Hey guys. I'm Aaron, and this is SketchUp Square One, where we take a look at the basics
of SketchUp one tool at a time. Today's tool - the Offset Tool. There are a couple of ways to
pull up Offset. It is in the main toolbar up here. It's right here in the default toolbar - a little
round line with an arrow and a red round line around that indicating that you're offsetting
that geometry. It is also an enlarge tool, so if you go to View > Tool Palettes on Mac/ Tool Bar on
Windows > Choose Large Tool Sets. Right here in the middle, on the right side - go ahead and click
on that. See that pop-up the tool there on the right tells us the shortcut key, the default
shortcut key for this, is the F key. If you hit F at any point, it is the same as clicking on
that icon. Offset is going to let us grab 2D geometry and offset it in plane. It's very simple
in that it does just one plane at a time. You have to have a closed face in order to use Offset.
It is very straightforward. Like a lot of other tools that we see in SketchUp, you can pre-select
geometry, or you can actively hover over geometry and choose it for Offset. Right now, I haven't
selected anything after being in Offset. If I move over this square I drew on the ground, you can see
the whole thing lights up. When it lights up, the other thing you see is this little red dot on the edge that is closest
to my cursor. That is very important, we will note that. I am going to arbitrarily click a point
and start to move my mouse. From the point I click it is going to pull out an outline
of the face I have on here. Right now, I'm currently doing a negative Offset.
If you look down at the bottom, I'm actually pulling this Offset into the face, whereas if
I move my cursor out to the outside, now I'm moving out and making a positive, or a larger,
Offset than the original shape. It is showing me the exact amount right there, so like most tools
I can actually type in an exact dimension. That exact dimension is from wherever that red dot is,
perpendicular to the edge that it is on. I want to take the square and make it
12 inches bigger, I can just type in 12 and hit Enter. I'm still in Offset right now,
so if I come back in here, I could click right here, start to pull it in this direction,
type in 12, Enter, and it will Offset it 12 times. Similar to manner in which we looked at Push/Pull,
if I hover over a shape, and double-click, it will do that same Offset again.
This is a 12 inch Offset. This is another 12 inch Offset because I double-clicked on this face.
I am going to undo a couple of times to get back to my original square. There is more
stuff we have got to look at. I mentioned you can pre-select geometry. I can come in here,
if I wanted to, pick this square, then hit Offset. The reason that is nice, is that I can
choose the point I want to go off of with a little more freedom. If I wanted to grab this corner,
I could click right here and now I'm pulling off that corner, I know for sure.
Without preselecting, it can be hard to get to an exact spot to pull that dimension from. The other
thing with pre-selection is a partial offset. What I have done up until now is the full face
in Offset. I can come in here, select one line, hold down the Shift key and click on this line.
Now, if I go to Offset, it's going to let me click and Offset just these two lines. I can just
do a partial Offset where I am just doing a couple of lines rather than the full-face. This is really
cool. This is a nice way to put edges on things to not have to get the full outline. Like on a
door I just want to do trim, so it is going to be three sides rather than all all four sides,
I can select the left, right, and top and just Offset them, rather than offsetting the
whole thing and having to do cleanup. Really nice option to have, but in order to do that,
you have to pre-select the geometry you want to Offset first. To stress the point, Offset is a 2D
function. If I click on Offset, and I come over to this cube, or box, I can offset one face at a time.
I can't, even with pre-select, come in here and select all of these. Watch what happens if
I try to do this. It deselects everything. I can only offset one face at a time. It does let me do
some cool stuff. This is not flat on the ground, it is a vertical, and if I pull it out like this,
it's going to create and close a face on the outside of that box. It is only
working on one face at a time. One more piece I want to talk about right here.
This is Overlap. If I grab this shape right here, I'm going to overlap this a couple of different
ways. I'm going to hover over this, and I'm going to start pulling it in. Watch what
happens right here in the corner. As these two cross over each other it closes that up. Watch
what happens over here on the right side, as the two lines come nearer each other,
they disappear. I am only offsetting the geometry that makes sense to Offset. I can toggle that.
Look at the modifier key at the bottom, I am on a Mac, so it says Command. If you're on a Windows,
it'll say Alt Key. If I just tap that once, if I use that Tap Command,
now it says to go ahead and allow overlap. Look what I can do now. I can create some totally
different shapes by allowing those pieces to lap over each other. Same with going outwards - I am
going to hit Command and toggle overlap. Now, as I come out, see how it merges that together?
If I turn that off, it will actually cross over itself. Look at that! Command is a good option to
have. This merging is really nice to have. If I do want a specific size border, I can have something
that is exactly 8 inches, I can type 8 and Enter. I then know this is 8 inches all the way around,
even the spots where, well it's not 8 inches here because of the overlap. Cool command,
it is really nice because not only can you get this Offset inwards, you can also take it outward.
If I take a composite shape like this and I go to Offset and I try to offset like this,
it will take the outermost edge and offset that. If I wanted to offset this piece here,
I'd have to separately go in and pull this out, same thing here.
There's a lot of things Offset can do. A lot of people think it's an overly simple command,
but it really is pretty powerful and you can create some unique geometry using that.
I like to use that along with Push/Pull to create things like trim or relief.
Because you can take something like a wall and offset portions of it and use Push/Pull
to create some depth. It's a really nice way to add detail to what would otherwise be
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