Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual

Using the Protractor Tool

SketchUp inferences are great as long as you're drawing lines along one of the main axes, but they're not as much help when you're drawing angles. That's a job for the Protractor tool. The Protractor is similar to the tape measure; you can use it to measure and to create guides.

Figure 8-2. Top: While using Push/Pull, press and release the Ctrl key (Option key for Macs), and the tool changes to copy mode. Bottom: Instead of just moving the selected face, Push/Pull makes a copy of the face and uses it for the extrusion. Notice the horizontal line that marks the position of the original face.

It takes three clicks to place a guide in your model using the Protractor. The first click sets the corner of the angle; or if you think of the 360-degree arc of a circle, that first click is the center of the circle. The second click sets a reference guide. This line isn't permanent; it's only displayed while you're measuring the angle. As you move the cursor between the second and third click, the Measurements toolbar shows (in degrees) the angle between the reference line and your cursor. You can create a guide by clicking, or by entering a value for the angle, as shown in Figure 8-3. Values can be expressed in degrees down to one tenth of a degree. Or, angles can be expressed in architectural slope notation. If you're unfamiliar with that notation, see the box on Using ...