Explore the basics of SketchUp, a 3D modeling computer program, through an introductory course provided by VDCI. This guide outlines the initial steps including downloading necessary files, signing in, choosing a template, and understanding the user interface.
Key Insights
- The VDCI introductory course to SketchUp requires students to download a zip file named 'skp-101-filedownloads' from the VDCI portal to access the course datasets.
- Upon opening SketchUp, users have several options, including choosing a template, opening a recent file, or adding a license. This course uses the 'architectural inches' template.
- The user interface consists of the title bar, the menu bar with toolbars, the drawing area for 3D objects and models, the default tray for dialogue boxes, and the status bar with three main elements - identifier information, the tooltip section, and the measurement box.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Welcome to the VDCI course Introduction to SketchUp. Before we get started with our course, we want to make sure that we have downloaded our file downloads so that we can work on the course datasets. You should already have downloaded the zip file called skp-101-filedownloads from the VDCI portal.
You can see it here, I have saved it on my C drive. To extract the zip, right click, extract files. Okay, you can now see I have the newly extracted folder skp-101-filedownloads and if I was to open this, you can see all of the files I will be using in this course.
Now we are ready to begin to use SketchUp. Open up SketchUp. When we first open SketchUp, we will be asked to sign in.
I will sign in now by clicking the blue sign in button. It'll automatically open up a browser window where it'll be asked to sign in with your username. I will sign in with my username here.
Next, I will minimize my browser window and now you can see the welcome to SketchUp dialog box. If you were already logged in, you would have already been So in this dialog box, we can do things like choose a template, open a recent file, or add a license. If I was to click licensing, you can see my active current subscription.
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Let's go back to files. So in this course, we will be using the architectural inches template. Select the architectural inches template to open SketchUp.
Before we begin to draw and use SketchUp, let's take a look at the user interface. So at the top of the screen, you will see the title bar. The title bar will have drop-down menus for file, edit, view, camera, draw, and so on.
We will be using these drop-down menus throughout the course. Below the title bar is the menu bar. The menu bar houses SketchUp's toolbars, which can be added and removed depending on which toolbars we would like to have active.
If I was to right-click on the menu bar, we can see the list of all the toolbars available. The toolbars that are active have a yellow check mark next to them. You can see getting started is active.
When you first open up SketchUp, the getting started toolbar will be the only active toolbar. We will leave that toolbar active and we will also click on the large tool set to activate that one as well. As you can see, the large tool set appears on the left of your screen.
Let's go back and right-click on the menu bar and activate the standard toolbar down here. I will click this. You can see the standard toolbar appear at the top.
I would like to move this standard toolbar to the right. To do that, I can click and hold these small little dots on the left side and drag and unclick. In the middle of the screen is SketchUp's drawing area, which is a single view 3D space.
This is where we will draw and build all of our 3D objects and models. To the right of the screen is the default tray, which houses various dialogue boxes. By clicking on the arrow next to each section, it will open up and expand or collapse.
This is really useful when you have a lot of trays open. If you do not see your default tray, you can go up to window, default tray, show tray. My tray is already docked to the right, so I can only hide the tray.
I will hide tray and then go back to window, default tray, show tray. My tray is currently docked on the right of my screen. If your tray is not docked to the right of the screen and it looks something like this, you can click and drag the top to one of these sections here or over here or top or bottom, whatever your preference is.
I like the right side and it will automatically dock it to the right. Next, at the bottom of your screen is the status bar. The status bar has three main elements, the identifier information in the bottom left, the tooltip section down here, and the measurement box to the bottom right.
The identifier information includes geolocation and model information. The tooltip section will display helpful tips about the tools as we are using them. As I slide my cursor over the various tools, you can see the information tooltip at the bottom text change to describe what each tool does.
This is very helpful in understanding quickly what each tool will do. The measurements box will display our current measurements as we are drawing and will allow us to type in specific measurements as we work through our projects. For example, if I was to draw a line, you can see in the bottom right hand corner the length automatically changing when I stretch this line out further.
If I was to type in 15 feet, enter, it will automatically create that line at 15 feet. So to review, we should have our getting started toolbar at the top, our large tool set to the left, our standard toolbar at the top, our default tray should be docked to the right, and we should be seeing a gray background as we are in the architectural inches template. So welcome to this introduction to SketchUp course.
We are going to have a ton of fun exploring all that this amazing program can do. I will see you in the next video.
