I a new (or, better, not a sophisticated) user of Sketch-up although I use it quite frequently. I would like to capture my home’s lot layout and am having trouble determining area measurements of various lot components. For example, I know the lot is 90ft wide and 150ft long. So I first drew a rectangle with these dimensions. I added some other rectangles for the home’s foot print. Next I drew areas that approximated the shape and size of the lawn areas and the planting beds, etc. I put all the lawn areas on one layer and the planting beds on another, the sidewalks and driveway on another, etc. I created groups for these different things. The overall lot is on Layer 0 and when I make all the other layers invisible, I can do an area measurement on the area of the over all lot size. But I can’t measure the number of square feet of lawn space I have or how many square feet of planting beds I have. What do I need to do to allow me to determine the areas of these sub-areas of my lot layout? Thanks for your help.
It sounds to me as if you might be using layers incorrectly and not using groups or components. You should read up on the proper use of layers. You would also find it useful to spend some time going through the SketchUp Fundamentals and perhaps the Landscape unit here: https://learn.sketchup.com/
Please also take a few moments to complete your profile with the SketchUp version and license type, operating system, and graphics card details. These things help us help you.
I uploaded a sample file and image. You can make components of each area type. I made a component for the overall lot and gave it a layer because you don’t need to see this when you are looking at the area breakdown–you can hide the layer. You can select the surface of each space or all the surfaces in a component. The “Area” contextual item gives you different ways of looking at it.
Using components is one way to keep it neat (once you’ve drawn all the boundaries) but even without components you can look at the various areas with the contextual menu. The overall site shape definitely needs separation in a component. Notice you don’t really have a need for layers for everything in this exercise. YARD AREAS.skp (49.8 KB)
