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This podcast is produced by the Harwood Productions Podcast Network. To learn more about the network and to find more of our shows, visit us online at www.harwoodpodcast.com.
Cameron Harris introduces SketchUp, explaining how to download the free version, set up a template, and navigate the interface: toolbar, instructor window, measurements box, and menus.
Key Takeaways
- SketchUp's free version provides all essential modeling capabilities for most users.
- Choosing the right template (feet and inches vs. meters) at setup determines measurement units.
- Understanding the interface (toolbar, status bar, measurements box, menus) is the first step to using SketchUp efficiently.
- Keyboard shortcuts and some interface details vary between Mac and Windows.
What the video covers
- Introduction to the first episode of the 'SketchUp, a 3D Toolbox' series hosted by Cameron Harris, focused on learning SketchUp basics.
- SketchUp is described as a powerful yet easy-to-use, free 3D modeling tool for buildings, sculptures, houses and more.
- Download options are explained: the free Google SketchUp 7 versus the paid SketchUp Pro (around $700), which adds Layout, Style Builder and export features.
- Free version is said to be sufficient for hobbyist modeling; Pro features are aimed at professionals.
- Walkthrough of first launch: the welcome window, learn section, and template selection, with feet and inches recommended over meters.
- Advice to disable the 'always show on startup' option to avoid the welcome window every launch.
- The Instructor window explains the active tool and can help users learn tools, though it can be closed to save space.
- Interface layout is described: the top toolbar of common tools, the bottom status bar with a tool hint, and the measurements box used for sizing while drawing.
- Menu bar access to Draw and Tools menus is covered, including tip to pull out a floating toolbar for frequently used tools.
- Keyboard shortcuts may differ between Mac and Windows (Command/Option/Control keys), so the manual should be checked.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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[Music] Hello everyone and welcome to the first ever episode of SketchUp, a 3D Toolbox.
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My name is Cameron Harris and I'm going to be your guide throughout these episodes and we're going to learn all about how to use SketchUp. Now, if you don't know, SketchUp is a very powerful 3D modeling tool. lets you model things
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like buildings, sculptures, houses, almost anything you can imagine really, but it does it very easily and at a free price tag. So, in this show, we're going to learn how to actually use SketchUp.
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At first, we're going to go through the basics and learn the navigation and the keyboard shortcuts and the tools that you use. And later on, we'll go into actually building projects and actually getting our hands dirty in modeling. In
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this episode, we're going to learn the basic interface of SketchUp. So, we're going to learn where all the windows are, where all the commands are, where all the tools are located in the SketchUp interface. This is the first
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step in becoming a SketchUp master. So, let's get started. So, obviously, the next thing you're going to need to do is download SketchUp. Now, you can do that by going to one of two URLs. The simplest of which is just to go up here
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into your favorite web browser and just go to www.sketchup.com. That's going to redirect you to sketchup.google.com because this is a Google product. Either way, you're going to end up here at the SketchUp homepage. Now, the only thing you need to worry about is this big
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button here that says download Google SketchUp right over on the right. By clicking that, you'll notice that there are two options. There's Google SketchUp 7, which is the current version at the time of this recording at least, and Google SketchUp Pro. Now, what's the
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difference between the two of them? Well, Google SketchUp 7 is free. Google SketchUp Pro is not. It's something around $700, I think. It's pretty expensive. The interesting thing is that there's almost no difference between SketchUp and SketchUp Pro.
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SketchUp Pro, you'll notice it has SketchUp Pro, but it also has Layout and Style Builder. Those are two extra applications that come with it. Uh Layout is sort of for building like blueprints and uh presentations and things like that. And Style Builder
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allows you to really tweak the look of your SketchUp model. And it also has in SketchUp Pro a couple of features including things like export. So you can export your 3D model in a variety of different formats.
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That's really useful for people who are doing this kind of thing for a living.
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If you're just doing it to model things, though, the free version is going to do everything you could possibly need. So the next thing you do is just click on download Google SketchUp. You agree to the terms of license and you choose
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whether you want the Windows or the Mac version. Once you click agree and download, you'll be presented with an installer. Once it downloads, of course, and once the application installs, you'll be able to find it. In my case,
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I'm on a Mac, so I have it right here in my dock. So, let's talk about what happens when you first launch SketchUp. I'm just going to click on the icon to launch it.
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And here is the new welcome window. Now, if this is the first time you're launching SketchUp, you're going to see this window. The first thing you have is this learn section here. I haven't found this section to be particularly helpful.
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So, I just clicked this closure triangle right here to collapse that. The next thing is the templates. And you can see default template is set to no default template. You have all these different things here. If you scroll through here,
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you'll notice Google Earth modeling in meters, an engineering template. This sort of dictates um what measurements you use and how you measure them. So for example, there's a difference between feet and inches and meters. There's slight differences between architecture
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and engineering. I always go with just the simple template. So one of these two guys here up at the top. And I work with feet and inches. If you like to work with meters, you can just choose meters.
