General SketchUp Info

PNG Trees: Part 1 - 3D Warehouse

Consider this lovely model of a small cottage in the woods, by Verkley Design and Modeling: (You can download this model yourself by clicking the “3D Warehouse” logo above. Or you can try this out with any model that can use some landscaping features.) The trees in this model are well designed, making good use […]

Soap Skin Table: Part 2 - Complete Faces

Here’s where I left off after Part 1 of this series – four border edges of the curved face I want to create. I have two arcs on the sides, and two horizontal edge at the top and bottom.   Now for the magic of Soap Skin. First I select all four borders. Then I […]

Soap Skin Table: Part 1 - Border Setup

I recently helped an interior design client design a lovely room, with this nice sitting corner:   Note the table between the two swivel chairs – it’s a round lamp table by Hickory White. Here’s a close-up:   A round table with all circular or straight edges would be pretty easy to model in SketchUp. […]

Openwork Vase: Part 3 - FredoScale

Here’s the last post in this three-part series. In Part 1 I set up the objects for Shape Bender, and in Part 2 I bent the trellis along a curve. In this post, I’ll use FredoScale to get half of the vase, then copy and assemble to complete. FredoScale is a SketchUcation extension. See my […]

Openwork Vase: Part 2 - Shape Bender

In Part 1 of this series, I left off with the three objects needed for the Shape Bender extension. I have the model to be bent (the trellis), a straight edge parallel to the red axis, and the curve along which the trellis will be bent. (Check out my previous series on Shape Bender. And […]

Openwork Vase: Part 1 - Setup

I wasn’t sure what to title this series, but this is what I created in SketchUp:   So “openwork vase” makes sense to me. I first saw this technique used in a cool video by Justin Geis of The SketchUp Essentials. Check out his website and YouTube channel, tons of great stuff! Here’s the video […]

Color by Layer

If you don’t use layers while modeling in SketchUp, you’re missing out. Especially if you create or use complex models with lots of entourage, furniture, etc. Good SketchUp modelers almost always work this way: Keep Layer0 always active. All objects are created or imported on Layer0. If you have any “loose” geometry, make these objects […]

Dynamic Windows: Part 3 – Generic Doors

OK, so maybe a post on doors doesn’t belong in a series on dynamic windows, but the concept is the same. Part 1 and Part 2 of this series showed two different types of generic dynamic windows, great for showing how basic windows look in a space. But my room also needs a generic door. […]

Dynamic Windows: Part 2 - Generic, Adjustable Windows

In Part 1 of this series, I showed how to insert a scalable dynamic window, to fill a wall cutout. In this post, I’ll show a different type of generic window – one that has a different options. This window will fill the smaller wall cutouts.   In the previous post I used the 3D […]