Hey, what is up, nation?
In this session we're gonna be taking a step back to
basics and focusing on 2D drawing or drafting in Sketchup.
Yes, so today we're gonna be talking about 2D drawing
or drafting in Sketchup. It's a foundational
principle in anything that you do in Sketchup. And so I figured we'd take some
time instead of showing how to make a rectangle and extrude it, and immediately
get to 3D. We take a little bit of pause, and we'll focus on some of the major 2D
tools. So that we can make better geometries quicker. So we are gonna start
with a rectangle. And we're just gonna show you sort of what happens and what's
going on with this rectangle. You can see this dotted line here that's actually
the golden section. If you're not familiar with the golden section it's
actually a ratio that has been shown throughout nature, and architecture, and
art. Is sort of a ratio that shows up over and over and over again, and makes
things visually appealing. I'm not sure what that means and why humans think
that ratio is visually appealing, but it does show up over and over again. So
sketch has put that into your model, or put that into the program to make that
really easy to pull from. Or to have in your models. So, that's pretty cool. But
anyway, you know. Let's say you started with this rectangle you want to edit it
so you can make an extrusion of a shape. One of the problems that people often
run into is that they have a shape that, and they start to draw on it, but then
they realize that it's like not in the right plane. So, if I start here and I
want to make this a star on here. So this is just a very rudimentary star. Let's
say add something like that. I don't delete the middle, I can't.
Now the reason for that is that this thing kind of looks like a star, but it's
actually not. It's like a complete scribble. Because I drew in different
axes. I don't know if you noticed that. And I wasn't on purpose. Why I mean it,
kind of was on purpose to illustrate the point. But the thing that you wanted to
just make sure is that you're drawing it says on face you can see here it says on
face. And make sure you don't get that blue vertical axis or whatever plane
you're drawing. And you don't get the plane that is you're not drawing in. A
plane, that is opposite the plane that you're perpendicular to, the plane that
you're drawing on if that makes sense. So if it says on face "you're always good"
for that, and then if you connect any two lines across those two lines, it will
always be on that plane. So you don't have to worry about drawing vertically,
so you can see if I go here, I get that star it's on the same plane. And if I
want to quickly get rid of these lines in the middle - I can hit E fore the eraser
tool, or select it up here. And then you can just very quickly sort of pain
through and get rid of those lines. Now if you wanted to delete that I could do
that, or push-pull it. I could do that as well. We're just gonna get rid of these
really quickly with the eraser tool. And I'm going to show you the freehand tool.
So that's another cool shape. I would stick with a plane, if you're going to
use the freehand tool. Just keep this plane and then freehand it in. So draw
your plane and then freehand your tool, so let's say I want to do a star, that's
a little curved, right. So we're thinking Patrick the Star here. So again, I got
that guy. And super easy, right? So that's just I take your time with this,
it is like drawing, but you can see that there's like little lines that make up
all of this. Like little facets. So it's definitely not perfect, it's only as
perfect as you are. And even still I've tried to take my time and you still get
geometries that aren't very smooth or don't look like how you intend, so really
just take your time with freehand - I sort of, always, recommend constructing
your shapes. That's what I like to do. Or I like to use the line tool to make sure
that it's like exactly what I want. Is you sort of give up some of your freedom
when you use the freehand tool, but it is what it is, I guess. And then we want to
jump into the circle tool, obviously drawing a circle is pretty fundamental
to Sketchup. The thing that I have learned over time is that you, sort of,
want to...finding a center point can be so difficult in Sketchup! So when you find
it, draw a line of it. And I've seen lots of other people in Sketchup will do that
with their center lines, is that they always will put a center line marker
because if you're gonna be referencing it for a tire, or a center of something, a
dome. Or what-have-you, it's gonna be something that comes up over and over
that you need to find that Center. So just have a line, you can hide it later
or delete it, but as you need it, just keep it. And try to ignore that it is
a sort of weird-looking thing and you're in your model. So just keep those. And, you
know, as always, with the circle tool you want to make sure that the signs are set
whatever sort of smoothness you think is is appropriate. So obviously 24 is
default. If you want more sides to have a smoother looking circle - feel free to do
that. If you don't need them any sides because this is something that is gonna
be in the background - feel free to bump the sides down. Now in
the past, Sketchup only had one tool for the circle tool, so you can make other
polygons with the circle tool. But, so if I wanted to say, put in a Pentagon.
Pentagon is six. So if I wanted to put this in, right? I would draw a Pentagon.
But you can see what's happening here. Is that these edges are rounded. So it's
kept actually put in a polygon tool. So if I do the same thing, six sides, extrude
this. You can see that the sides here aren't rounded. You can obviously go back
and retroactively lis fix these, but why do that if you don't have to. So just a
the thing under them we're getting a 3D there, but just sort of the difference of
the polygons versus the circle tool there. And obviously same thing, center
line. Make sure you draw a center line. Always important. The last thing we
want to talk about today is the arc tool. There's many different art tools in
Sketchup. If you have, sort of like, you want to construct an arch from something,
you have like a reference or are an image I recommend the three-point arch.
Because you can just quickly draw it. And it looks good! The other thing that I
really like is, you know, this this art tool here, is you choose the center point
and then you can draw the...I mean it's like a swinging arc. Almost like if you
had a you're actually drawing the arc and I like that aspect. And then
this last one is you pick the two and then you pick the radius, which is also
very useful. So what I would recommend with these, is that you just want to be
very careful. And if you need to pick the center line of that as well. But when you
go through arcs, the thing that happens a lot of times is, let me just delete this
really quick. You know, let's say, I have a run here. I'm gonna make an arc. I'm gonna
try to make like an S-shape. Choose a another arc. What happens, and I've seen
this a lot of times and probably didn't notice as much. So let's say, we're going
between knees. What happens a lot of times is that you'll go through this, but
what's easy to go unnoticed and this was like pounded into me. My first real
architecture job, where we cared a lot about design was that this isn't here,
this isn't a tangent. It's a kink, like if this is a hose, this is a kink in
the hose. And so you just want to make sure that whenever you're making, and you
sort of curves that are flowing into other curve,
that those lines are tangent. No, I'd love to make another video that shows how to
make the lines tangent through drafting, but for now - and this is sort of what I
ended up doing. Because it was like you had my head spinning trying to figure it
out. It's just sort of make sure those kinks don't exist, or that they're really
really unnoticeable, so you can see that this flows much better than that kink we
had before. So let me just copy this, copy and then go back a little bit. Look at
how different these two look. You see this like kink versus a smooth curve! So,
when you're doing this kind of stuff, just think about that. And the same thing,
you know, if I wanted to turn this into, you know, another shape. These two like
flowing into each other, just be very mindful about how this
looks. At this, the end is a point. So I just want to try to make sure that this
flows as nicely as I can get, versus if this looks something more like where we
have more over here, I guess. You can see just like how different these two shapes
look. Because I'm not taking the tangent points off of them. They're just the
kinks. You want to get rid of the kinks. Just have flowy lines. And that's all
I want to cover for today. Hopefully this helped. And if you're new to Sketchup -
hopefully was helpful. If you've been using sketch for a long time, I hope it
was helpful as well. Because sometimes it's good to just step back to the basics.
If you like this video, please don't forget to like, subscribe and share
this video with your friends. And as always, happy hacking!
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