Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual

Understanding SketchUp's Sticky Behavior

If you've been following the exercises up to this point, no doubt you've experienced SketchUp's "sticky" behavior. When edges and faces come in contact with each other, they tend to weld themselves together in a way that makes it difficult to separate the entities. In these next steps, you'll deliberately experiment with SketchUp's sticky behavior, and then by creating a grouped object, you'll see how to overcome this natural tendency in SketchUp:

Note

The exercise in this section uses the house model that was designed in Chapter 8 (shown in Figure 9-2). You can use your model or you can download advanced_components_begin.skp from http:// http://missingmanuals.com/cds.

1. Using the Rectangle (R) tool, begin to draw a rectangle in front of the house. Then type 10',3' and press Enter (Return on a Mac).

   A rectangle appears in front of the house. Make sure none of the rectangle's edges touches the house model.

2. With Push/Pull (P), begin to pull the rectangle up and then type 2' and press Enter.

   Your planter box begins to take shape.

3. With the Offset (F) tool, click the top edge of the box and, on the top surface, begin to move to the inside of the rectangle. Type 6 and then press Enter.

   The Offset tool creates an additional face on the top of the box.

4. With Push/Pull (P), click the center face in the top of the planter and begin to push down. Then type 2 and press Enter.

   At this point the planter looks like the one in Figure 9-2. You can easily select it with ...