It's time to apply the drawing techniques you've learned to a practical project. In this chapter, you'll build a house with an overhanging roof and a garage. You'll model the doors and windows and trim them out in realistic detail. To complete the project, you'll add a driveway and a front path.
Along the way, you'll add some new skills and techniques to your SketchUp toolkit. To start with, you'll learn new techniques for coaxing inferences from the points, edges, and faces of your model. Equally important, you'll learn how to lock your drawing tools so they move only along specific inferences and axes. After you've mastered these techniques, you'll use them time and again. They're one of the main reasons SketchUp artists are able to draw so quickly and accurately. You'll also learn how to use the Offset tool to quickly model new elements—like trim details—based on the outlines of existing objects like doors and windows. So hop in your pickup truck, and drive out to the construction site. It's time to start building.
Chapter 3 introduced inferences (Finding 3-D Inferences)—handy lines that pop up from time to time to show you what SketchUp thinks you want to do. Inferences appear as temporary, dotted lines. They help you align your work to SketchUp's main axes or find an edge's midpoint or endpoint (Figure 4-1). You use these inferences as guides when you draw new lines and shapes. Letting SketchUp do the aligning and measuring for you makes your work go a lot faster.
Figure 4-1. As you move your cursor around your drawing, SketchUp displays inference lines. Use these inference lines to measure and align the new parts of your model.
As you move a drawing tool (like the Line tool) around in 3-D space, SketchUp works behind the scenes to figure out which inference you need. When it sees a likely candidate, the program displays an inference line or highlights a particular point. Inference lines usually run from your cursor back to a point that you might find helpful. When specific points are highlighted, you see a large colorful dot under the cursor. For example, when your cursor is over an edge, a green dot indicates an endpoint, and a blue dot indicates a midpoint. Usually, accompanying tooltip messages explain the inference.
In earlier exercises when you saw an inference that you needed, you moved your cursor slowly and carefully, so you didn't lose the inferences as you drew new shapes and lines. In this exercise, you learn how to lock an inference, so you can work more quickly instead of making your mouse tightrope walk to use the inference.
With the rectangle tool, draw a 20 x 10-foot rectangle.
Draw the rectangle on the plane formed by the red and green axes. The blue axis is perpendicular to the rectangle.
With the Push/Pull tool, pull the rectangle up into a box.
Pull the box up so it's a good height for a one-story house—about 8 feet works well.
Click the Iso view button or choose Camera → Standard Views → Iso.
You see an angled view of the box.
Click the box's lower-left corner to start a line, and then move along the green axis, as shown in Figure 4-2.
When you move your cursor along the green axis, you see a thin green line. If you happen to move off the green axis, your cursor changes to a black line.
While the line is still green, press and hold Shift to lock the inference in place.
When you press Shift, the thin green line changes to a thick green line, as shown in Figure 4-2. Once you lock in the green inference, you can move your cursor all over the drawing, and no matter where you move the cursor, the line you're drawing is locked to the green axis.
With the Shift key still down, click to finish the line.
The line is drawn parallel to the green axis. SketchUp assumes you want to continue drawing lines, so there's a rubber band line between your cursor and the recently clicked point.
Position the cursor so that the rubber band line is aligned with the red axis.
When your line is parallel to the red axis, the rubber band line changes to a thin red line.
Press and hold Shift to lock the red inference line.
The thin red line changes to a thick red line. You can move the line cursor around your drawing to reference other points, edges, or faces.
Move the line cursor to the box's lower-right corner to reference that point.
When you move the cursor to the corner of the box, the line that you're drawing extends along the red axis. SketchUp displays three signals when you move the cursor to the corner of the box—kind of like a basketball coach waving wildly from the sidelines:
A green dot appears at the box's corner.
A new dotted inference line runs from the corner to the tip of the line you're drawing.
A tooltip appears that reads, "Constrained on Line from Point." This is SketchUp's cryptic way of saying that you're using the corner point as a reference for the new line.
With your cursor still referencing the corner point, click to complete the line along the red axis.
A new line appears along the red axis. This line is parallel to the bottom edge of the box, and it's exactly the same length. Best of all, you didn't need a carpenter's square or a tape measure to draw it.
Draw the next line to the corner point on the box.
This line's a cinch, and it completes a rectangle that's attached to the box. There's no longer a rubber band line attached to the cursor, because SketchUp knows you've completed the shape. Now that you've built out, in the next steps you'll build up.
Click the new rectangle's lower-left corner, and then begin to draw a line up the blue axis.
When your line is on the blue axis, the rubber band line changes to a thin blue line (see Figure 4-3).
Press and hold Shift to lock the blue inference.
The rubber band line changes to a thick blue line, and the line is locked to the blue axis.
Move the line cursor to the top edge of the box, and then click to complete the line.
You can reference any point on the top edge or face of the box to set the height of your line.
Continue by drawing a new line along the green axis back to the box.
This should only take one click, because SketchUp's all ready for you to draw another line. When you're done, a new face fills in.
Draw a new line along the blue axis from the right corner of your rectangle.
Use the same techniques (steps 12–14) to lock the inference and reference a point on the top of the box to set the height for your line.
Draw a horizontal line to the corner of the first box to complete the face of this new box.
After you've drawn the line, the face fills in.
Complete your new box by drawing a line from top corner to top corner, as shown in Figure 4-4.
Once this last line is drawn, the faces on top and to the right fill in. You've drawn a perfect, new box by using inferences from the first box.
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