Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp

Transcription

1 Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp If you are a decent 3D modeler, you could design an aquarium filled with 3D models of sea plants, coral, and fish. To save time, you could even find most of these models in the 3D Warehouse. This project will show you a much easier way: using a digital photo to paint the sides of the aquarium. And the file size of your model will be much smaller than if you filled an aquarium with complicated 3D models. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, orbit, and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Find an Aquarium Picture The best picture to use for this project is a wide one like the one shown below. (Wider is better because the picture will be wrapped around three sides of the aquarium.) I found this one here: (scroll down the web page to see it). You can find different pictures using a search engine such as Google Images (go to and click the Images link at the top left). Here are some search terms you can try: coral reef aquarium fish wide aquarium fish tank To save a picture you find on the Internet, just right-click on it and choose one of the saving options, such as Save Image As or Save Image to Desktop (options vary with your browser and operating system). 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

2 Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp Step 2: Paint the Picture onto the Box 1. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 2. The aquarium tank is basically a box, so to start the box, activate the Rectangle tool. Draw a square on the ground (in the red-green plane). You ll know it s a square when you see the Square popup. (The aquarium won t actually keep this square shape for the base; it will eventually be made smaller. But it s easier to shrink a box to fit a picture than to have to make it larger.) 3. Activate the Push/Pull tool and pull the square up into a box, using the approximate proportions shown below. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

3 Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp 4. To bring in the aquarium picture, go to the main menu and choose File / Import. Make sure you re looking for image files (as opposed to SketchUp or other 3D model files), and check Use as texture. (The pictures below are for PC and Mac, respectively.) Browse to find the picture you saved, and then click Open or Import. 5. Now the image is attached to your cursor, and we re ready to paint the front face of the tank. First click the lower left corner of the front of the box, then click the lower right corner. The picture is now as wide as the front of the box, though the box might be higher or lower than the top of the picture. As soon as you click the second corner, the front of the box is filled with the picture. The picture will tile as needed to fill the face. If your tank ends before the top of the picture, you ll see just the lower part of the picture. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

4 Step 3: Adjust the Picture Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp Now comes the fun part - using texture positioning to adjust the picture to fit the faces of the aquarium. The entire picture will be wrapped around the left, front, and right sides of the box, but now the entire picture appears only on the front face. So we ll adjust the picture so that only part of it appears on the front. 1. Right-click on the front face of the box (the face painted with the picture), and choose Texture / Position. 2. What you will see now are four pins; they will either have four different colors, or be all yellow. The two types of pins represent the two different ways you can adjust a picture - yellow pins are free pins and multi-colored pins are fixed pins. We want the free pins (yellow), so if you see the multi-colored pins, right-click again on the picture and choose Fixed Pins, which toggles off the fixed pins and displays the free ones. Fixed pins are usually used for materials like stones, tiles, bricks, etc., when you want to set where the materials start and end, how large they are, etc. If you ve been getting the 3DVinci SketchUp projects for a while, one of the October projects shows how to do this. (If you re a recent subscriber, you can get all of the projects from the first six months at 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

5 Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp 3. Hover your mouse over the pin in the lower left corner, and you ll see the popup shown below. You can do two things with these pins: drag them to a new location (which drags the picture with it), or click to lift the pin and place it somewhere else. We ll do both: first we ll lift and move the pins, then we ll drag them. 4. We want the middle half of the picture to cover the front face of the aquarium. This leaves a quarter of the picture on both the left and right sides, which will be wrapped onto the side faces. So click the lower left pin (without keeping the mouse button pressed) and move it directly to the right. Click again to drop the pin at about 1/4 the picture width. 5. Click to lift the lower right pin, and place it to the left, about 1/4 of the picture width. This places about half of the picture between the two lower pins. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

6 Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp 6. Now we have to place the two upper pins directly above the lower ones. We will use helper lines when placing these pins, but the picture is a bit dark and these lines will be hard to see. So here s a trick to make the picture a little lighter: from the main menu, choose View / Face Style / Monochrome. (On my Mac, this switched the picture to all-white, instead of just a lighter version of the picture. If this happens to you too, go back to View / Face Style / Shaded with Textures and use the picture as is.) 7. Lift and move the upper right pin until it is directly above the lower right pin; you ll see a dotted blue helper line. This pin can be placed in the middle of the water, below the top of the picture, as long as it s higher than the tallest coral. 8. Finally, move the upper left pin and click when you see two helper lines: one from the lower left pin and one from the upper right one. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

7 Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp 9. Now comes the dragging part. Take any pin, and click and drag it (keeping the mouse button pressed) until you reach the closest corner of the front face of the aquarium. 10. Drag the other three pins to their corners, so that the front face of the aquarium is filled with the picture between the pins. 11. If you switched to Monochrome view before, bring back the normal colors of the picture by going back to the main menu and choosing View / Face Style / Shaded with Textures. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

8 12. To get out of texture positioning mode, right-click on the picture and choose Done. Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp Now the front of the aquarium looks like this: Step 4: Paint the Side Faces We could paint the left and right side faces by importing the same picture and adjusting the pins, but it s much easier, and more accurate, to start with the face that s already painted. 1. What we re about to do is sample the picture on the front face and apply it to the side faces. To sample a material or texture, first activate the Paint Bucket tool. 2. This opens the Materials window (PC) or Colors window (Mac), but we don t need to use this window. Instead, press and hold the Alt key (PC) or the Command key (Mac), which turns the cursor symbol into an eyedropper. Then click the front face of the aquarium. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

9 Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp 3. Now that you ve sampled this material, click the left side face to paint it with the same picture. It wraps around the front corner perfectly. 4. Because we used a square as the base of the aquarium, the depth of the tank (not to be confused with its height) is much larger than it needs to be. Look closely at the picture on the side face, and you ll see the seam where one picture ends and another one starts. 5. We ll adjust the aquarium s size to match the picture, but first sample the front picture again and paint the right side face. Here also the front corner wraps perfectly, but there is a seam along the side face. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

10 Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp 6. Use the Push/Pull tool to move the back face of the tank forward, stopping when you reach the seam on one of the side faces. Unless you were very exact when you placed your yellow pins, the widths of the picture on each side face will be a little different. For instance, the picture on my right face above looks OK, but I can still see a seam on the left side. 7. If you have a seam, or if your picture extends past the face, you can adjust its pins. In my example, here are the pins I get after right-clicking on the left face and choosing Texture / Position: 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

11 Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp 8. The two pins on the right side (along the front corner of the aquarium) are already in the right place. But I moved the two pins on the left to match the edge of the picture. (Your pins on the left side might already be in the right place.) 9. Here s how my picture looks after dragging the pins to the corners of the face, then right-clicking on the face and choosing Done. The picture on this face is a little stretched out, but nobody will be able to tell. Step 5: Complete the Aquarium Model The painted tank looks pretty neat, but an actual aquarium has a few more objects. There are a million ways you can build an aquarium from this box, but here s how I did mine. 1. I activated Push/Pull and pressed the Ctrl key (Option on the Mac), and pulled the top face up a little. (Without Ctrl or Option, you would just continue the tank itself.) 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

12 Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp 2. Using Push/Pull again and pressing Ctrl/Option again, I double-clicked on the bottom of the tank. This pulls down a set of faces that are the same height as the top ones. 3. I then used Push/Pull (without Ctrl/Option) to pull out the sides and front of the base. Again, double-clicking repeats the pull or push distance you used previously. 4. I used Push/Pull with Ctrl/Option to pull down a cabinet base, and painted all of the new faces with materials or solid colors. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

13 Making an Aquarium in Google SketchUp 5. For a slightly more realistic look, I erased the top face of the tank topper, and painted the top of the water with a water material. If you try this project with your children or students, and have a model of an aquarium, or some other model painted using a photo, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and maybe feature it in a future newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you like painting with digital pictures, you ll love these two books from 3DVinci s ModelMetricks series. Check them out at 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

14 Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp Did you know you can make great mosaic patterns like the ones below, by simply drawing and copying circles? This project is all about rotational symmetry - copying objects in a circular pattern. Symmetry is an important concept in geometry, but you don t need any complicated math to make these patterns. This also makes a great art project. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Simple Pattern 1. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 2. Switch to Top view (from the main menu, choose Camera / Standard Views / Top). You should see the word Top at the top left corner. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

15 Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp 3. We need the model axes to be visible. So if you don t see the red and green axes, choose View / Axes. 4. Activate the Circle tool. 5. Before clicking anywhere, type the number 12, which will appear in the Sides field at the lower right corner of the SketchUp window. (You don t ever have to click inside this field, just type and the numbers will appear.) Then press Enter. This means the circle you re about to draw will have 12 sides (more like a polygon than a circle). 6. Click to place the center of the circle at the origin (where the red and green axes meet), and click along the red or green axis to finish the circle. The size of the circle is not important. 7. Keep the Circle tool active because we ll be making another one. For the center point, click where the first circle meets the red axis. Then click the second point on an adjacent endpoint on the first circle. 8. This second, smaller circle will now be copied around in a circular pattern, going all the way around the first circle. But objects must be selected before they can be rotated, so activate the Select tool. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

16 Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp 9. The smaller circle actually consists of two parts (right and left), because it is divided by the edges of the larger circle. So press and hold the Shift key, which enables you to select more than one object, and click both faces of the smaller circle. 10. With the entire smaller circle now selected, activate the Rotate tool. 11. For the center of rotation, click the origin (which is also the center of the larger circle). 12. To make copies, press (tap, don t hold) the Ctrl key (PC users) or the Option key (Mac users). This adds a plus sign to your cursor. 13. The next two clicks determine how far the rotated copy will go around the center of rotation (in other words, the rotation angle). For the beginning of the rotation, click this corner point: 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

