Using Measured Push/Pull
What if you wanted to push or pull an object exactly 5 feet when making it 3D? That is, suppose you have a circle on one surface of a cube (refer to Figure 5.3), and you want to pull the circle out into a cylinder exactly 5 feet—could you do it?Yes. Like most SketchUp operations, you can interrupt them midway and enter a measurement. Here’s how it works when you’re pushing or pulling objects into 3D—in this example, we’ll pull a cylinder out of a
cube by 5 feet:
1. Click the Start Using SketchUp button and click the human figure that appears in the Engineering–Feet template to select it; press the Del key to delete it.
2. Draw the cube with a circle on one surface.
3. Click the Push/Pull tool in the toolbar.
4. Move the mouse cursor to the circle and press the mouse button on the circle.
5. Drag the circle out of the cube to pull it into 3D, or push it into the cube to push it into 3D.
6. Release the mouse button. The cylinder becomes 3D.
7. Enter the length of the 3D object you want. In this example, we’ll create a 5-foot cylinder. Enter a length and then the units— you can use these units:
- cm to signify centimeters
- m to signify meters
- ' for feet
- " for inches
Thus, 5m means five meters, 5" means five inches, and so on. In this example, we’ll use 5 feet, 5', giving you the cylinder you see in Figure 5.6.
8. Press Enter. SketchUp changes the new 3D object’s length to match what you’ve requested.
Note that when you release the mouse button the first time, it feels as though you’ve finished drawing the cylinder, but SketchUp remembers that the cylinder is still being drawn, and if you enter a length and press Enter, it’ll apply that length to the most recent figure, which in this example is the cylinder.
Inferring Push/Pull
Suppose you wanted to draw two cubes to the same height, similar to what you can see in Figure 5.7, but are not satisfied with your first effort.Can SketchUp help make the two cubes the same height?
FIGURE 5.6 A measured cylinder.
FIGURE 5.7 Two cubes.
Yes, it can—through inferring. Because it’s so common when creating models to want one object to match another in some dimension (think of the length of table legs, for example), SketchUp allows you to set an object’s length by referring to another object that already has the length you want. This process is called inferring (See Lesson 2, “Up and Running with SketchUp”).
When drawing 3D objects, you can infer the length on one object to another object, making the first object’s length match the second object. Here’s how it works in the example of the two cubes in Figure 5.7:
1. Click the Start Using SketchUp button and click the human figure that appears in the Engineering–Feet template to select it; press the Del key to delete it.
2. Draw two rectangles in the x-y plane.
3. Click the Push/Pull tool in the toolbar.
4. Pull the rectangles into cubes of different heights, as shown in Figure 5.7.
5. With the Push/Pull tool, click the top surface of one of the cubes.
6. Move the mouse to the top surface of the other cube. A dotted blue line extends from the first surface to the surface you’re inferring, as shown in Figure 5.8, and the first cube (the one you clicked first) snaps to the height of the second cube (the one you’re inferring to), as you can see in the figure.
7. Click the top surface of the second cube. The height of the first cube becomes frozen to match the height of the second cube.
Inferring provides an easy way to make the length of objects match in SketchUp.
Thanks :
Steven Holzner,
SamsTeachYourself Google SketchUp 8 in 10 Minutes
