created, you will see as it happened with the groups, this box around, which will protect our geometry from intersections with other geometries till now, exactly the same as with the groups. So if I move this element to this corner, again, the rectangle will keep untouched. As it happens with our hexagon. But we have here a component and not a group. And the main property about components is that if I copy any of them, Let's do e.g. three copies and I make any change in any of them. It doesn't have to be that change in the original one. Let's do a change, e.g. in this second copy, I go in, I select the surface, I click for post and pull, click unreleased. And I create this 3D model. As you can see already, these changes inside this component is affecting the rest of the copies. So now I will click Space key, one-click outside of the components. Here we are. As you can imagine, the use of components in SketchUp is going to be key for drawing, let's say in an intelligent way. Because many times we will find modeller elements and we will need that our changes will be applied not just in that geometry, but in all the elements similar to them. I'm talking about windows, frames or doors or bathrooms, PLRs, etc, etc. So we will finish the class here. And in the next episode, we will talk about another important concept, as it is the outliner Default tray. We will find that here. And it will help us to understand better the structure of our drawing. And I'm talking about these three elements that we have seen already. The first one would be simple geometry or free geometry. It is free because it is not inside any box, e.g. this rectangle we have here. And other elements would be groups. And the third element would be components. 4. The map of the drawing: the outliner: Hello everyone. Welcome to this new class in where we're going to talk about the Default tray called outliner. We will continue with the drawing as we left it in the last episode. So we said that we have here three different entities or concepts. We have these free geometry because it is not inside a box. It is not inside a group or a component, which can be considered as well as real geometry because we can touch it. The key is that we can touch, not geometry. We have our group and we have our component. If we expand, they outline their tray. We will see here that geometry represented by different names and icons, e.g. now, this component is selected and we can see here how this element is selected as well. This component has this name, component one, the icon for a component. And the component, it is like this rectangle in black divided in four pieces. If we select the next one, we can see inside the drawing that element has been selected. So we can work in our tool when directly with the geometry placed in our Canvas. Or we can go to this outliner tray and select elements from here, erase elements from here, because e.g. if I click right button, I will find many more options as erase, hi, look, explode, make a unique, as I said, many different options that we can select from here. Let's say e.g. erase. The element has been erased, it, now it disappears from our outliner tray. We have just three components. This one, this one, and this one. And then we have a group. The group, the default name is gonna be group. And the icon for representing groups is this black rectangle not divided in different pieces. As it happens with components, we can hide and unhide easily those entities using these eyes. And as you can see, what we find here is that free geometry, the free geometry we have to take in mind that is not represented inside the outliner tray. Here, we will find just components and groups till here, easy, but our drawings can be much more complex. Let's do an example. Imagine that I select these three components, right button. And I say that I want to create a group, a box to place the three of them inside this group. Here we are. Now we have that box which includes these three components. Let's check how this is represented in our outliner. Now we have another group which is already selected and we have this arrow already expanded. So inside this group, we have three components. I can collapse the arrow and then we see just the name of the group. We already know that inside this group there is something else. Because we have this arrow. I click again here. I'll expand the group and I see what is going on inside. This is very, very important because in many cases, you will work with drawings which haven't been drawn by you. Maybe you are downloading a model from the warehouse. And usually they are very, very complex with many groups inside groups and components altogether. And thanks to the outliner, we will be able to understand the structure of throwing in a much more easy way a part of creating groups. We can destroy those groups, those boxes, those component boxes, we have gas to select the element, the group right button explode. Then that group has disappeared and the elements are now, lets say free, they are not into another box. To understand this better, I think that it could be helpful if you imagine this kind of, let's say, organisation as something that you already use every day when you organize your stuff in your computer, placing your different files into different folders. Here I made this example for you. Currently, I am in windows inside one folder called group one. Inside this folder, which could be any group in SketchUp, that box, just the box inside the box, inside the folder, we have more things. Those things could be free geometry, e.g. these files or more boxes. Those boxes could be components or groups. If I want to work with the geometry, I have to go inside the box, right? Like it happens here. So I should go to group number two, e.g. click Select. Go inside, then I will find the real geometry, in this case, the real files. One PDF, which could be a rectangle, a palm tree, a house, a wall, whatever. But it is the real geometry, what I call free geometry. And here we have another piece of geometry. In this case, another file. Once I am here, if I want to go back, I need to go out from this group one step back, which means that now I am outside from that group number two, but I am still inside this group number one. And then here I will find another box, in this case a component. And inside this box I will find more geometry, more files. Again, one step back for going inside group number one in where I can find as well real geometry already, because this geometry wouldn't be inside any box. In this case, files, which we can already open and work with them. If I go one step back from here, then I would go to the Desktop. In SketchUp. It could be like our canvas. The plays in where there is no boxes selected, even one here. So let's represent that example here in a schizo, we have one group, so I will put everything together inside one group. Inside that group. Number one, we have in Windows, another group and another component and some free geometry. So I will go inside this group. We have another group. We have free geometry, which can be touched and we can transform this geometry. And we had another component, just one more. Note three. So I will erase this element and another element. We have just one more component. We go to the outliner, we can see the group, group number one in Windows. Another group called group number two in Windows, Let's put the same name, rename Group one. Here, rename Group two, component, rename component one. The fried geometry is not shown here as I told you, because it is not directly inside another group. If I go inside any of these boxes, e.g. let's start with this group number two. Click, click. We will find the real geometry which can be transformed because we can touch it in the Windows example, we had two files to different