17 Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp 14. For the end of the rotation, click this corner point: 15. Here s a little math: do you know how far you just rotated the small circle? Look in the Angle field, which should read 60 degrees. Why 60 degrees? The total angle all the way around a circle is 360 degrees. The circles we re drawing all have 12 sides (which means 12 corners), so the angle from one corner point to the next is 360 / 12 = 30 degrees. But when we rotated the small circle just now, we started at one corner, skipped over the next corner, and ended at the corner after that (we passed over the corner in the middle). So the rotation angle is twice as large: 60 degrees. 16. How many copies of this small circle will fit all the way around the larger circle? If each circle is 60 degrees apart, then we can fit six (60 x 6 = 360). So instead of the one copy we just made, we need five copies (not including the original circle). To make the additional copies, type 5x, which appears in the Angle field, and press Enter. Here are the six small circles around the larger one. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

18 17. What is a mosaic pattern without color? To paint the circles, click the Paint Bucket. Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp 18. In the Materials window (Windows) or Colors window (Mac), find a collection of colors or textures to use. (If you re a Mac user, there are several options for picking colors; the graphic above shows the crayon picker. If you want to find textures as well as color swatches, click the brick icon, then select the collection you want.) 19. Click a color, then click a face to paint it. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

19 Try This Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp Start with the same two circles as before: a large one centered on the origin, and a small circle drawn using corner points of the larger circle. This time, when you rotate the small circle around, use two adjacent corner points, instead of skipping over one. This time, the rotation angle should be 30 degrees. What number do you use to make more copies? This time, 12 small circles will fit around the larger circle, so type 11x (for 11 copies) and press Enter. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

20 Step 2: Figure Out the Repeating Pattern Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp For the two simple examples above, it s easy to paint each face of the mosaic pattern, because there aren t that many faces. But what if we had a more complicated pattern that had a huge number of small and large faces? With a little bit of observing and thinking, you can figure out which parts of the mosaic will repeat, and just paint those few faces. When you copy those painted faces around, you quickly get an instant mosaic! 1. We ll try this with a simple example first. Start with a circle centered at the origin as before, then create a second circle as shown below (click a corner of the circle, then click the origin). The two circles will be the same size. 2. Copy the second circle around the first one, using a 60-degree angle (skipping over one corner point) and make 5 copies. 3. There are only four unique faces in this pattern - faces you can copy around the origin that would create the same exact pattern. Paint these faces using different colors. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

21 4. Activate the Eraser and click edges one by one, until only the four painted faces are left. Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp When using the Eraser, you can click and drag the cursor over edges you want to erase. Then when you release the mouse button, all highlighted edges disappear. Also, if you re good at using the Select tool to drag selection windows, you can quickly erase lots of edges at once. The best method for this is to drag right-to-left windows that pass through edges you want to erase, then press the Delete key to erase all selected edges. 5. To recreate the pattern using the painted faces, first select all of the faces. (Either use the Shift key and click the faces one at a time, drag a selection window around the faces, or press Ctrl+A or Cmd+A to select everything.) Then activate Rotate and click where the center of the mosaic will be (the origin). 6. Because the original pattern was created using a 60-degree angle, use the same angle to rotate these faces. (If you can t get 60 to appear in the Angle field, just type 60 and press Enter.) 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

22 Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp 7. Type 5x and press Enter, and here s your pattern: Try This Make the same two circles, and this time use a rotation angle of 30 degrees instead of 60. Copy the circle around 11 times. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

23 Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp Paint the faces that will repeat. Erase everything else and copy the painted faces around. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

24 Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp Here s another variation: instead of finding the faces that can be copied around 11 times, find a set of faces (twice as wide) that can be copied around 5 times: And here s a spiral variation: 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

25 Step 3: Play Around with Different Circles Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp You can try all sorts of different circles to get different patterns; circles that start and end in different places, and circles of various sizes. For example, start with one large circle (shown in blue below), and create two more circles, one inside the other (shown in green and yellow). These colors aren t actually used in the pattern, they re just used in the picture above to differentiate between the circles. Here s what you d get if you copy the two circles (yellow and green above) around 60 degrees, making five copies: And here s what you d get if you copied them around 30 degrees, 11 copies: 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

26 Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp You could also try this with a larger or smaller inner circle. Here s what I got with a larger inner circle, copied both ways (60 degrees and 30 degrees): The circles can even be placed randomly, like these: Here s what I got when rotating the circles above, using 60 and 30 degrees: 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

27 Round Mosaics in Google SketchUp Finally, you can try out circles with different numbers of sides. The example below uses 16-sided circles. So if you want to make 15 rotated copies, the rotation angle would be 360/16 = 22.5 degrees. To make 7 rotated copies, the angle would be 45 degrees. This is what I got with 15 rotated copies of the smaller circles: If you try this project with your children or students, and have fantastic round mosaics you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and maybe feature it in a future newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you like round and spiral patterns, you ll love 3DVinci s Aperiodic Patterns books, part of our GeomeTricks series. Check them out at 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

28 Modeling a Fluted Column in Google SketchUp Architectural columns in ancient Greece, Rome, and even China used flutes - vertical grooves cut along the outside of the cylinder. If you want to create a model of an ancient temple, or perhaps one of the grandiose government buildings in Washington, DC, this project will show you one way to build the columns. This project is suitable for students (and teachers) who already have a bit of SketchUp experience (though detailed instructions are provided). If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: The Bottom of the Column 1. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 2. Switch to Top view (from the main menu, choose Camera / Standard Views / Top). You should see the word Top at the top left corner. 3. We need the model axes to be visible. So if you don t see the red and green axes, choose View / Axes. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

29 4. The basic shape of a column is a circle, so activate the Circle tool. Modeling a Fluted Column in Google SketchUp 5. I m going to make a simple Doric column, which usually have 20 flutes. So before clicking to place the center of the circle, we need to set the number of circle sides to match the number of flutes. Type 20, which appears in the Sides field in the lower right corner of the SketchUp window, then press Enter. 6. Place the center at the origin, then click on the red or green axis to complete the circle. (If the exact size of the column is important, pay attention to the size of the circle in the Radius field.) 7. Activate the Push/Pull tool, and pull the circle up very slightly, into a flat cylinder. 8. To see how the cylinder is divided into segments, we need to see the hidden edges. So from the main menu, choose View / Hidden Geometry. 9. At either end of a flute is a quarter-sphere. There are a few ways to create this shape; here s my favorite way. First, activate Circle and place the center at the top midpoint of one of the cylinder segments, making sure the circle will be vertical and not horizontal. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

30 10. Complete the circle when it takes up about half the width of the segment. Modeling a Fluted Column in Google SketchUp 11. Use the Eraser to trim away the top half of the circle. 12. The next shape will be an Arc. 13. This arc will go on the flat top of the cylinder, and will share endpoints with the half-circle you just finished. Click Points 1 and 2 shown below, then click Point 3 when you see the Half Circle popup. 14. We no longer need to see the hidden edges, so choose View / Hidden Geometry again to toggle them off. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

31 Modeling a Fluted Column in Google SketchUp 15. The tool needed to make these two half-circles into a quarter-sphere shape is Follow Me, but before you can use this tool, we need to define the Follow Me path. So activate the Select tool, and click the vertical arc to select it. 16. Keeping this arc selected, choose Tools / Follow Me from the main menu. Then click the half-circle face on the top of the cylinder. Here s what you should have: a quarter-sphere with some small, extra faces. Yours might look a bit different. 17. Clean up the extra faces by zooming in closely and erasing each extra edge. This is the bottom of the column: a solid cylinder with one quarter-sphere cutout. Only one flute will be made now, but the flute will later be copied around to the rest of the column. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

32 Modeling a Fluted Column in Google SketchUp Step 2: The Rest of the Column 1. Use Push/Pull to pull up the column and flute cutout, stopping when the column is about half its desired height (mine will be short). 2. The inside of the flute will have at least one, and maybe more, edges that don t need to be displayed. These edges won t be erased; they will be softened (a way of hiding edges while also smoothing the faces around them). Activate the Select tool and select the entire model (either drag a selection window around it, or press Ctrl+A or Cmd+A). Right-click on any selected face and choose Soften/Smooth Edges. 3. In the Soften Edges window, check both boxes and adjust the slider until the inside of the flute has no edges inside it. 4. Close the Soften Edges window. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

33 Modeling a Fluted Column in Google SketchUp 5. Now the column and flute will be copied straight up, and the copy will be flipped over and moved down so that the two halves will meet. If the entire column is no longer selected, select the entire thing again. 6. Copying is done with the Move tool. Press the Ctrl key (PC) or Option key (Mac), click anywhere to start the copy, and move the mouse straight up, in the blue direction. Stop when the copy is directly above the original. 7. Now the copy is what s selected. Right-click anywhere on the copy, and choose Flip Along / Blue Direction. 8. Now that the copy on top is flipped over, use the Move tool to move it straight down, stopping when the two halves meet. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

34 Modeling a Fluted Column in Google SketchUp 9. To remove the seam in the middle of the column, activate Select again and drag a selection window that includes all of the seam edges. Be sure to drag this window from left to right, not right to left! 10. When all of the seam edges are selected, press the Delete key to erase them. 11. To make the flute easier to see, you can paint it. Click the Paint Bucket. 12. In the Materials window (Windows) or Colors window (Mac), find a collection of colors or textures to use. (If you re a Mac user, there are several options for picking colors; the graphic above shows the crayon picker. If you want to find textures as well as color swatches, click the brick icon, then select the collection you want.) 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

35 13. Click a color or texture, then click the flute - it should consist of only one face. Modeling a Fluted Column in Google SketchUp This flute has what s called a high-poly count meaning that it consists of a high number of objects. This is what happens with complex, curved objects created from arcs and circles. High-poly objects take up a lot of file size, and if you copy the flute 19 more times around the column, the file size will be much larger. The solution for this is to make the flute into a component, so that SketchUp only has to store the flute s geometric information once, and apply it to all of the copies. 14. Activate Select again and double-click on the inside face of the flute; this selects both the faces and its surrounding edges. Right-click on the selected face, and choose Make Component. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

