I’m new to sketchup and I’m trying to do a layout of my bedroom for some interior design. How do I draw this in Sketchup? I’m having trouble with reproducing the bottom left corner entryway because of the diagonals.
Hi,
Draw this with two separate rectangles, and make a Group for each one… so that they don’t stick to one another.
Then Rotate, and Move the smaller one into position.
The Tape Measure tool can be used for setting in Guidelines, such as a horizontal guide line that marks the top intersection point of the smaller rectangle.
Once positioning is correct, you can Explode the two shapes, and delete all of the inside overlapping line work…
OR, you can Group what you’ve just done, and use it as a tracing template to redraw the entire floor plan.
Tricky layout work (which this job really isn’t) is often aided by drawing in some underlying shapes who’s sole purpose is to support a second drawing which is done on top. SketchUp will see the intersecting lines of the template drawing, and use those positions as snap points for what’s happening with the top ‘important’ drawing. which I hope make sense.
Another approach is to just rotate everything… Rotate the entire model so that the part you want to work on is aligned with the default axis directions.
If you’re nervous about messing up something… then it’s time to copy what you have and paste it in somewhere else so you can practice on the copy model with less stress.
As an advanced option, There are ways to rotate the entire Axes system via the axes tool. This is probably the approach many folks would take, but it assumes a little bit of familiarity with SketchUp in general, and I’m not sure how comfortable you are with jumping into the deep end (or middle) of the pool as it were.
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Thanks for the help.
The original model I made in Onshape which only took me about a minute or so.
I’m trying to replicate it in SketchUp as a learning exercise.
My main issue is that the 37.855" side on the smaller rectangle is a driven dimension, so I only know how long that side because it was calculated by Onshape. I’d like to know how to do it in SU without having that information.
If I am only using SU then all I would know is that the smaller rectangle had side lengths of 30" and 8.375", and that each corner was 90 degrees, and that the small rectangle intersected the large rectangle at 76" and 108.5". Geometrically this should be sufficient to create the drawing.
I don’t want to rotate the whole drawing since the room as it stands is aligned on north-south-east-west lines, and I would prefer to keep it that way. Also since the original drawing was done in Onshape it wouldn’t be very straightforward to copy it over the SU and use as a template, plus I want to learn how to do things from the ground up in SU alone.
Here’s what I’ve done so far:
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Construct the large rectangle at 119.25" by 118.25".
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Use the Tape Measure to create guide points and 76" and 108.5" in the lower left area of the large rectangle.
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Make the large rectangle a group.
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Construct the small rectangle at 30" by an arbitrary length around 35" (exact length unknown).
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Use the Tape Measure to create a guide point at 8.375" on the bottom side of the small rectangle.
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Make the small rectangle a group.
Screenshot so far:
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Ok, now I use the move tool to bring the upper-right corner of the small rectangle to be coincident with the guide point at 76".
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Next I use the rotate tool to swing the small rectangle to line up the 8.375" guide point with the guide point at 108.5":
Now I’ve run into a problem. Since I didn’t know the second length of the small rectangle I came up short. If I try to move the points circled in red together it just moves the whole small rectangle as a group, and then I’m short on the top side. If I scale the small rectangle then my 30" and 8.375" lengths grow. If I ungroup the small rectangle and try to move things I get unintended movement from other lines that are now sticking together. So I’m not sure what to do at this point.
From your description, as you’ve grouped the large rectangle and grouped the small rectangle, therefore creating two separate groups, editing the small rectangle should not affect the large rectangle.
Therefore, you should be able to double click the small rectangle to edit the geometry inside this group. As you will be inside this group, the lines will not be ‘stuck’ to the large rectangle. It should therefore be possible to move the line with the reference point that you have created, so that it intersects with the reference point on the large rectangle. It will then stretch the smaller rectangle to the desired size.
When finished, just click anywhere outside the small rectangle group.
Hope that helps.
Mike
Here’s a little gif of basically what @MichaelSiggers has described.
But note that when moving an edge it can move out of alignment, so I have used the Left Arrow to Constrain the move to the green axis of the group allowing you to grab the line almost anywhere and move it to your guidepoint without any skewing.
Draw in two circles with a high value for their side count.
you essentially need to find the tangent point between a 30", and a 8.375" radius circle.
The problem is that SketchUp doesn’t draw in true curves. nor does have a built-in tangent finder. some interpretation is in order. without using a plug-in extension.
In the top picture I’m rotating a squared angle w/ a 30" side until it meets up with the lower circle.
In the bottom picture I’m drawing a guideline that approximates where the tangent line would be.
Thanks Michael and Box, I appreciate the help.
I followed what you showed in the gif, although it gets me close, it doesn’t get the correct dimensions:
The lower side of the small rectangle now extends out 7.085" instead of the required 8.375". If I just extend it out to 8.375" then the top length will change from 30.000" to 30.290". The issue here is that the rectangle isn’t exactly at the proper angle. It needs to be both extended and rotated at the same time, so that everything stays square and the rectangles intersect at the correct points with the correct lengths.
Yes that will get to the correct dimensions. How do I create a guide line that’s tangent to both circles? Also my circles are coming out as ~24 sided polygons, is that just a consequence of using Sketchup Free or am I missing something?
Crank up your side count… to 96 or so.
When you initiate the circle or arc tool, the first value you can enter will adjust the side count. If you look carefully I think you should see that the value control box will say ‘sides’ at this point.
I don’t use, and haven’t even seen the SketchUp Free program… but It shouldn’t be any different from what I have.
24 sides is just the default count for all versions, so don’t worry about missing out on anything there.
Ok I got everything preeeetty close. I think this is about as good as it’s going to get unless there is another method that will get it to the exact dimensions.
I do wish I could get it exact but I suppose this is good enough.
Thanks everyone for the help!
Oh, so you want to be a mathematician then. I can appreciate that.
You know the center points for where the two circles are. measure the distance between them and then use that as the hypotenuse for a right angle triangle that has a 21.625" side (30" - 8.375").
Let me rephrase lol,
I wish I could get it exact using the tools easily available within SU. For example it took me about a minute to get everything exact within Onshape but things are just done very differently there.
I already know how to do it on pen and paper to get exact measurements so there’s no need to keep going through that, I’ll just move on to the next part of my project.
No need to rephrase at all… I can appreciate all expectations that SU will be able to nail down a simple layout problem like this. I wish it would too. There is a way it’s just tedious, and in opposition to how SU handles arcs and curves in general.
How does the SketchUp Free program run under the Chrome OS?
That’s a combination that I don’t often see… but something which I think Trimble thinks about fairly often.
Oh I’m running windows 10 using the chrome browser. I’ll update my profile to remove the ambiguity. It seems to run ok except things are noticeably slower when I’m using the protractor tool or the move rotation tool.
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