Hi there,
I am trying to have tech students create 2d plans for machine shop. I have two questions:
a) How can we create a simple arrow? I thought we would be able to just change the line function to an arrow but that does not seem to be the case.
b) I have figured out how to create dashed lines by the divide and erase function, but is there not a way to just create a dashed line?
Any help would be appreciated.
You would have to draw arrows in SketchUp. With SketchUp 2019, there’s an option to set dashed lines for edges in groups that have been assigned to layers with the Dashes enabled. In older versions of SketchUp dashed lines would most easily be made the way you are doing them with divided lines.
For plans, though, your students should be modeling in SketchUp but using LayOut to create the plan documents. In LayOut arrows and dashed lines can be created along with labels and dimensions and other things. Scenes showing 2D views in the SketchUp model can be used to create scaled illustrations in the plan in LayOut, as well.
Thanks for the input, greatly appreciated! I will play with Layout for awhile and learn more before asking further questions. Thanks again!
Thanks for the tip about Layout Dave. It was far easier and will be more accessible to the students. Greatly appreciated!
Excellent! With LayOut they’ll also be able to do more proper drawings with correct dimensioning and labels and such. Here’s a quickie I zipped out. If you don’t already have a font with the various symbols, you can get the one I used which is called Y14.5M-2009. There are probably newer versions with more symbols but this works well enough for my use.
I did a mock up of the tech teacher’s metal hammer project for him as a sample with top, side and back views with labels etc. The degree symbol took a bit to find but everything else was intuitive. I do not think it is too challenging for the grade 9s but we will see. I am hoping we can get the nines and tens into layout and then the 11s and 12s into sketchup and get them to print 3d projects. Thanks again.
Good deal.
Are you familiar with Character Map in Windows? It’s really handy for finding symbols and such in a font. You can either select glyphs to copy and then paste into your text or for those such as the degree sign, you can find out how to insert it by keystroke if you are using an extended keyboard.
For the degree sign, hold Alt while typing 0176.
I would suggest that you have the students make their model in SketchUp and create scenes to show the views. Then send to LayOut. The students get the best of both that way. The block with the holes in my illustration was modeled in SketchUp and I created two scenes; top view and front view with a section cut… After saving the file I sent it to LayOut to layout the page and add the labels and dashed lines.
Thank you, very helpful!
