Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual

Chapter 4. Drawing a Basic House

It's time to apply the drawing techniques you've learned to a practical project. In this chapter, you'll build a house with an overhanging roof and a garage. You'll model the doors and windows and trim them out in realistic detail. To complete the project, you'll add a driveway and a front path.

Along the way, you'll add some new skills and techniques to your SketchUp toolkit. To start with, you'll learn new techniques for coaxing inferences from the points, edges, and faces of your model. Equally important, you'll learn how to lock your drawing tools so they move only along specific inferences and axes. After you've mastered these techniques, you'll use them time and again. They're one of the main reasons SketchUp artists are able to draw so quickly and accurately. You'll also learn how to use the Offset tool to quickly model new elements—like trim details—based on the outlines of existing objects like doors and windows. So hop in your pickup truck, and drive out to the construction site. It's time to start building.

Locking an Inference

Chapter 3 introduced inferences (Finding 3-D Inferences)—handy lines that pop up from time to time to show you what SketchUp thinks you want to do. Inferences appear as temporary, dotted lines. They help you align your work to SketchUp's main axes or find an edge's midpoint or endpoint (Figure 4-1). You use these inferences as guides when you draw new lines and shapes. Letting SketchUp do the aligning and measuring ...