36 Modeling a Fluted Column in Google SketchUp 15. In the Create Component window, give the flute a name, and check both Cut opening and Replace selection with component. Then click Create. 16. The flute is now a component, and it should be selected. Keep it selected, and activate the Rotate tool. 17. Place the protractor at the top of the cylinder, where the cylinder meets the blue axis. 18. Press Ctrl or Option for copies, and click any two adjacent endpoints along the top of the cylinder. What is the rotation angle? The circle has 20 sides, and 360 degrees divided by 20 is 18 degrees. So 18 is what you should see in the Angle field. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

37 Modeling a Fluted Column in Google SketchUp 19. Only one copy is made, but we need 19 copies (20 total flutes). So type 19x, which now appears in the Angle field, and press Enter. There you have it - a basic fluted column! This is a uniform cylinder; it has the same radius all the way along its length. Actual columns are tapered inward toward the top, which is possible to do in SketchUp but it takes a slightly complicated, incremental approach. If you re interested, here are two tutorials on this: and 2Benthasis.skp&usg=AFQjCNHPXvNox2xYWzlkFWRmSdfJLC06XQ. Try This: Capital and Pedestal The objects above and below a column can be beautiful and incredibly complex, but you can also represent them with something relatively simple. Here s how I did it; maybe you come up with something more ornate. 1. Use Push/Pull with the Ctrl or Option key pressed, and pull down the bottom of the column just a bit. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

38 Modeling a Fluted Column in Google SketchUp 2. Select the bottom face of this new cylinder, and activate the Scale tool (Tools / Scale). 3. Click and drag one of the corner handles outward, keeping the Ctrl or Option key pressed so that the center of the face will stay in place. 4. Repeat these steps at the top of the column. When you Push/Pull with the Ctrl / Option key, you can double-click the top face, to pull it up by the same distance you used at the bottom. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

39 Modeling a Fluted Column in Google SketchUp 5. Then for both the top (capital) and bottom (pedestal), use Push/Pull again (without the Ctrl / Option key). 6. If you were going to use this column repeatedly in a model (and what building ever has just one column?), you would make the entire column into a component. The Create Component window has an option to set a component s axes, and ideally the axes should be placed at the bottom center point. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

40 Modeling a Fluted Column in Google SketchUp Here s a model I made with my column - I m not sure what it is but it looks like it belongs in downtown Washington, DC (where I live). I placed the dome model above into the 3D Warehouse. If you want to download it, go to and search for dome supported by fluted columns. If you try this project with your children or students, and have a fantastic column model you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and maybe feature it in a future newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

41 Scenes and Animation in Google SketchUp If you ve ever searched for the term sketchup on YouTube, you ve probably found lots of clips of models spinning around, or maybe some animated guided tours of models. If you ve wondered how those are created, this project will show you how easy it is. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, pan, and orbit the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Create the Scenes 1. This project can use any model, either one you create yourself, or one you find from somewhere else. I m using a model of a dune buggy I found in the 3D Warehouse. To find this model, or a similar one, open the Google 3D Warehouse: In the search field, enter dune buggy, or enter the search term for the type of model you re looking for. 2. My search produced about 200 models; I m using the one shown below, created by best-lemming. To download and open the model, click the Download to Google SketchUp link. (The SketchUp version listed in the link is not important, as long as you re using that version or a newer one.) 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

42 Scenes and Animation in Google SketchUp 3. Open your model in SketchUp. Here s the dune buggy, with a beige background and some thick, dark edges. (Your model may look different.) 4. For my animation, I want to change how the dune buggy is displayed. Specifically, I want to hide all of the edges. To do this, open the Styles window (choose Window / Styles from the main menu), and click the Edit tab. 5. Then click the first icon under the Edit tab, which displays the Edge settings. On this page, uncheck all of the boxes. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

43 Scenes and Animation in Google SketchUp 6. Close the Styles window. Now the model has no edges, and therefore looks a little more realistic. I ve also turned off the display of the axes (the red, green, and blue lines) by choosing View / Axes. 7. Now we re ready to create some scenes, which will basically save specific views of the model. First, orbit to a view like this, which shows a nice overall view of the entire dune buggy. The model should be centered in the screen, zoomed in closely (but not so close that the model takes up the entire screen). 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

44 Scenes and Animation in Google SketchUp 8. To save this view, choose Window / Scenes from the main menu. Make sure all of the boxes are checked. Then click the plus sign at the top of the Scenes window. (If you get a warning message, choose the do nothing to save changes option and create the scene.) The various properties listed in the Scenes window are used to save different features of the scene: camera location, shadows, etc. When all boxes are checked, it means you ll be saving everything you see on the screen as part of the scene. This creates a scene with the default name Scene 1. A scene tab appears at the top of the SketchUp window, with the scene name listed on it. If you orbit or zoom out of the current view, clicking this scene tab will get you back to the view you saved. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

45 Scenes and Animation in Google SketchUp 9. The name Scene 1 isn t very useful, so in the Scenes window, replace what s in the Name field with something like General View. This updates the name on the scene tab. 10. To produce an animation, you need at least two scenes (we ll create several scenes of this model). For the next scene, orbit so that you re looking at the left side of the model. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

46 Scenes and Animation in Google SketchUp 11. Click the plus sign in the Scenes window, and change the name to something like Left Side. Now there are two scene tabs. 12. For the third scene, orbit to face the back, and add a scene called Back. 13. For the fourth scene, orbit to face the right side, and add a scene called Right Side. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

47 14. For the fifth scene, orbit to face the front, and add a scene called Front. Scenes and Animation in Google SketchUp 15. For the last scene, orbit to face the underside, and add a scene called Underside. Now you should have six scene tabs. Step 2: Animate! 1. To play the scenes as an animation, right-click on any of the scene tabs and choose Play Animation. (This option can also be found in the main menu: View / Animation / Play.) 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

48 Scenes and Animation in Google SketchUp 2. Sit back and watch the tour of your model, one scene at a time. The animation is a loop; after the last scene, SketchUp goes back to the first one. PC users: to stop the animation, you need to click the Stop button. Mac users: click any scene tab to stop the animation. 3. To change the speed of the animation, choose Window / Model Info, and open the Animation page. By default, SketchUp takes 2 seconds to transition from one scene to the next, and pauses on each scene for 1 second. 4. For a slower but smoother animation, try the settings shown below. The transition will now take 4 seconds between each scene, but you won t pause on a scene; you ll move straight into the next transition. 5. Finally, you can export your animation. From the main menu, choose File / Export / Animation. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

49 Scenes and Animation in Google SketchUp 6. For now at least, PC users can export to AVI format; Mac users can export to MOV format. You can create your movie file by clicking Export, and if you want to change the movie s settings, you can click the Options button. 7. Here are the options: you can change the size of the movie s window, number of frames per second (a higher number of frames means a smoother animation but a larger file size), etc. That s it! If you have access to video editing software, such as Camtasia, you can adjust the settings, add captions or labels, and even add background music or voice narration. If you try this project with your children or students, and have a fantastic animation you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and/or include it in a future monthly newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! Scenes can be used for much more than the basic animation presented here. You can include use of layers, labels, text, styles, walk-through tools, and even section planes, to create very sophisticated animations and presentations. All this is covered in 3DVinci s book Google SketchUp 7 Hands-On: Advanced Exercises. Check it out at 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

50 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (Mac) Look at the checkerboard below. Which red is darker - the squares near the top or the squares near the bottom? Of course, all of the red squares have the same exact color. But the eye interprets color based on what surrounds the color; the red squares near the bottom seem darker because they are surrounded by dark gray. This project will show you how to create this model in SketchUp, and how to change the colors to try different contrasts. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF): Step 1: Set up the Checkerboard 1. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 2. Switch to Top view (from the main menu, choose Camera / Standard Views / Top). You should see the word Top at the top left corner. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

51 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (Mac) 3. Activate the Rectangle tool and click the first rectangle corner. Move the mouse until you see the Square popup, then click again to finish the rectangle. 4. We ll divide this square into four smaller squares. Activate the Line tool and draw a horizontal line from midpoint to midpoint. 5. Then draw a vertical line from midpoint to midpoint. 6. To paint the squares, click the Paint Bucket. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

52 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (Mac) 7. In the Colors window, open one of the color collections (as opposed to materials and textures). The crayon box is shown below, but you can use the color wheel or sliders as well. 8. Click a yellow color then click two opposite squares to paint them. Paint the other two squares purple. 9. These four squares will be copied horizontally, to form a long row of squares. First, select all of the squares by pressing Cmd + A. All four squares should be highlighted in little dots to show that they re selected. 10. With everything selected, activate the Move tool. 11. To make copies, press the Option key (just press it once; you don t have to keep it pressed). This adds a plus sign to your cursor. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

53 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (Mac) 12. Making a copy is done by clicking two points, which determine how far and in what direction the copy will be placed. For the first point, click the upper left corner of the square. 13. And for the second point, click the top right corner of the square. This places the copy directly to the right. 14. Just after you place the copy, type 5x, which appears in the Length field at the lower right corner of the SketchUp window. (You don t ever have to click inside this field; just start typing and the numbers will appear). This means you ll be making five copies of the square, instead of just one. 15. Press Enter, and the row of squares is complete. You should have six larger squares, divided into a total of 24 small squares. 16. Before making copies of this row, we ll make this row into a group. This will make it easy later to change colors of specific squares. Use Cmd + A again to select everything, and right-click on any selected face. From the popup menu, choose Make Group. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

