Google SketchUp Basic Tools

Tool bar usage.

Select Tool:
With the select tool you can, well, select objects. With this, it is the normal click and drag to select things. With Ctrl+Click (holding Ctrl), you can select multiple objects. This is good for selecting multiple, specific objects.

Here, I selected just only two sides of the object with Crtl+click

With Shift+Crtrl+Click (holding shift and ctrl) you can deselect sides you have already selected. Its like the Ctrl+Click, but youre deselecting objects.

Draw Tool:
With the draw tool, you can draw different polygons freely.

Here I start freely drawing, and here I finish.

Rectangle Tool:
The rectangle tool allows you create a flat (2D) rectangle. To use it, click and drag.

Circle Tool:
The circle tool it allows you to create a flat (2D) circle. To use it, click and drag.

Arc Tool:
The arc tool allows you to create, an arc. To use it, simply click where you want to start, then once you get to your desired length, click again, and then move your mouse forward or backwards to change the direction and size.
Here, I make an arc, start to finish

Component Create Tool:

Now, this tool is slightly more difficult to use than the other ones. First, Create any object. For the example, I have made a simple window.

Once youve made your object, select all of it with the select tool.

Then, click the component create tool. A window like this should appear.

Then, once youve created your component, go to the Window tab up top and click on it.

Then select Components

After that, this window will pop open. To get to the components YOU made, click the small house and go to In Model and select your component.

The Erase Tool:

The erase tool is quite simple. It erases things youve made, by just clicking and dragging over the unwanted object.

But there is also another thing, instead of erasing; you can soften the edges and make things look smoother, which just hides the edges from view. You do this by holding Ctrl + click and drag (reverse by Shift+Ctrl):

The Measuring Tool:

Nothing to complicated here, its very useful if youre making a scale model and need precise measurements.

For the example, I decided to measure the starting models height.

Which came out to be about 5 6.5.

Paint Bucket Tool:

Again, this is another basic tool. When you click on the tool icon, a window will pop open. This is where you can select all types of colors and textures.

The Push/Pull Tool:

This tool makes flat, boring 2D surfaces into 3D blocks/cylinders/polygons/whatever shape youve made and is very easy to use.

Once you have the tool selected, just click on the surface you want, and push/pull to make it 3D

The Move Tool:

This tool is another, very simple tool. To use, simply click and drag a surface to move it around. To move a whole object, you must first select the entire object and then drag it around with the move tool.

Entire object Move.

Single face Move.

Rotate Tool:
This works similar to the move tool, how you have to select either a single face to rotate just the face, or the whole object to rotate the entire object.

Entire Object Rotation

Single face rotation

Offset Tool:
Creates copies of lines are a uniform distance. You can combine it with the Push/Pull tool to make stepped effects.

Here I use the offset tool.

Here I combine it with the push/pull tool

The Orbit Tool:

This tool is the thing youll be looking/moving around your canvas with. It is a simple, click and drag to orbit around something. Also, if you need to zoom in/move from a spot, use the scroll wheel. It will zoom/move to wherever your cursor is.

Let us use this 3D object as a point of reference

Just a normal orbit around the object.

If you hold Ctrl, it suspends gravity, in the sense where it does not keep vertical edges up and down.

A suspended gravity orbit

If you hold control, your cursor turns into the Pan tool:

The Pan Tool:

With the pan tool, you can change your view in a horizontal or vertical manner, so you arent rotating, but panning only on the x and y axes.

The Zoom Tool:

With this this tool you can, obviously, zoom in. Click and to zoom in, move your mouse to towards the top of the screen, to zoom back, move the cursor to the lower part of your screen.

The Zoom Extents Button:

On click, the button zooms out to view the extent of an object (you and entire object is visible).

Add Location Tool:

If you have a model of a certain place on earth, you can use this tool to find that place on Google Maps and mark your model as that place.

Add New Building Tool:

Allows you to access the Google Sketchup Warehouse, and use buildings other people have made.

The Photo Textures Tool:

This tool is quite cool. It allows you to either get a screen shot from Google Earth or your own photos and allows you to place them on a surface in your model.

Plain old surface before photo textures tool.

Surface after photo textures tool. (some random place from Google Earth)

The Preview Model in Google Earth Tool:

This tool allows you to plop your model down in a location in Google Earth. Like if youre making a model of a building that will be constructed, you can plop it down to see what it might look like once its built in real life.

Ill use this block that looks like a monolith for an example.

Now the monolith is on the moon Hm, reminds one of space odyssey.

The Get/Share Model Tools:

These are just either to get models from the Google Warehouse or share your models to be put in the Google Warehouse.

The Share Components Tool:

Like the share model tool, it shares components youve made.