How to accuratly scale something to a precise size?

SketchUp 3D Printing
1

I am sure this is an easy question, but something I have never been able to work out.

Say I want to scale an object (in all 3 planes) to a specific size (in 1 plane) is there an easy way to do it?

Imagine I have a washer… And I want to scale it so that it was 10mm across (but I didn’t care about the height, instead I just wanted it to remain in the correct proportion)… Currently I would select it… Grab one of the “corners” and drag it, but then I have to get to 10mm by trial and error.

I could of course draw some 10mm wide lines and scale to the edges of the lines… But I am sure there must be a better way.

Is there any way to type something in the text box to do this?

I know I can type something like “10mm,10mm,1mm” and this seems to work… But its no longer in proportion… I want to set ONE value only and have the whole thing keep its proportions.

I was thinking that I could do “10mm,1,1”, where 10mm, was the absolute size, and the 2nd and 3rd one was a ratio… But this just takes the whole thing in mms.

2

SketchUp doesn’t have a Transform menu like in Adobe Illustrator, unfortunately. Drawing a line and scaling your object based on that line is one way.

You could also use the Tape Measure Tool to scale your entire model uniformly. Refer to the following video from SketchUp’s official YouTube channel - SketchUp Training Series: Tape Measure Tool. Have a look at 1:45 for the exact process of scaling with that tool.

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3

Grab the handle to scale in the one axis you want to be 10mm, hold down shift to scale uniformly, click somewhere to scale to an arbitrary size then immediately type in “10mm” and press enter.

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I am not sure I follow that… When I click on a corner, the proportions are “locked”… When I hit shift, I can then move around and change the proportions… If I now type 10mm, it sets the model to 10mm, but hte proportions are random (i.e they were what they were when I typed 10mm)

Am I missing a step?

Edit: Hang on… I think I understand now… So rather than select a ‘corner’… I just choose one of the single axis’s… But when I then hit “shift” its like I am grabbing a corner… But now what I let go, I can then type a size… I think that works…

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Don’t grab a corner handle. Grab the one in the middle of the side.

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:slight_smile: Cheers. I edited my original post… I understand what you mean now… And that does EXACTLY what I wanted.

Cheers

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