54 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (Mac) 17. After the group is created, it is highlighted as one object, which means it s selected. Keep it selected, activate the Move tool and press the Option key to make a copy. Then click the two points shown below, which creates a copy of the row just below the original row. 18. Type 5x and press Enter, and now there are six total rows. Step 2: Add the Contrast Color Now we ll add one more color to the checkerboard. In one row, the contrast color will replace yellow, and in another row, the contrast color will replace purple. 1. Each row is a group, and before any row can be changed, it must be opened for editing. We ll first change the second row from the top, so right-click anywhere on that row and choose Edit Group. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

55 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (Mac) The opened row is now surrounded by a dotted-line box, and the rest of the rows are faded into the background. This means you can only change what s in the open row, and nothing else. 2. Pick a green color, and press and hold the Shift key. Then click any purple square in the open row. Because the Shift key was pressed, all of the purple squares become green. And because only the squares in the open row can be edited, the purple squares in all other rows remain unchanged. 3. To close the group, right-click in blank space and choose Close Group. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

56 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (Mac) 4. Now we ll change the second row from the bottom: right-click on that row and choose Edit Group. 5. You can probably find the same exact green shade you used on the row above, but what if you forgot where that color was? To be absolutely sure that the greens will be the same, go to the Colors window and click the brick icon at the top, then click the house icon. This opens the Colors in Model folder, which contains the three colors used so far in the model. (If you see extra colors in this folder, they are probably from the person you erased at the start of the project.) 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

57 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (Mac) 6. Click that green color, press and hold the Shift key, and click any yellow square of the open row. 7. Close the group, and here s how your checkerboard should look. Do the shades of green look different? In my example, the green next to the yellow looks a little lighter than the green next to the purple. 8. To see the contrast more strongly, we can hide the black edges between the squares. Open the Styles window by going to the main menu and choosing Window / Styles. (The style that appears in your window might be different than the one shown below.) Click the Edit tab. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

58 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (Mac) 9. Click the first icon under the Edit tab, which opens the Edge settings. Then uncheck all of the edge options. Step 3: Change the Colors Now we can experiment with different colors to see how different shades affect the contrasts. 1. First we ll change the green to another color. In the Colors window, find the green color in the Colors in Model folder, and double-click it. This changes the Colors window to Edit Material. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

59 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (Mac) 2. To change the green color, click one of the icons along the top of the Edit Material window, such as the color wheel (shown below) or the sliders. I switched to a medium-dark shade of blue. Whenever you set a new color this way, the color in the model updates as well. 3. Now we ll change the yellow color. As long as the Edit Material window is open, your cursor will be an eyedropper symbol, which means you can pick up any color in the model. Click any yellow square. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

60 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (Mac) Now that yellow color appears in the Edit Material window. 4. I changed all yellow squares to green-blue, which gives an interesting contrast to the blue and purple squares. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

61 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (Mac) 5. Keep changing the various colors to see if you can get the contrast color to appear in different shades. Here are some examples you can try; see what else you can come up with! If you try this project with your children or students, and have interesting color contrasts you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and maybe feature it in a future newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you like experimenting with color and playing tricks on your eyes, you ll love 3DVinci s Optical Illusions, part of our ModelMetricks Advanced series ( 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

62 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (PC) Look at the checkerboard below. Which red is darker - the squares near the top or the squares near the bottom? Of course, all of the red squares have the same exact color. But the eye interprets color based on what surrounds the color; the red squares near the bottom seem darker because they are surrounded by dark gray. This project will show you how to create this model in SketchUp, and how to change the colors to try different contrasts. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF): Step 1: Set up the Checkerboard 1. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 2. Switch to Top view (from the main menu, choose Camera / Standard Views / Top). You should see the word Top at the top left corner. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

63 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (PC) 3. Activate the Rectangle tool and click the first rectangle corner. Move the mouse until you see the Square popup, then click again to finish the rectangle. 4. We ll divide this square into four smaller squares. Activate the Line tool and draw a horizontal line from midpoint to midpoint. 5. Then draw a vertical line from midpoint to midpoint. 6. To paint the squares, click the Paint Bucket. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

64 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (PC) 7. In the Materials window, open one of the color collections (as opposed to materials and textures). 8. Click a yellow color then click two opposite squares to paint them. Paint the other two squares purple. 9. These four squares will be copied horizontally, to form a long row of squares. First, select all of the squares by pressing Ctrl+A. All four squares should be highlighted in little dots to show that they re selected. 10. With everything selected, activate the Move tool. 11. To make copies, press the Ctrl key (just press it once; you don t have to keep it pressed). This adds a plus sign to your cursor. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

65 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (PC) 12. Making a copy is done by clicking two points, which determine how far and in what direction the copy will be placed. For the first point, click the upper left corner of the square. 13. And for the second point, click the top right corner of the square. This places the copy directly to the right. 14. Just after you place the copy, type 5x, which appears in the Length field at the lower right corner of the SketchUp window. (You don t ever have to click inside this field; just start typing and the numbers will appear). This means you ll be making five copies of the square, instead of just one. 15. Press Enter, and the row of squares is complete. You should have six larger squares, divided into a total of 24 small squares. 16. Before making copies of this row, we ll make this row into a group. This will make it easy later to change colors of specific squares. Use Ctrl+A again to select everything, and right-click on any selected face. From the popup menu, choose Make Group. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

66 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (PC) 17. After the group is created, it is highlighted as one object, which means it s selected. Keep it selected, activate the Move tool and press the Ctrl key to make a copy. Then click the two points shown below, which creates a copy of the row just below the original row. 18. Type 5x and press Enter, and now there are six total rows. Step 2: Add the Contrast Color Now we ll add one more color to the checkerboard. In one row, the contrast color will replace yellow, and in another row, the contrast color will replace purple. 1. Each row is a group, and before any row can be changed, it must be opened for editing. We ll first change the second row from the top, so right-click anywhere on that row and choose Edit Group. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

67 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (PC) The opened row is now surrounded by a dotted-line box, and the rest of the rows are faded into the background. This means you can only change what s in the open row, and nothing else. 2. Pick a green color, and press and hold the Shift key. Then click any purple square in the open row. Because the Shift key was pressed, all of the purple squares become green. And because only the squares in the open row can be edited, the purple squares in all other rows remain unchanged. 3. To close the group, right-click in blank space and choose Close Group. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

68 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (PC) 4. Now we ll change the second row from the bottom: right-click on that row and choose Edit Group. 5. You can probably find the same exact green shade you used on the row above, but what if you forgot where that color was? To be absolutely sure that the greens will be the same, go to the Materials window and click the house icon. This opens the In Model folder, which contains the three colors used so far in the model. (If you see extra colors in this folder, they are probably from the person you erased at the start of the project.) 6. Click that green color, press and hold the Shift key, and click any yellow square of the open row. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

69 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (PC) 7. Close the group, and here s how your checkerboard should look. Do the shades of green look different? In my example, the green next to the yellow looks a little lighter than the green next to the purple. 8. To see the contrast more strongly, we can hide the black edges between the squares. Open the Styles window by going to the main menu and choosing Window / Styles. (The style that appears in your window might be different than the one shown below.) Click the Edit tab. 9. Click the first icon under the Edit tab, which opens the Edge settings. Then uncheck all of the options. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

70 Step 3: Change the Colors Now we can experiment with different colors to see how different shades affect the contrasts. Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (PC) 1. First we ll change the green to another color. In the Materials window, find the green color in the In Model folder, and double-click it. This opens the Edit tab of the Materials window. 2. My example below shows the color wheel, but there are also different types of sliders you can use to change the color. I switched to a medium-dark shade of blue. Whenever you set a new color in the Edit tab, the color in the model updates as well. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

71 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (PC) 3. Now we ll change the yellow color. Since the Paint tool is already active, you can easily pick up that color for easy editing. Press and hold the Alt key, which turns your cursor into an eyedropper symbol. Then click any yellow square. Now that yellow color appears in the Edit tab. 4. I changed all yellow squares to green-blue, which gives an interesting contrast to the blue and purple squares. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

72 Color Contrast in Google SketchUp (PC) 5. Keep changing the various colors to see if you can get the contrast color to appear in different shades. Here are some examples you can try; see what else you can come up with! If you try this project with your children or students, and have interesting color contrasts you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and maybe feature it in a future newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you like experimenting with color and playing tricks on your eyes, you ll love 3DVinci s Optical Illusions, part of our ModelMetricks Advanced series ( 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

73 Cube, Tetrahedron, Octahedron in Google SketchUp If you ve studied 3D geometry, you ve probably taken note of the relationships between three of the Platonic solids: cube, tetrahedron, and octahedron. There are a number of ways to start with one of these shapes and derive the others; this project shows one neat example. For a YouTube version of this project, see my blog entry from April 14, 2010: For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, pan, and orbit the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Create the Cube 1. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 2. Switch to Top view (from the main menu, choose Camera / Standard Views / Top). You should see the word Top at the top left corner. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

74 Cube, Tetrahedron, Octahedron in Google SketchUp 3. Activate the Rectangle tool, and click one corner to start a rectangle. Don t click the second corner. 4. Look at the Dimensions field at the lower right corner of the SketchUp window, which will tell you the width and height of your rectangle. My units are Architectural (feet and inches); your units might be different. You can set the units of your model by choosing Window / Model Info from the main menu, and opening the Units page. Decimal units are a bit easier to work with than Architectural. 5. To make this rectangle a perfect square, we ll tell SketchUp the length of each side. I m entering 4,4 to make a four-foot square. The numbers you type appear in the Dimensions field; there s no need to click inside this field. Because my units are Architectural, I need to include the foot symbol (apostrophe), otherwise the number would be read as inches. Don t make the size of your rectangle too much larger or smaller than it already is. 6. After typing your numbers, press Enter. The rectangle becomes a square. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

