Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual

Working with Sloped Surfaces

Up to now, most of the exercises have concentrated on edges and faces that are parallel and perpendicular to each other. Most of the edges and faces have been aligned with one of the three main axes: red, green, or blue. However, the world is filled with odd angles and sloped surfaces. And for good reason—a sloped surface is a great way to keep rainwater off your roof. In this section, you learn how to create sloped surfaces and how to reference an existing sloped surface to create a second sloped face at exactly the same angle.

Follow these steps to create a sloped roof for the first box you created in this chapter:

1. Click the corner that's farthest to the back, and then draw a short line along the blue axis.

   A new line extends above the top of the boxes. SketchUp is ready for you to draw another line.

   Tip

   Press the up arrow to force the line to the blue axis, or wait until you see a tooltip that says "On Blue Axis", and then press and hold Shift. Pressing Shift locks your line to the blue axis.

2. Draw a line down to the endpoint shared by the two boxes to create a triangular shape at the front of the box.

   The angle of a sloped roof begins to take shape. Use Figure 4-5 as a reference for this second line.

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 to create an identical triangle on the box's right side.

   As you draw the vertical line along the blue axis, hold down the Shift key to lock the inference on the blue axis. Then move the cursor to the top of the first line as shown in Figure 4-5 ...