how do you change the size of a rectangle?
You can select an edge and use the Move tool or you might use the Scale tool. Depends on exactly what you need to do.
Are you actually using SketchUp Free which is the web-based version?
Dave:
thank you.
yes I am using the free web version to evaluate this product.
I tried it, I find it very inconvenient.
It will be more useful if I can just enter the size of the rectangle again.
moving it with the mouse it is not user friendly.
Thank you again
Fausto
OK. I moved your post to the correct category.
Well, that’s not an option in SketchUp. It’s really not that difficult once you learn how to use the tools. Of course if you just make the rectangle the right size in the first place you don’t need to change it.
You can draw a line in Photoshop, but PS doesn’t “know” what a line is. Likewise, you can draw a rectangle in SketchUp, but it doesn’t “know” what a rectangle is, at least natively.
What you can do on your own, though, is draw a square 1 unit (one foot or one meter) square, and then make a component out of it and name it “Unit Rectangle”. If you need a different size, get the scale tool, grab the handle of one edge at a time and while stretching it, stop and type the dimension like say 2m and return and it should make it that dimension.
Yes, it is inconvenient to resize the rectangle in the at this point in your Sketchup experience. However, as you gain knowledge and practice. you will find selecting lines, points or a portion of an object and moving them to be a very satisfying editing technique. Practicing selections and moving them using axis locking will teach a number of useful skills in Sketchup.
Remember learning to walk? Probably harder than crawling the first few days.
With simple shapes you can also use the Scale Tool.
For example, with a 2 meters by 3 meters rectangle that you would like to stretch so that it will be 2 meters by 4 meters, use the Scale Tool and enter the required length as a number followed by a unit abbreviation instead of a pure number that SketchUp (SU) interprets as a scale factor.
In this example, you need to input 4m (4 meters) in the Dimension Window (DM).
Don’t click in the DM, just type.
The exact steps are:
1 - Select the rectangle.
2 - Select the Scale Tool.
3 - Click on the required handle to stretch the length of the rectangle.
4 - Move the mouse somewhat to actually stretch the rectangle.
5 - Let go of the mouse and immediately type a value (4m in this example).
6 - Press the Enter key or the Return key to validate your input.
As I wrote before, SU interpret a pure number as a Scale Factor and a number followed by a dimension suffix as the required overall dimension. If you type only 4, the rectangle will be 12 meters long (3 meters time 4).
Open the Instructor Window (IW) if you want more details about the Scale Tool.
Scroll dan to the end of the text in the IW and you will see a link to get more informations.
Also, after choosing the Scale Tool, observe what SU is telling you in the status bar just below the modelling window.
Any tool you use seems inconvenient when you have not learned to use it. SketchUp allows you to model anything by limiting drawing to two items… edges and faces. By moving these two items around, there is nothing you cannot make (a limit that may well exist if you were limited to only drawing with predefined shapes).
Once you learn to use the tools, resizing ANY shape takes a few seconds at most.
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To help achieve your goals, some time spent at the SketchUp Campus and at the SketchUp - YouTube channel will be very worthwhile. Both sites are from the SketchUp team. On the YouTube channel, pay attention to the Square One Series. It covers the basics for each tool.
This is very true.
Select something and you can move it, rotate it, scale it, delete it, make a group or a component, etc.
However, something excludes endpoints.
What is not so obvious is that you can choose the move tool without having any selection. Then, hover the cursor over any endpoint or midpoint and you can then move this point. Anything attached to it will also move while staying attached to this point.
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