75 7. Orbit so that the square appears to be lying flat on the ground. Cube, Tetrahedron, Octahedron in Google SketchUp 8. Activate the Push/Pull tool, click the square, and move your mouse up. You can click again to complete the pull, or just leave it unfinished. 9. The height of the pull needs to be the same as the length and width of the square. So type the same number you entered before (I m typing 4 ) and press Enter. We now have a perfect cube. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

76 Cube, Tetrahedron, Octahedron in Google SketchUp Step 2: Get Tetrahedrons 1. Activate the Line tool, and draw one diagonal line, corner to corner, on any face of the cube. 2. Draw another line in the opposite direction, to form an X. 3. Make similar X s on the other five faces of the cube (don t forget about the top and bottom faces!) 4. While you were drawing all those lines, faces were being created inside the cube. To see the new faces, activate the Eraser and click all horizontal and vertical lines. (In other words, erase all 12 edges that formed the cube. It helps to count out loud while erasing!) 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

77 Cube, Tetrahedron, Octahedron in Google SketchUp 5. This is what you should have: it s called a stellated octahedron (stellated meaning star. ) The octahedron is at the center of the star, and we ll see it shortly. But in the meantime, can you identify the two shapes that form this object? The stellated octahedron is actually composed of two tetrahedrons - each tetrahedron is a pyramid composed of four equilateral triangles. 6. To better see the tetrahedrons, we ll color them. Click the Paint Bucket. 7. In the Materials window (Windows) or Colors window (Mac), find a collection of colors. 8. Pick a color, then press and hold the Ctrl key (Windows) or the Option key (Mac) and click any face. All of the faces of the tetrahedron you clicked become painted. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

78 9. Pick another color and paint the second tetrahedron the same way. Cube, Tetrahedron, Octahedron in Google SketchUp 10. How can we be sure that these shapes are tetrahedrons? A tetrahedron is composed of four equilateral triangles. We can easily see that each tetrahedron contains four triangular faces, so let s check that each triangle is equilateral. From the main menu, choose Window / Entity Info. 11. The Entity Info window can display lengths of selected edges. If each triangle edge has the same length, the triangle is equilateral. So activate the Select tool, press and hold the Shift key, and click the two halves of any edge. (If you click a face by mistake, just click it again to unselect it. Then try again to click an edge.) The combined length of the edges appears in the Entity Info window. 12. Test out a few other edges the same way; all edges should have the same length. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

79 Step 3: More Tetrahedrons, Plus Octahedron Cube, Tetrahedron, Octahedron in Google SketchUp 1. Within the two tetrahedrons we already have, there are bunch of smaller tetrahedrons. Specifically, each of the eight pyramids pointing outward (four in each color) is its own tetrahedron. We can check this by measuring edges as before, but we need to fill in the missing edges where the two tetrahedrons intersect. Select everything by pressing Ctrl+A (Windows) or Cmd+A (Mac). 2. Right-click on any selected face and choose Intersect / Intersect Selected (the Intersect with Model option will also work). Now there are edges where the tetrahedrons meet. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

80 Cube, Tetrahedron, Octahedron in Google SketchUp 3. Use the Entity Info window again to measure edges of these small tetrahedrons. Each edge should be identical. 4. Now use the Eraser to erase all of the outward-pointing edges of the eight tetrahedrons. What s left? An octahedron, consisting of eight equilateral triangles. And all of this came from just one, simple cube. If you try this project with your children or students, and have interesting geometric models you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and maybe feature it in a future newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you like 3D geometry, and exploring the relationships between Platonic and Archimedean solids, you ll love 3DVinci s 3D Solids Series, part of our GeomeTricks series ( 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month April

81 Chess Pieces in Google SketchUp If you ve ever wondered how to make round objects in SketchUp, this project will show you how it s done, using the very fun Follow Me tool. You ll create a chess pawn based on a photo - it s easier than it looks! Even if you don t play chess, you ll still enjoy this project. You can use the technique to make any round object: a cup, vase, bowl, streetlight, or even pieces for a different board game. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, orbit, and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Trace the Shape 1. You ll need a photo of chess pieces, which is easy to find on the internet. I went to clicked the link for Chess Pieces, and the set shown below was the first one on the list. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

82 Chess Pieces in Google SketchUp Here is the enlarged image of just the pawn. To save a picture from the internet, right-click on it and choose one of the save options. (This particular website doesn t let you save images this way, so I took a screen capture instead. If you don t have screen capture software, you can also search Google Images for pictures that can easily be saved.) 2. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 3. Switch to Front view (from the main menu, choose Camera / Standard Views / Front). You should see the word Front at the top left corner. 4. To bring in the picture of the pawn, go to the main menu and choose File / Import. Make sure you re looking for graphic files (as opposed to SketchUp files), and choose the Use as Image option. Browse to the picture you saved, and click Open (PC) or Import (Mac). 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

83 5. Click anywhere to place one corner of the picture, then click to place the second corner. Chess Pieces in Google SketchUp 6. The default color of edges is black, which may be hard to see while tracing directly on the picture. If you want to change the color of your edges, open the Styles window (Window / Styles from the main menu). Click the Edit tab, then the first icon in the row at the top of the Edit tab, which opens the Edge settings. Check Profiles so that you ll see thick edges, and click the color box to change the color to something easy to see, like green. (Mac users: after you change the edge color, close the Colors window.) 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

84 Chess Pieces in Google SketchUp 7. Activate the Line tool. We only need to trace around half of the pawn, so start by drawing a vertical line that divides the shape exactly in half. I started at the top and ended at the bottom. When you click points, make sure you see the On Face in Image popup. When that first line is complete, it will appear in the color you set in the Styles window. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

85 Chess Pieces in Google SketchUp 8. Continue tracing lines on one side, wherever you see straight lines. When you get to a curvy edge, activate the Arc tool. Start the arc at the end of the last line you drew (Point 1 below), click the second point where the arc ends (Point 2), then click Point 3 when the arc matches the picture. 9. When you want to draw an arc that connects smoothly to the arc you just finished, the new arc should be tangent to the previous one. To make a tangent arc, click the arc s start point and make sure the arc preview color is light blue and the Tangent popup appears. Then double-click the arc s end point. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

86 Chess Pieces in Google SketchUp 10. Keep tracing around with lines and arcs, until you return back to the start point. When the loop of edges is closed, you will create a face. (If you don t see a face then you may have small gaps between lines and arcs, which you ll have to zoom in closely to see and fix. Or maybe you ve drawn some lines in the wrong direction; orbit to face the side of the image, erase anything that needs to be erased, then start again.) 11. The pawn picture is no longer needed, so activate the Eraser and click an edge of the picture to erase it. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

87 Chess Pieces in Google SketchUp 12. If you want to change your edges back (my bright green edges hurt my eyes after a while!), go back to the Styles window and change everything back to the way it was. Step 2: Make it Round As stated on the first page, the Follow Me tool is what you use to make round objects. Basically, Follow Me takes a 2D face and pulls it along a path, which is how you can make ornate railings, crown moldings, etc. When the path is a circle, the 2D face goes all the way around and produces a round object. 1. So the first step is to create the circle. First, orbit so that you looking almost straight down on the half-pawn face. Then activate Circle, and place your mouse (don t click yet!) at the bottom of the vertical line that divided the pawn picture in half. The circle s preview color should be blue, since it is lying on the ground. 2. If you created the circle right at this point, you d have to fix some faces later after the round pawn is created. When using Follow Me with a circle, it s usually a good idea to draw the circle some distance away from the face, so that the circle and face won t be touching. So move your cursor straight down (in the blue direction), then click to place the center of the circle. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

88 Chess Pieces in Google SketchUp 3. Click again to complete the circle. It can be any size. 4. Before using Follow Me, we ll select the path first. So activate Select and click the circle, either on its edge or face. 5. From the main menu, choose Tools / Follow Me. Then click the half-pawn face. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

89 The operation may take a few seconds to complete, then presto - the pawn is created! Chess Pieces in Google SketchUp 6. The circle is no longer needed, so erase it. Then you can paint the pawn to match the picture, or add some colors or materials of your own. You can use the same method to create the remaining chess pieces, which are all basically round except for the knight (the one that looks like a horse). If you re feeling ambitious, you can also create a board with a checkered pattern. There are many chess sets, complete with pieces, that people have uploaded to the Google 3D Warehouse ( Here are a few of them: 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

90 Chess Pieces in Google SketchUp You can use one of these models, or a chess set you ve created yourself, to play an actual game of chess: just use the Move tool to move pieces along the board. You can even play with a friend, by ing back and forth the SketchUp model showing your latest move! Here s another way to play chess back-and-forth, for those who know their way around the 3D Warehouse: set up a private collection for your chess set model, for which both you and a friend have editing permission. If you try this project with your children or students, and have interesting round objects you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and maybe feature it in a future newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you like using the Follow Me tool, you ll love 3DVinci s Crazy Shapes, part of our ModelMetricks Advanced series ( 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

91 Fence Illusion in Google SketchUp Do you see a closed fence in the picture below? Guess again. To see the illusion, look at the video on my blog: In this project, we ll build the model shown in my video, and learn how to create your own animation. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, orbit, and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Make Half the Fence 1. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 2. Switch to Front view (from the main menu, choose Camera / Standard Views / Front). You should see the word Front at the top left corner. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

92 Fence Illusion in Google SketchUp 3. Activate the Rectangle tool and draw a small square. (After you click the first rectangle corner, click the second corner only when you see the Square popup.) 4. I painted my square with wood; you can paint yours or leave it blank. Then activate Push/Pull and pull it forward (toward you) to make a long board. 5. Use Rectangle again to draw a square at the back of the board, along the side, as shown below. 6. Then use Push/Pull to pull out this new square, which creates the second board. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

