From the course: Learning SketchUp Free

Line tool fundamentals - SketchUp Tutorial

From the course: Learning SketchUp Free

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Line tool fundamentals

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- [Instructor] Now let's get started with drawing in SketchUp. We're going to start off with the line tool. Now, before we get started, I want to remind you that SketchUp is a 3D application. So we have three axes on which to draw. So we have the red axis, which is basically left and right. The green axis, which is forward and back. And then the blue axis, which is vertical or up and down. And when we draw, we need to pay attention to these axes, and also snap to them so that we can draw accurately. So let me show you how to do that. So we're going to start off with the line tool. So we can go over here, and select this pencil icon, and that's the line tool. Or you can hit the letter L for line. Now once I have this tool, all I have to do is left-click in a viewport, and then it will allow you to drag out a line. So I'm going to go ahead over here, and just left-click. And now you can see, I can drag out a line to any length that I want or any orientation. Now notice how when I drag close to parallel with this red axis, it actually snaps to that red axis, same for the green axis as well as the blue axis. So if I want to, I can drag this out to whatever length I want. And then a second left-click anchors that. So now I have a line, and because I snapped it to red, this is parallel to that red axis. Now I can go back to that line tool, and I can continue to draw. So notice how I can keep drawing, and I can also keep snapping. So let's snap this one to the green axis. Now one of the things I want you to notice is, in the bottom right-hand corner, we have a length box and that's basically what's called our measurement box in SketchUp. Now this will change from say length to degrees or whatever, depending upon what you're doing. And this is where we can actually type in specific measurements. So all I'm going to do here is just left-click, and then I'm going to type 10 feet. Now I don't have to click in that box, I just have to type the number 10, and then the apostrophe for 10 feet. Now some people get confused that you actually have to click in that box, you actually don't. And once I type that, all I do is hit enter, and notice how that line snaps to that exact measurement. Now again, I can draw another line at any length I want and that will, because it's on the red axis, it's at a right angle. And now if I want to, I don't have to snap, I can draw on a line that's not at a specific right angle to that. So let's go ahead and just draw something like this. And now I want to show you how to use another type of snapping, and that's called inferencing. And what it does is it knows that this line is at an angle. So when I move it parallel to that, you can see it snaps to a magenta colored line, and it tells me it wants to extend the edge. If I go this way, you can find it snapping to perpendicular to edge. And again, it's snapping to magenta. Hopefully you can see that. And if I click on that, notice how now this is at a right angle to this edge, which is actually off kilter from this line here. Now I can keep drawing as well. So I'm going to go ahead and just select my line tool again and just start drawing. Now as I go up this way, notice how I'm getting that red dotted line. Now that red dotted line means that this is exactly across from this point on the red axis. So when I have green and red, you'll know that I'm actually at basically at a right angle to that, and I can continue to snap. Now I can infer to this here if I wanted to go down this way, but I actually want to infer to this, and it's kind of hard sometimes to snap to that. So what I can do is I can snap to green here, and then just hold down the shift key. Now when you hold down the shift key, it constrains it to whatever axis you snap to. So I'm going to go ahead and snap to that axis, and then do that. So once I snap on that endpoint, I get a shape and I can work with it. Now, I highly encourage you to draw with snapping and inferencing because it will allow you to draw accurately. If you just draw kind of randomly in a 3D viewport, you're going to have problems. So let's say I were to select the line tool, and just start drawing random, random points here, and not really snapping to anything. Well, as soon as you rotate off of that, you're going to see that, "Oh my gosh. I've got some really weird stuff happening there." And that's simply because I didn't snap properly. So when you draw, use snapping and inferencing to get that drawing exactly the way that you want.

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