Tutorials

Items you design in SketchUp rely on the small details you make, to make them appear realistic. In this tutorial, David draws wall molding / moulding that was required for a house project he was working on. This method can be used to draw floor, ceiling, and door molding as well.

The tools David used in this tutorial include Line Tool, Arc Tool, Push / Pull tool, and used the rectangle tool to draw the wall.

SketchUp can draw many things, such as Pyramids of different types. David will walk you through how to draw three different types of pyramids; one with a square base, one with a triangle base, and one with an octagon base. The types of pyramids are endless.

The tools required are the Line Tool, Square Tool, and the Polygon Tool, to create the triangle and the octagon.

In this tutorial for SketchUp, David will show you how to draw two types of cones; One with a point at the peak, and the other with a flat top and bottom. With this knowledge in SketchUp, you open up a lot of other shapes you will now be able to draw that you may not of been able to imagine. Also, using the tool Follow Me, which may be your first time using it, will invite you to quickly making solid custom shapes.

After you use SketchUp for a while, you may notice your drawings being very sharp and square. Or, you may need to draw a ball, sphere, half sphere, bearing, or some other “sphere-like” shape for your design. It’s really simple to do, and only takes a second once you learn how to.

This tutorial most likely will bring a new tool into view, that you have not heard of yet called “Follow Me” tool. This tools continues a surface until the end of the adjacent or connected surface.

SketchUp, now managed by Trimble Buildings, is a free 3D CAD Program. It may not be the most beautiful CAD software out there, but it has the tools most people will need. You can design houses, furniture, cars, and much more. If you are unaware what a CAD program is, it’s software to design structures, various parts such as for cars, electronics, etc, and nearly everything that needs to be designed. CAD software comes in both 2D and 3D versions, and also a “4D” version which includes time, so you can animate your design.