Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual

Using the Freehand Tool

In the toolbar you find the Freehand tool under the Line and Arc tools, or choose Tools → Freehand. There's an exception to almost every rule, and for SketchUp, it's the Freehand tool. This tool is the one drawing tool that you use by dragging, not click-move-clicking. This flexibility gives you the ability to draw a line that follows any shape you create. Freehand lines have a starting point, where you first click, and an ending point, where you release the mouse button. In between the two points, the line follows everywhere you go with your mouse. SketchUp considers a freehand line to be a single object and keeps that shape unless you bisect the line, in which case it turns into separate line segments.

In these steps, you'll use the Freehand tool to draw two ears for Skeeter SketchUp:

1. Using the Freehand tool, find a good point for the top of the ear. Click and hold the mouse button.

   When the mouse is over the line that defines the head, you see a tooltip message "On Edge", meaning that's where you'll connect the ear to the head.

2. Drag to trace the shape of the ear, and then click another point on the head's edge to complete the ear.

   As you trace, a line forms in the trail of your Freehand cursor.

3. When you're back over the edge of the face, release the mouse button to set the ear's endpoint.

   The face defined by the ear shape fills in when you close the shape. The line dividing the surface of the ear and the surface of the face is a shared edge, as shown in Figure 2-18 ...