Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual

Chapter 6. Changing Styles and Applying Materials

The name “SketchUp” says a lot about how you might use the program. You can work quickly, with an end result that looks hand-drawn rather than like some polished special effect from George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic. After all, you could have plenty of reasons to show someone a sketch rather than a photo-realistic image. From architects to advertising types, artists know that presenting sketches to their clients is a way of showing that the project is still in progress, open to suggestions and change. Photorealistic images and tightly drawn plans, on the other hand, imply that a project is finished and unchangeable.

By choosing different edge styles, you can give your model either a hand-drawn look or one that has machine-like precision. How and when you use different looks is up to you, but once you work through this chapter, you’ll have the tools to create whatever look you want.

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to change the whole look of your SketchUp project with just a mouse click or two. You’ll delve into styles, which let you change the look of all the faces and edges in your model. You can make faces semitransparent, so you can look through walls to see the inside workings of a model. Or you can apply materials that look like wood, metal, glass, or concrete.

Changing Face Styles

When you work in 3-D, you’re constantly changing your view. It seems that something you want to see is either out of the picture or hidden by ...