93 Fence Illusion in Google SketchUp 7. These two boards will now be copied straight up. But first they must be selected. Activate the Select tool (with the icon shown below or press the Spacebar), and drag a selection window that contains both boards. 8. With everything now selected, activate the Move tool. 9. Press the Ctrl key (PC) or the Option key (Mac), which means a copy will be made. (You don t have to keep this key pressed; just tap it once.) Then click anywhere, move the mouse straight up (in the blue direction), and click when the copied boards look approximately like this: 10. To complete the half-fence, we need to add two vertical posts. Use Rectangle again to draw a square in the inside corner of the bottom boards. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

94 Fence Illusion in Google SketchUp 11. Paint the square if you want. The square needs to be copied, so it needs to be selected first: activate Select and click the square. 12. Activate Move and press Ctrl or Option. For the first move point, click the corner point shown: 13. For the second move point, click this corner point: 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

95 Fence Illusion in Google SketchUp 14. Pull one of the posts up, a little bit past the top of the top boards. 15. While still using the Push/Pull tool, double-click the square for the other post. This pulls up the square to the same height as the first post. Now we have our half-fence. Step 2: Make the Other Half-Fence 1. To make both fence halves easier to work with, they should both be groups. To make a group of the half we have so far, select everything, right-click on any selected face, and choose Make Group. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

96 Fence Illusion in Google SketchUp 2. Once the group is made, it is highlighted in a blue bounding box, which means it is a single object, and it is selected. Use the Move tool to make a copy of the half-fence, in the green direction. (You could use the red direction as well.) 3. Leave the copied group selected, and keep the Move tool activated. Move your cursor along the top of the copied group, and you ll see four small red plus signs - these are rotation handles. Click on one of these and spin the group around so that it s facing the exact opposite direction. If you look at the Angle field in the lower right corner, you ll see either 0, 90, 180, or 270, depending on the rotation handle you clicked (the angle could also be negative). 4. Orbit to face the fences head-on, and move the copied group down slightly (blue direction). 5. Then move it toward the first group, in the green direction (or red, if that was the original direction of your copy). Make the two fences overlap a bit. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

97 Fence Illusion in Google SketchUp 6. Finally, orbit to a plan (top) view and move the copied group so that the posts are closer together. This is more or less how your two half-fences should look: There are other ways you can place the two half-fences, and you ll still get a neat optical illusion. After you complete the project using my instructions, try it again with different types of fences placed in different ways! 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

98 Fence Illusion in Google SketchUp Step 3: Create the Illusion Animation 1. The default view in SketchUp is perspective view, which means objects closer to you appear larger on the screen. This is how the eye sees objects in the real world, so SketchUp uses this view as its default. But for this illusion to work, we need all objects to appear the same size, whether they are close or far. So from the main menu, choose Camera / Parallel Projection. Your fences will appear to change slightly; you might not even notice. 2. Now orbit carefully so that the two half-fences appear to make a complete fence with four posts at the inside corners. Make sure the two corners closest to you line up as perfectly as possible. 3. To save this view, open the Scenes window (choose Window / Scenes from the main menu). Click the plus sign at the top of the window. This adds Scene 1 to the Scenes window, and adds a scene tab with the same name along the top of the SketchUp window. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

99 Fence Illusion in Google SketchUp 4. For the next scene, orbit to a view in which you can clearly see that the two fence halves are not connected. 5. Click the plus sign again in the Scenes window. This adds the Scene 2 tab. You can click Scenes 1 and 2 to see the fence join and separarate. 6. There are two ways these fence halves can appear joined. Orbit all the way around, looking up at the fence instead of down, and find the joining view. Save this as the third scene. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

100 Fence Illusion in Google SketchUp 7. Finally, orbit to one more separated view, for Scene Once a model has at least two scenes, you can save an animation. From the main menu, choose File / Export / Animation. There is an Options button that enables you to change the frame rate, window size, and a few other properties. If you try this project with your children or students, and have interesting illusion animations you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and maybe feature it in a future newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you like playing tricks on your eyes, you ll love 3DVinci s Optical Illusions, part of our ModelMetricks Advanced series ( 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month May

101 Quadrilateral Tessellation in Google SketchUp A quadrilateral is any four-sided shape. The quadrilateral you probably automatically think of is a square or rectangle, which clearly is able to tessellate: it can repeat to fill a plane with no spaces in between. This is obviously true for any rectangle or rhombus: And it s also true for rectangles laid in a brick or paving pattern: The shape below on the left is also a quadrilateral, with varying edges lengths and interior angles. This kind of quadrilateral can also make a perfect tessellation, and SketchUp enables you to decorate it to make cool patterns. Tessellation is an important concept in math, and for this project you don t need any numbers or equations - just a few simple SketchUp tools. This is also a great project for an art class. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

102 Quadrilateral Tessellation in Google SketchUp Step 1: Make the Tessellation 1. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 2. Switch to Top view (from the main menu, choose Camera / Standard Views / Top). You should see the word Top at the top left corner. 3. Activate the Line tool, and draw any shape with four sides. Your quadrilateral doesn t have to match the one I ve made below. 4. Before making copies of this quadrilateral, we ll make it into a component. This means that later on when we want to add some extra shapes and colors, all of the quadrilateral s copies will get the same changes. So activate the Select tool (use the icon shown below or press the Spacebar), and drag a selection window around the entire quadrilateral. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

103 5. Right-click on the quadrilateral face and choose Make Component. Quadrilateral Tessellation in Google SketchUp 6. In the Make Component window, assign any name you want, and make sure Replace selection with component is checked. Then click Create. Now the quadrilateral is a component, which means it s considered to be a single object (whereas before it was comprised of one face and four edges). It s also surrounded by a blue bounding box, which means it s selected. Keep it selected. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

104 Quadrilateral Tessellation in Google SketchUp 7. Activate the Move tool, which is used to both move and make copies. Press the Ctrl key (PC) or the Option key (Mac), which means a copy will be made (your cursor should include a plus sign). Then for the first move point, click any corner of the quadrilateral. 8. For the second move point, click the opposite corner of the quadrilateral. (In other words, don t click an adjacent corner.) This places the first copy. 9. To get more copies, type 4x (or 5x or 10x), which then appears in the Length field at the lower right corner of the SketchUp window. (You never have to click inside this field; just type and the field will be filled automatically.) Then press Enter, and the rest of the copies are made. If you want a different number of copies, just type something different (12x, 3x, etc.) and press Enter. You can keep changing the number of copies this way until you start a new operation. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

105 Quadrilateral Tessellation in Google SketchUp 10. Now we need a second row of quadrilaterals. Use Select to select the entire row you have so far, and use the Move tool with the Ctrl / Option key to make a copy of the row, somewhere in blank space. 11. This new row needs to be flipped completely over. So keep the quadrilaterals in the copied row selected, and activate the Rotate tool. For the first click, which places the protractor, click anywhere near the selected quadrilaterals. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

106 Quadrilateral Tessellation in Google SketchUp 12. The second click defines the start of rotation; click anywhere. Then move the cursor to turn the row all the way around, until you see 180 in the Angle field, then click again. (If you can t get 180 to appear, just type 180 and press Enter). 13. Keep the flipped row of quadrilaterals selected, and activate the Move tool. For the first move point, click one of the corner points of the flipped quadrilaterals. 14. Move the flipped row to the first row, and click when the two rows fit together, like two rows of teeth. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

107 Quadrilateral Tessellation in Google SketchUp 15. To make the tessellation larger, select all of the quadrilaterals you have so far, and use the Move tool to make a perfect-fit copy. 16. Then type 3x, 4x, etc. to make the pattern as large as you want. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

108 Step 2: Decorate! Quadrilateral Tessellation in Google SketchUp Now we ll see the reason we used components back at the start of this project. 1. Right-click on any quadrilateral in the middle of the pattern, and choose Edit Component. This leaves only that quadrilateral active, and everything else is faded in the background. This means that you can only make changes to the active component. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

109 Quadrilateral Tessellation in Google SketchUp 2. There are a billion ways you can decorate these quadrilaterals, but here s what I did. Activate the Arc tool, and for the first two clicks, click on midpoints of adjacent edges. (Midpoints are highlighted as light blue circles.) The third click defines the bulge of the arc. Once you complete the arc, it also appears on all of the other quadrilaterals. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

110 3. Draw another arc the same way, using the midpoints of the other two edges. Quadrilateral Tessellation in Google SketchUp 4. What is a pattern without color? To paint the circles, click the Paint Bucket. 5. In the Materials window (Windows) or Colors window (Mac), find a collection of colors or textures to use. (If you re a Mac user, there are several options for picking colors; the graphic above shows the crayon picker. If you want to find textures as well as color swatches, click the brick icon, then select the collection you want.) 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

111 Quadrilateral Tessellation in Google SketchUp 6. I ve painted my quadrilaterals as shown below. When finished, right-click anywhere in blank space and choose Close Component. 7. This brings all of the other quadrilaterals back into focus, and they all look the same. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

112 Try These Quadrilateral Tessellation in Google SketchUp The pattern shown above can be painted in all sorts of ways. But if you want shapes to be painted individually, without affecting all of the rest, they must be exploded first. To do this, select all of the components, right-click on any of them, and choose Explode. Then each face can be painted separately. The quadrilateral below on the left is also a quadrilateral and can tessellate like the others. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

113 Quadrilateral Tessellation in Google SketchUp In addition to arcs, you can add extra lines, circles, and other shapes, to make some interesting patterns! If you try this project with your children or students, and have fantastic tessellations you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and maybe feature it in a future newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you like tiling and tesellations, you ll love 3DVinci s Periodic Patterns books, part of our GeomeTricks series. Check them out at 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month March

