Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual

Using the Move Tool in 3-D

When you build 3-D models in SketchUp, you're always moving something. Perhaps you're moving model furniture around the inside of your model beach house. Or maybe your hot tub needs to be bigger, so you're moving one of the endpoints on a circle. In any case, you're moving, tinkering, and fiddling. It's all part of the 3-D design process.

When you use the Move tool with 2-D objects, you click a point, release the mouse button, and then move the cursor. The shape seems to be attached to the cursor until you click a new spot to set the shape down. It's the same drill when you move 3-D objects in 3-D space. One obvious challenge is that you can move the objects in three dimensions instead of just two. Also, remember how moving surfaces, edges, and endpoints of 2-D shapes had different effects? That's true with 3-D objects, too.

SketchUp tries to make movement easier by initially restricting the motion along axis lines. It's pretty good at guessing which direction you want to move a face or an edge most of the time. What about the other times? If you want to overcome movement restrictions, you use a keyboard toggle dubbed Auto-fold (for the origin of that name, see Understanding Auto-Fold). On a PC, you press and release the Alt key. On a Mac, the toggle is the ⌘ key. The Auto-fold toggle turns off movement restrictions until you press the key again.

In the following steps, you'll learn how to move objects along the three axis lines, and how to overcome movement ...