Architectural Design with SketchUp: Component-Based Modeling, Plugins, Rendering, and Scripting

Chapter 3

Using SketchUp to Inform Your Designs

This chapter goes beyond using SketchUp as a simple 3D modeling tool. While this software is excellent at that, 3D modeling in SketchUp can and should be about more than just representing your designs—you can use it very effectively to inform your designs.

The following sections cover using group- and component-based modeling (for detailing, assembly planning, and other tasks), working with dynamic components, and using geo-based modeling effectively.

Key Terms:

• Component-based modeling
• Reporting component attributes
• Assembly-based modeling
• Trimming and cutting in SketchUp
• Using and making Dynamic Components
• SketchUp and Building Information Modeling (BIM)
• Architectural space programming with SketchUp
• Geo-based modeling

Group- and Component-Based Modeling

As you saw in Chapter 2, using groups and components can clean up your SketchUp model, keep it organized, create 3D geometry efficiently, and permit easy reuse of modeling objects.

You also learned that groups in SketchUp are useful for logically grouping individual geometry (e.g., assembling six faces into a brick), while components are appropriate if we want to reuse the exact same component multiple times. In addition, components can attach (“glue”) themselves automatically to other geometry (any faces, horizontal faces only, etc.), or they can always face the camera (like the person model in SketchUp’s default template). You can also reuse components easily through SketchUp’s ...