114 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (Mac) To model a box of Cheerios, all you need are some simple SketchUp tools and a few digital pictures. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, orbit, and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Get the Pictures Of course, you can take your own pictures of any box you want, but if you d rather work through my exact example, you ll need to get my Cheerios model, and extract the pictures from it. (I used Apple Cinnamon Cheerios because that s my kids favorite.) 1. Go to the Google 3D Warehouse ( and search for apple cheerios. Then click the download link and open the model in SketchUp. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

115 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (Mac) 2. Once you have the model open in SketchUp, open the Colors window (click the Paint Bucket icon or choose Window / Materials from the main menu). Click the brick icon at the top, then the house icon, which lists all of the materials found in the model. There should be five digital photos (front of box, back of box, two sides, and top), plus one solid green color I used to paint the bottom. 3. Double-click the first photo, which changes the Colors window into the Edit Material window. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

116 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (Mac) 4. In the Edit Material pane, choose Edit from the drop-down menu. 5. This opens the photo in your computer s default graphic editing software. From this application, use File / Save to save the photo to your hard drive. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 for the other four photos. Note that each picture is a head-on view of a side of the Cheerios box. If you re going to take your own pictures, get the largest possible view of just one face head-on, otherwise the photo will need too much distortion later on to fit the face in the SketchUp model. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

117 Step 2: Model the Box to Scale Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (Mac) I took out my ruler and measured the cereal box, so that the SketchUp model would be accurate. (If you ever import your own Cheerios model into another model that has a table or cabinet, you d want it to be the right size.) My cereal box measured 29 cm tall, 5.5 cm deep, and 19.5 cm wide. 1. Open a new file in Google SketchUp. I m using one of the templates with a person in it (his name is Sang), to get an accurate sense of the box s size. But you can use any template you like. It doesn t matter if you re using metric units or feet / inches (in fact I m using a template whose base unit is feet). If you re not sure what your file s base unit is, choose Window / Model Info from the main menu, and open the Units page. 2. Activate the Rectangle tool and draw a rectangle on the ground. The rectangle can be any size, and you can see its width and height listed in the Dimensions field at the lower right corner. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

118 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (Mac) 3. You can either click to complete the rectangle, or don t click (leave it unfinished). Then type 19.5cm, 5cm (unless your base unit is centimeters, you ll need to include the cm after each number). These numbers will appear in the Dimensions field - you never need to click inside this field. Press Enter, and the rectangle resizes. It should be pretty small compared to Sang. 4. To make the box the correct height, activate Push/Pull and pull the rectangle up. Either click to complete the Push/Pull or leave it unfinished, then type 29cm and press Enter. 5. If you ve got Sang (or anything else) in your model, get rid of him with the Eraser tool. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

119 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (Mac) Step 3: Paint the Box Now we ll use those five pictures to paint each side of the box. 1. From the main menu, choose File / Import. 2. We ll start with the front of the Cheerios box. Make sure you re looking for graphic files (as opposed to SketchUp files), choose Use as texture, and find the graphic for the front of the box. Then click Import. 3. The photo is now attached to your cursor. On the front face of the box, click any two points, either at corners or somewhere in the middle of the face. The size of the photo doesn t matter, but it should be large enough to see clearly (don t make it too tiny). 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

120 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (Mac) After you click the second corner, the photo will become the texture for the front of the box. It will also tile to completely fill the face. But the photo probably isn t located where it needs to be. 4. To fix the photo, right-click on the front of the box and choose Texture / Position. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

121 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (Mac) 5. This is what you should see: a few tiling, translucent photos, four yellow pins around the photo in the center, and the box itself, a bit faded in the background. If the pins you see have four different colors, right-click and choose Fixed Pins; this will change the pins to free pins which are all yellow. The four-color fixed pins are used more often for tiling images like bricks or stones, and are useful for changing scale, angle, and size. Free (yellow) pins are more commonly used for cases like this one, in which you re trying to fit a photo to a face. 6. When your cursor is anywhere on one of the pictures, it will be shaped like an open hand, and the popup reads Drag to move texture. This step isn t really necessary, but if you want you can drag the photo so that it fits within the SketchUp face it s supposed to fill. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

122 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (Mac) 7. Now move your cursor to one of the pins (don t click yet). The popup says you can do two things: either click to lift the pin, or drag the pin to distort the picture. 8. Click (don t drag) the pin to lift it off the photo. Zoom in and move the cursor to the corner of the cereal box in the photo, then click to drop the pin at this spot on the photo. 9. Do the same for the three other pins: lift and move each one to a corner of the cereal box within the photo. You ll probably have to do a lot of zooming in and out during this step. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

123 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (Mac) 10. Now we ll distort the photo so that each pin will meet a corner of the SketchUp box. Click and drag one pin, and you should be able to snap to the corner of the SketchUp face. The photo now looks a bit warped, but it ll look perfect after all of the pins are dragged to their corners. 11. Do the same for the other three pins. If you don t like how the photo looks (maybe edges aren t lined up perfectly), you can zoom in and lift pins to move them slightly, then drag them again to their corners. Sometimes it takes a bit of trial and error. When your photo looks good, right-click on the face and choose Done. (You can still fix things later if needed, by right-clicking again and choosing Texture / Position.) 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

124 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (Mac) Now the front of the box looks good enough to eat. 12. Now that you know how it s done, paint the other four faces (back, left, right, top). If you want, paint the bottom plain green, or leave it blank (who s going to see it?) A note about digital photos and file size: If you noticed, my Cheerios model from the 3D Warehouse is about 1 Mb - pretty big for just a simple box. All this bulk comes from the photos. Even if you only use a small part of a photo to paint a face, SketchUp still stores the entire photo in the Materials window, which can add unnecessary size to your file. So whenever possible, trim out what s not needed in your photos (I have a lot of extra background objects in my photos which would be better left out). Also, you don t need the highest-resolution photo that your camera can produce. The original photos I took were each about 2 Mb, which would have completely ballooned my SketchUp model. So I made them about 80% smaller, taking each file size down to about 200 Kb. Still larger than necessary, but not too bad! If you plan to produce models of buildings, painting with digital photos is an easy way to produce complex-looking models without all the modeling work. (Would you rather model each and every window and door of a skyscraper, or just slap a picture onto a plain wall?) And if you plan to create models for Google Earth, Google strongly prefers models created this way, rather than complex models with lots of geometry. Modeling for Google Earth will be included in an upcoming project! 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

125 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (Mac) If you try this project with your children or students, and have interesting painted models you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and maybe feature it in a future newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you enjoy using textures and graphics in models, you ll love 3DVinci s books Painting with Pictures and Using Pictures in 3D, part of our ModelMetricks Series. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

126 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (PC) To model a box of Cheerios, all you need are some simple SketchUp tools and a few digital pictures. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, orbit, and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Get the Pictures Of course, you can take your own pictures of any box you want, but if you d rather work through my exact example, you ll need to get my Cheerios model, and extract the pictures from it. (I used Apple Cinnamon Cheerios because that s my kids favorite.) 1. Go to the Google 3D Warehouse ( and search for apple cheerios. Then click the download link and open the model in SketchUp. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

127 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (PC) 2. Once you have the model open in SketchUp, open the Materials window (click the Paint Bucket icon or choose Window / Materials from the main menu). Click the house icon, which lists all of the materials found in the model. There should be five digital photos (front of box, back of box, two sides, and top), plus one solid green color I used to paint the bottom. 3. On each of the digital photos, right-click and choose Export Texture Image. Save each photo to your hard drive. Note that each picture is a head-on view of a side of the Cheerios box. If you re going to take your own pictures, get the largest possible view of just one face head-on, otherwise the photo will need too much distortion later on to fit the face in the SketchUp model. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

128 Step 2: Model the Box to Scale Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (PC) I took out my ruler and measured the cereal box, so that the SketchUp model would be accurate. (If you ever import your own Cheerios model into another model that has a table or cabinet, you d want it to be the right size.) My cereal box measured 29 cm tall, 5.5 cm deep, and 19.5 cm wide. 1. Open a new file in Google SketchUp. I m using one of the templates with a person in it (his name is Sang), to get an accurate sense of the box s size. But you can use any template you like. It doesn t matter if you re using metric units or feet / inches (in fact I m using a template whose base unit is feet). If you re not sure what your file s base unit is, choose Window / Model Info from the main menu, and open the Units page. 2. Activate the Rectangle tool and draw a rectangle on the ground. The rectangle can be any size, and you can see its width and height listed in the Dimensions field at the lower right corner. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

129 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (PC) 3. You can either click to complete the rectangle, or don t click (leave it unfinished). Then type 19.5cm, 5cm (unless your base unit is centimeters, you ll need to include the cm after each number). These numbers will appear in the Dimensions field - you never need to click inside this field. Press Enter, and the rectangle resizes. It should be pretty small compared to Sang. 4. To make the box the correct height, activate Push/Pull and pull the rectangle up. Either click to complete the Push/Pull or leave it unfinished, then type 29cm and press Enter. 5. If you ve got Sang (or anything else) in your model, get rid of him with the Eraser tool. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

130 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (PC) Step 3: Paint the Box Now we ll use those five pictures to paint each side of the box. 1. From the main menu, choose File / Import. 2. We ll start with the front of the Cheerios box. Make sure you re looking for graphic files (as opposed to SketchUp files), check Use as texture, and find the graphic for the front of the box. Then click Open. 3. The photo is now attached to your cursor. On the front face of the box, click any two points, either at corners or somewhere in the middle of the face. The size of the photo doesn t matter, but it should be large enough to see clearly (don t make it too tiny). 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

131 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (PC) After you click the second corner, the photo will become the texture for the front of the box. It will also tile to completely fill the face. But the photo probably isn t located where it needs to be. 4. To fix the photo, right-click on the front of the box and choose Texture / Position. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