files. Here we have just one element, so I could draw another element here. As you can see, the box is adapting itself to this new size to cover all the elements inside. But at the same time in the outliner that real geometry is not represented just the boxes. Once we are inside the group and we want to go one step back, we need to choose the selection tool, one click outside from that box, and then we are already one step back is still inside the group. Number one, we can now go inside this another box called component one. If I click twice, I go in. And then in Windows we had as well two elements. So I will draw another element. Another element is placed inside that box called component one. Again, is not represented in the outliner. If I want to go back using just the Outliner, I can do it. I can select group number one or even I can select on title. And now I am outside any group. Like if we were in the desktop and we haven't selected any folder yet. So as you can see, using the outliner could be very, very helpful. Well, time to say goodbye. And in the next episode, we will continue talking about another concept, the last one before we start drawing, which is called reverse faces. 5. One plane, two faces: reverse faces: Hello everybody and welcome to this new episode in where we are going to talk about another concept which is called Reverse Faces. Well, when you are drawing in SketchUp, you will see many times that your faces are colored either in white or this kind of gray or blue color. This is because, as you already know, SketchUp is facing modeller, not as solid Modeller. So it is treating each phase individually. And we can say that its phase has two sides, the front side, the backside, by default, the front side is white, this one, and the backside is this kind of gray or blue. If I select any phase and I go to Entity Info tray, you will see here those thumbnails representing those two sites. The first one for the front side and the second one for the backside. Right now, they are both the same because it is selected this default style. But if I apply any color, I go to materials, select. I go here and I say colors, and I choose e.g. this pink, I apply this pink to this backside phase, then as it is still selected, you can see here that color for the backside and this another default style for the front side. Here it is represented those two colors, the white and that blue color for the backside. So the thing here is that it's very common that when we are drawing a sketch up randomly, Our Faces take the backside color when we actually want that front color towards us. And then is when we have to use that to call reverse phases, Let's do it. E.g. here with the cube. On the left side, we have this cube with all the phases using the front color. And on the right side, we have just the opposite example, my advice here, and you will see during the course that I will do it every single time is to fix this situation immediately. So it will become like a habit for you to reverse the phase. Place the front color to us, the camera, e.g. here, if I click on this face and I say right bottom, and I go to reverse faces, then this phase is already fixed. Then I should do the same everywhere here. I select all the faces, right bottom reverse phases. Here we are. Maybe you are thinking what is the reason for doing this? Firstly, is because it is very good to have your drawing organized, but at the same time, having the backside color to us, you might have bad consequences in terms of performance when you are exporting your SketchUp file to our rendering software or our 3D printer. Both of them use that information for pointing a normal vector towards the interior or the exterior. So it could end up in an error here in a SketchUp actually doesn't matter so much. E.g. if we are applying materials and I will recover those backside phases. And now I'm going to materials select. Let's pick up e.g. this brick antique texture. I will select with three clicks, all the entities connected here. Then letter B for the Paint Bucket Tool, one-click. Here we have this texture applied to the cube. I can do exactly the same to this another queue and there will be no differences. So we can think that it is not needed to do this reverse faces. But as I already told you, the problems will appear when we export this cube to our rendering software or a 3D printer. In my experience, not always those problems will ACU, but it does exist the possibility of the error. Another tool related with this Reverse Faces is called orient faces. Here, e.g. in this cube, we can check how this phase is currently oriented, but the rest are not. Instead of choosing every single wrong phase and fix them, I can choose the correct one, right bottom orient faces. And then the program is intelligent enough to recognize all the phases connected to our selection and orient them in the same direction as our reference. Finally, if I go to Styles, I will collapse the entity Info. Here, you will find, first of all, a thumbnail about the default style with those color I told you the white and the blue one. But my tip here is going to Edit and here go to face settings. Here you will be able to change and customize that front and back color, creating your own style or modifying the one you are using at that moment. So I'll click on this color and I will change e.g. this red. Or I can go to the color wheel and say that I want this red all the time with the purpose of making that backside color much more different than the front color. Furthermore, if I go to style and I click this option, displays said that he using all same, which can be found here as well. Then you will be able to spot Where are you using that back side color and then fix it. E.g. in this cube, where we applied that brick texture, three clicks, pattern, reversed faces, it is already corrected. And then I can go back to this, say that with textures option. Now that brick texture is applied inside the queue for spotting this backside color's faces, we will be able to use as well. And let's say automatic tool, which is not native from SketchUp, it is an extension. It is called solid inspector and then it will be easier and faster. But we will see that when we talk about plug-ins. Now, it's time to say goodbye. In the next episode, we will jump to another block of information and we will start drawing in SketchUp using the line tool and freehand tool. 6. FINAL EXERCISE : Hello guys. As a final project for this class, I am proposing you a simple exercise in where you will have to replicate the model that you are watching right now, if you look carefully, you will see that I have the outliner open. And then let's check the structure of this drawing. We have one group with more things inside it. If I open it, we find that we have two components. Write the name of that component is column. Actually it is one component with two copies and then we have another group. So if I select e.g. this group, we can see that group is this cube. If I select this component, we can check that the element selected is this column the same with this, another component. And then we can check how this line and this rectangle are both free geometry because they are not inside any books at the same time. All these entities are inside a big box, which is a group. This is the group. We can see it here in the outliner. So the exercise is, as I told you, to replicate this structure with these same elements at the same time. Pay attention because I want you to draw all of your elements, all of their geometry with the front color of the faces towards the camera. If you need to reverse phases time to time, you will have to do it as well. So that's all. I hope that you enjoy, this final project and I invite you to continue learning about the SketchUp in the next class.