Mastering SketchUp: Modeling a Detailed Clubhouse from an AutoCAD Floor Plan

Welcome to the VDCI Intermediate SketchUp course, SKP-201. 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 have already downloaded the zip file called SKP-201 file downloads from the VDCI portal.

You can see it here that I have saved it to my C drive. To extract the zip, right-click, extract files. Open the newly extracted SKP-201 file downloads folder, and now you should see all the files we will be using in this course.

Now, we are ready to begin using SketchUp. Let's open SketchUp Pro. When we first open SketchUp, we'll be asked to sign in.

I will sign in now. This will open a browser where you can type in your password and log in. However, if you were already logged in, you would already be in this box.

Let's select the architectural inches template. We'll be using this template for every drawing in this course. Before we actually start modeling in SketchUp, I want to make sure that our toolbars are all set up in the same way.

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If you go up to the top right and right-click, please make sure that you have your getting started checked, your large tool set checked, and then you also have sandbox and your standard tool sets. Your large tool set is this one up here, which you remember from SketchUp 101. Also, we want to make sure that we have our default tray pinned over to the right side of our screen, docked to the right.

I have entity info, materials, components, tags, soft and edges, instructor, shadows, fog, scenes, and styles. If you would like to edit this default tray, go up to window, default tray, and here we can check the certain boxes that we do not want to have or we want to add. I will uncheck instructor.

We will be editing the default tray as we move through the course. So let's get started. Well, if you please go to file, open.

Let's navigate to the C drive and go to our SKP 201 file downloads. Let's open community park start. For the first part of this course, we will like to look at the architecture in the community park, primarily this clubhouse.

Back in SketchUp 101, we had brought in this generic clubhouse model as our architecture. However, as you may notice that this clubhouse is nothing more than a couple of basic shapes and roof planes. Now, in this course, we are going to model this clubhouse in much more detail.

We will get all of our dimensions and lines for the clubhouse from AutoCAD floor plan that I have provided, and then we will model together all of the architectural elements and details for our clubhouse. Now, let's get to modeling. We no longer need to be in this file.

Let's go to file and let's make a new file. Go to file, new from template, and we'll go click our architectural inches template. Now, if we go back to our file explorer in our SKP 201 file downloads folder, you can see that we have two files, import clubhouse plan.dibg and import clubhouse plan.skp. This is a SketchUp file and this is an AutoCAD file.

We're going to want to import the AutoCAD file. However, if you don't have AutoCAD, we've also included a SketchUp file for import. Now, let's take a quick look at our floor plan in AutoCAD.

Now, if I zoom in, you can see that we have a clubhouse as the main room in the middle. Now, if I zoom in to our clubhouse, you can see that the clubhouse has a main room in the middle, most likely for hosting small private public events. Now, we have a small kitchen and storage space to the right, and we have two bathrooms to the left.

This file also includes dimensions and a note plot. So, let's bring this into SketchUp. I will close out of AutoCAD and now in SketchUp in our new file, let's first delete the man.

Now, let's bring in our floor plan. Go to file, import, and if you're using SketchUp Pro like I am, you have the option to import all the files including DWG. However, if you're using SketchUp Make or the free version, you will not be able to import a DWG.

That is why I have provided the SketchUp plan that you can import instead. I will import the DWG file and hit import, and this shows basically everything that was imported, how many layers and blocks and lines, and then you can close this out and then here we go. We have our floor plan inserted.

When we bring in an AutoCAD file, the dimensions are geometry that SketchUp does not recognize and they will not import into SketchUp. However, if we would like to import the dimensions, we need to explode them in AutoCAD. Let's clean up our file before we begin to model.

I will go into my tags dialog box in the default tray, and you can see here these were various layers that AutoCAD had in the file. It not only imported the line work, it also imported the layers. Yeah, I can see that we have a fixture hidden.

I do not need this tag, as well as a no plot. So to delete these two, have one of them selected, and hold down control and then right click delete tags. We do not want to assign it to untag, we want to delete the entities.

So I will click delete the entities and then click OK. Now I want to move all of my layers of my tags onto the untagged tag. I will right click, delete tags, and I will assign it to untagged.

Now all of those layers and tags are now under untagged. You can see that my objects are still a component. So I'm going to make a new tag and name it floor plan.

I will click the plus, add tag, and then type floor plan and hit ENTER. And now I will go to entity info, and I will while my floor plan group or component is selected, I will select tag and then select my floor plan in the drop down menu. Now if I turn on and off floor plan, it'll turn on and off that tag.

Next, just to organize our model even further, I would like to either move my floor plan to my axis location, or move my axes to my floor plan. So I will select my floor plan and go to my move tool. And then clicking on this corner right here, I'll move that point to where it snaps in my origin axes.

You will notice that I did not move the extents of my component geometry. Instead, I moved the corner of my architecture itself. This will be useful when we place our component back into our community park.

Now let's save the file. Go to file, save as. I'll save my file as clubhouse-dm.

You should use your initials. If your name is Aaron Thomas, then you would do AT. My name is Derek McFarland, so I'm using DM.

And then save under your SKP tool and file downloads folder. Now the last thing I would like to do in this video is set up some scenes that we can toggle on and off our floor plan visibility. Well, I would close my entity info dialog box in the default tray and close my tags as well.

And this time I want to open up scenes down here on the bottom. Now I want to create a new scene. So by creating a new scene, click this plus button.

You will see that a scene populates here and it also populates up here what this is called. I want to turn off everything except hidden objects. And I will name this floor plan on and I will click this update button and that'll update this scene to apply the changes that I made.

Now I will select my component right here. I will right click, hide. And now I will create a new scene with it hidden.

And I will call this scene floor plan off. As you can see, when I add it, it'll copy all of the same settings that I previously had on. Now you can see that I have two basically scenes set up here on the top of my screen.

I have floor plan on and floor plan off. If I toggle these on and off, you can see that the only thing that changes is the hidden geometry of specifically the floor plan that goes on and off. So as we begin to model walls and doors, etc, we can turn this on and off to hide the actual CAD floor plan.

Also, when I orbit around the model and I click both of these tags, you can see that it still keeps in wherever camera location that I'm at because I did not check the properties to save a camera location. If I had this, then it would always come back to this current save scene. Next, let's save our file.

File, save. And in the next video, we will begin to create the walls in three-dimensional space. I will see you in the next video.