Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual

Selecting Objects

Before you can move an object you create in SketchUp, you have to select it. Similarly, if you want to change the shape of an object, you need to select the edge or face of the object that you want to change. In fact, before you can do pretty much anything in SketchUp, you need to make a selection. If you've used drawing or animation programs, you're probably pretty confident about your selection skills. That's great—but SketchUp has a few quirks that you need to know about:

• All SketchUp objects are made up of edges and faces. Those are the two basic elements of the SketchUp universe. No matter how complicated a SketchUp model is, it's simply a collection of edges and faces.

• All SketchUp objects are hollow inside. That board you created in the previous section? It's not solid wood; think of it instead as a cardboard box. You'll learn some of the implications of this hollowness in later chapters.

• When you select an edge, a highlight shows the selection as a blue line.

• When you select a face, it's highlighted with a pattern of dots as shown in Figure 1-17.

• A single click selects the edge or face that you click, nothing else. So if you click an edge and then use the Move (M) tool, you change the shape of your object because you're moving a single edge. The faces adjacent to the edge you're moving change shape, and your object shrinks or grows accordingly. Go ahead and try it on your board now—you know you can't wait. Use Esc or Ctrl+Z (⌘-Z) to undo any weirdness and to ...