Google SketchUp Cookbook

Chapter 10. Modeling with Exact Dimensions

When SketchUp was first introduced, the idea behind it was that you could produce great-looking computer models representing your rough sketches, rather than scratch out your designs on the back of a napkin. Whereas most conventional CAD applications require you to know the exact sizes of all your model’s objects, in SketchUp you can design “by eye.”

What many SketchUp users don’t take advantage of, however, is that the application also enables you to create entire models using exact dimensions, despite its deceptively simple tool set, meaning you can use SketchUp as a start-to-finish design tool. (SketchUp Pro provides even more sophistication with LayOut, an application that enables you to produce fully annotated and dimensioned drawings of your SketchUp model.) In addition, if you’re handed a model that was created without regard to scale or dimension, SketchUp enables you to easily resize the entire model or only selected objects within it.

All of SketchUp’s editing and drawing tools can be used with exact dimensions. You can enter a dimension’s value before or after the tool’s operation is complete, and you can enter new dimensions, repeatedly if necessary, to change the results after the operation is complete. After you start a new object or activate a new tool, you can no longer enter new dimensions for the existing object.

Dimensions appear in the Measurements field, located by default below the SketchUp window. The name of this field ...