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But I like feet and inches. And that's it. That's all you need to do. Then you can just click start using SketchUp. Now, one thing I always do is I always uncheck this always show on startup box. So that way I don't get
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this little window every single time I launch SketchUp. Gets pretty annoying after a while. So just click start using SketchUp and you're presented with the SketchUp interface.
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Now over here you have this window that opens by default. It's the instructor. And this can be pretty useful if you want to learn more about how to use SketchUp just kind of on your own. So for example, right now you can see right
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here it says I'm in the select tool. And it sort of tells me how to use the select tool. If I were to go over here and select the line tool, it tells me how to use the line tool. It can be
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pretty useful if you're having um issues figuring out what a certain tool does, but for now it's just kind of taking up window space. So, we'll just close that.
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Close this, too. This is a plugin that I use. And then we have the SketchUp interface. Now, there are a couple of differences between using SketchUp on a Mac and using SketchUp on a PC. Um there's going to be a slightly different
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interface, but it's going to be pretty much the same uh general layout. Uh and also, uh keyboard shortcuts might be a little bit different. Uh for example, you'll hear me talking about the command key and the option key and the control
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key. Uh in Windows, uh there's the control key and the option key, and they're kind of switched up a little bit. So, uh, you might want to check with the SketchUp manual to see just double check and make sure, uh, that the
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keyboard shortcuts are doing what you expect them to do. So, let's go over the SketchUp interface here real quick. This is the main SketchUp window. This is really all you need to start working.
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And you have sort of three areas here. The first thing you have up here is the toolbar. Now, this is a little part at the top of the window where all of the most commonly used tools are. So each
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one of these little icons is actually a button. So you can choose between all these different tools very quickly.
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Brings up colors window sometimes. Uh so these are all very commonly used functions. We'll actually be learning how to customize this a little bit later on. Then down here we have this little um bar right at the bottom. Uh this has
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a couple of buttons right here which allow you to access certain preferences. We'll be talking about those in a future episode. Uh this is kind of like a general overview of what tool you're using. So you can see here I'm in the
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selection tool right now and it says this selects objects. Shift to extend select and drag the mouse to select multiple. If I were to choose the next tool over says select start point. So it gives you a little bit of a hint uh if you need
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that. Uh the next thing you have is this measurements box right here. We're going to be talking about this guy a lot over the next few episodes. Um, he is very useful. He tells you basically what size the the object you're drawing is. Very
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useful for modeling. Now, of course, up in the toolbar, we have the most commonly used tools, as I've said, but those aren't all the tools. Far from it.
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Uh, in fact, you can see the this is the menu bar up here. You see this in every uh application whether you're on uh a Mac or on Windows and it's going to be pretty much the same thing uh no matter
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what. We have these two menus here. We have draw and you can see we have all these tools here for drawing rectangles and circles and polygons. And we also have tools which gives me things like moving and rotating and scaling and tape
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measures and protractors. We're going be talking about all those. Some of these things aren't in the toolbar.
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And it's a little bit of a pain to figure out, okay, is it in the draw menu? Is it in the tool menu? That's why something that I like to do sometimes, particularly if I'm switching between certain tools a lot and I've run out of
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space on my toolbar up here. Something I'll do is I will use what they call tool pallets. Now, you can turn on the tool pallets because it's not turned on by default. You can turn them on by going on to uh the view menu up at the
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top here and then select the tool pallets. And then here you have uh different tool pallets that you can bring up. Now, the one that you're going to want that kind of covers all your basic tools is the
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large tool set right there. So, if you click that, then that brings up this little window right here. And we can just grab this guy and move him over wherever we like. And you can see it has the same tools, the same buttons as the
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menu bar, but a lot of others that aren't up there. So, this is kind of useful if you need to uh access a com a tool that isn't in your toolbar that you want to have access to. And that's
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pretty much the entire SketchUp interface. That's really all you need to know. There are more uh sections to it there. It gets much more deep, but uh we'll be talking about those in a later episode. This is all you need to start
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modeling. And that just about wraps it up for this episode. I hope you found it useful and informative. And I think you're probably starting to see how powerful SketchUp really is. And we're just tapping the surface right now. Until next time, you
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can uh check us out online at www.harwoodpodcast.com for show notes and uh lesson files. And uh you can also send us an email with questions, comments, feedback, all that kind of stuff at [email protected].
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[Music] Until next time, goodbye and good modeling. [Music]
Topics:SketchUp3D modelingtutorialinterfaceGoogle SketchUpbeginnertoolbarfree 3D softwareMacWindows
