Sticking To A Grid - What Grid? Where IS The Grid?

Technical Problems SketchUp
1

Okay, this is slightly infuriating.

  1. “Remember when you had to align things the old-fashioned way? On graph paper? Turns out, grids are handy on-screen, too, and LayOut has a grid that you can toggle on or off to line up your entities. To see the grid, select View > Show Grid. When the grid is displayed, select View > Hide Grid to make it disappear.”

Excuse me… there is no option for a grid on the view menu here.

“To customize the grid’s appearance and spacing, follow these steps:
Select File > Document Setup.
In the Document Setup dialog box that appears, select Grid in the sidebar on the left.”

There is no sidebar on the left in Document SetUp.

So what now?
Is it because the Mac OS version of Sketchup simply does not have a grid?
Is this documentation out of date?
Am I overlooking something?
What? Where? How?

I’m lost.

2

Are you looking for the grid in SketchUP or Layout? Which program are you in?

3

Thanks. I’m using Sketchup.

4

Using SketchUp in the past, I seem to remember being able to view the grid. I was using Windows back then.

5

Hello! SketchUp never had a grid option as far as I remember. LayOut has a grid though. You can toggle it on/off by desire. If you really need a grid in SketchUp, you could most likely draw it manually with the Guides Tool.

6

Oh, okay. Thanks. I must have got distracted by LayOut then. I find the help rather confusing at times.

Also, while I’m here - can I ask if there’s a way to constrain the Move tool to align with axes? Before I was using a Kensington trackball with axis lock (the software no longer works). So I need a reliable way of doing this.

7

No problems! You can lock to the XYZ axes by holding down the Shift key while moving. Just start moving your object to the desired direction and when you notice it snaps to the axis, press Shift and it’ll lock.

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8

@PropBuilder, at the risk of sounding like a broken record (boy what a dated simile that is), both your perceived need for a grid and your request for an axis lock relate back to my earlier comment about you needing to invest some time learning about inferencing. Going through the videos and Knowledge Base looking for everything you can find on the subject–and practicing–should be your first priority. Everything else will be harder until you do.

-Gully

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9

You’re right, Gully. I’m just getting into a right mess and it feels like I’m never going to get this. I can’t even move or rotate something without it flipping about all over the place. I’m going to ditch this attempt and spend a few days following videos, I think.

I could have drawn all this easier with a pencil and ruler by now.

Nevertheless, your insight into building this model from outlines has been invaluable. So thanks again.

10

But then all you’d have is some smudges on a piece of paper. Static, inert, and soon to fade away forever.

With a model you’ve got a dynamic simulacrum of the real thing. You can look at it from all angles, take it apart and put it back together, tweak it endlessly, feed the data to downstream applications (like 3D printing or CNC milling), reuse it over and over, and maintain it in pristine condition forever.

A model is better. Worth the effort.

-Gully

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