132 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (PC) 5. This is what you should see: a few tiling, translucent photos, four yellow pins around the photo in the center, and the box itself, a bit faded in the background. If the pins you see have four different colors, right-click and choose Fixed Pins; this will change the pins to free pins which are all yellow. The four-color fixed pins are used more often for tiling images like bricks or stones, and are useful for changing scale, angle, and size. Free (yellow) pins are more commonly used for cases like this one, in which you re trying to fit a photo to a face. 6. When your cursor is anywhere on one of the pictures, it will be shaped like an open hand, and the popup reads Drag to move texture. This step isn t really necessary, but if you want you can drag the photo so that it fits within the SketchUp face it s supposed to fill. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

133 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (PC) 7. Now move your cursor to one of the pins (don t click yet). The popup says you can do two things: either click to lift the pin, or drag the pin to distort the picture. 8. Click (don t drag) the pin to lift it off the photo. Zoom in and move the cursor to the corner of the cereal box in the photo, then click to drop the pin at this spot on the photo. 9. Do the same for the three other pins: lift and move each one to a corner of the cereal box within the photo. You ll probably have to do a lot of zooming in and out during this step. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

134 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (PC) 10. Now we ll distort the photo so that each pin will meet a corner of the SketchUp box. Click and drag one pin, and you should be able to snap to the corner of the SketchUp face. The photo now looks a bit warped, but it ll look perfect after all of the pins are dragged to their corners. 11. Do the same for the other three pins. If you don t like how the photo looks (maybe edges aren t lined up perfectly), you can zoom in and lift pins to move them slightly, then drag them again to their corners. Sometimes it takes a bit of trial and error. When your photo looks good, right-click on the face and choose Done. (You can still fix things later if needed, by right-clicking again and choosing Texture / Position.) 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

135 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (PC) Now the front of the box looks good enough to eat. 12. Now that you know how it s done, paint the other four faces (back, left, right, top). If you want, paint the bottom plain green, or leave it blank (who s going to see it?) A note about digital photos and file size: If you noticed, my Cheerios model from the 3D Warehouse is about 1 Mb - pretty big for just a simple box. All this bulk comes from the photos. Even if you only use a small part of a photo to paint a face, SketchUp still stores the entire photo in the Materials window, which can add unnecessary size to your file. So whenever possible, trim out what s not needed in your photos (I have a lot of extra background objects in my photos which would be better left out). Also, you don t need the highest-resolution photo that your camera can produce. The original photos I took were each about 2 Mb, which would have completely ballooned my SketchUp model. So I made them about 80% smaller, taking each file size down to about 200 Kb. Still larger than necessary, but not too bad! If you plan to produce models of buildings, painting with digital photos is an easy way to produce complex-looking models without all the modeling work. (Would you rather model each and every window and door of a skyscraper, or just slap a picture onto a plain wall?) And if you plan to create models for Google Earth, Google strongly prefers models created this way, rather than complex models with lots of geometry. Modeling for Google Earth will be included in an upcoming project! 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

136 Cheerios Box in Google SketchUp (PC) If you try this project with your children or students, and have interesting painted models you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and maybe feature it in a future newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you enjoy using textures and graphics in models, you ll love 3DVinci s books Painting with Pictures and Using Pictures in 3D, part of our ModelMetricks Series. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

137 Cordoba Tiling, in Google SketchUp Lately my new favorite (non-fiction) book is Islamic Geometric Patterns, by Eric Broug. Broug explains how to make 19 different tiling patterns found on some of the most beautiful structures in the Middle East and Europe. Broug s drawing tools are a protractor and straight edge; I prefer SketchUp. His patterns range from basic to complex; this project shows how to construct the first pattern in the book, which appears on a mosque in Cordoba, Spain. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Set up the Lines to Trace 1. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 2. Switch to Top view (from the main menu, choose Camera / Standard Views / Top). You should see the word Top at the top left corner. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

138 Cordoba Tiling, in Google SketchUp 3. Activate the Rectangle tool and make a square (look for the Square popup before you click the second rectangle corner). 4. Activate the Line tool and draw two corner-to-corner lines. 5. Then draw two midpoint-to-midpoint lines: one vertical and one horizontal. All lines should cross at the center of the square. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

139 Cordoba Tiling, in Google SketchUp 6. Activate Circle and for the center of the circle click the point where all the lines meet. To complete the circle, click the endpoint of either the horizontal or vertical line inside the square. 7. The next lines we ll create are called guide lines or construction lines. They re not geometric objects in the model, instead they re temporary lines that will mark where we need to trace. Guide lines are created with the Tape Measure tool (which has a few other functions as well). Click this tool. 8. There should be a plus sign attached to your cursor, which means a guide line will be created (otherwise you ll only be taking a measurement). Click the two points indicated below on the left (the lower point arrow is pointing to an intersection point), and you ll get an infinite, dashed line that passes through those points. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

140 Cordoba Tiling, in Google SketchUp 9. Create the next guide line by clicking these two points: 10. Then draw two more guide lines, which are the mirror image of the ones you just made. 11. Now draw the same four guide lines again, but at a 90-degree turn. You should end up with eight total guide lines, forming a star pattern but also leaving a bit of a mess. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

141 Cordoba Tiling, in Google SketchUp 12. Everything we have so far will be erased once we trace over what we need. To make it easier to erase later, select the whole thing (press Ctrl+A on the PC or Cmd+A on the Mac), right-click on any selected face, and choose Make Group. Now everything is a single object, which can be erased later with just one click. Step 2: Trace This part can get a little tricky, so pay close attention! 1. First, use the Rectangle tool to trace over the square. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

142 Cordoba Tiling, in Google SketchUp 2. Then use the Line tool to trace over the lines shown below in red. (They re only red in my picture - your lines won t appear red in SketchUp.) You should draw four lines total, each containing two segments. 3. Then trace over the eight lines shown below in blue. If you re wondering how I got the red and blue colors to appear in these pictures, I used the LayOut application which is included with SketchUp Pro. In LayOut, you can import a SketchUp model and change colors and weights of individual lines. LayOut is a pretty amazing presentation tool - you can download a trial version of SketchUp Pro and check it out! 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

143 Cordoba Tiling, in Google SketchUp Here s how your model should look now: 4. Because all of the underlying geometry (the original square, lines, and guide lines you made) is a group, it can be erased as a single object. Activate the Eraser tool and click on any line that wasn t traced over (such as the horizontal line indicated below in the left picture). The guide lines are also part of the group, but it seems you can t erase a guide line that s part of a group (I m not sure why). You should be left with the star-shaped figure shown below on the right - this is the tile that will repeat to form the pattern. 5. What is a pattern without color? To paint the tile, click the Paint Bucket. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

144 Cordoba Tiling, in Google SketchUp 6. In the Materials window (Windows) or Colors window (Mac), find a collection of colors or textures to use. (If you re a Mac user, there are several options for picking colors; the graphic above shows the crayon picker. If you want to find textures as well as color swatches, click the brick icon, then select the collection you want.) Here s my painted tile: 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

145 Cordoba Tiling, in Google SketchUp Step 3: Repeat 1. Now we have the tile that will repeat, but to get the most out this pattern, we should make the tile into a component. This way, when we change one tile, the rest update the same way. So select everything, right-click on any selected face, and choose Make Component. 2. Enter a name for the tile, make sure Replace selection with component is checked, and click Create. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

146 Cordoba Tiling, in Google SketchUp 3. After the component is created, leave it selected and activate the Move tool. To make the first copy, press the Ctrl key (PC) or Option key (Mac), and click the two points indicated below. (You don t have to keep Ctrl / Option pressed, just tap it once to add the plus sign to your cursor.) 4. Once the first copy is made, type 3x (or 4x or 6x or 100x), which will appear in the Length field in the lower right corner. Press Enter, and the additional copies are added (3x will produce three copies, or four total tiles). 5. Then select the entire row of tiles and copy them a few times in the vertical direction. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

147 Cordoba Tiling, in Google SketchUp Because these are components, you can change one and the rest will change as well. For example, I right-clicked on one tile and chose Edit Component. On that component I hid all of the surrounding square edges (using the Eraser while pressing Ctrl or Option), and erased some faces as well. Then after right-clicking in blank space and choosing Close Component, I got this: Here s another variation I did: using the Offset tool to make the shapes into frames and using Push/Pull to make the frames 3D. I then painted the remaining flat faces with translucent colors. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

148 Cordoba Tiling, in Google SketchUp And here s one more thing you can try: instead of starting with a square, start with a non-square rectangle. When the tile is complete, paint some of the faces black, and leave the rest unpainted. While the components are all closed (not open for editing), you can paint each tile a different color, which will give that color to all unpainted faces. If you try this project with your children or students, and have fantastic tessellations you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and maybe feature it in a future newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you like tiling and tesselations, you ll love 3DVinci s Periodic Patterns books, part of our GeomeTricks series. Check them out at 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

149 Linked Chain in Google SketchUp This project is all about components, and how to set them up so that they intersect each other. We ll make a linked chain in which each link is a component and is attached the component next to it. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, orbit, and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Create the Link Component 1. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 2. Switch to Front view by choosing Camera / Standard Views / Front from the main menu. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

150 Linked Chain in Google SketchUp 3. Activate the Line tool and start drawing a chain of six horizontal and vertical lines as shown below, starting where the green arrow is pointing. Start the next line in the horizontal (red) direction, but don t click yet to complete this line. 4. While the line is still red, press and hold the Shift key. This makes the line bold, and locks it to the horizontal direction. 5. Keep Shift pressed and click the point where you started drawing the chain of lines. 6. Then add that last vertical line to close the chain and make the face inside. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

151 7. Activate Push/Pull and pull out the face you just created. This is one of the chain links. Linked Chain in Google SketchUp 8. To make this link into a component, select the whole thing (press Ctrl+A on the PC or Cmd+A on the Mac), then right-click on any selected face and choose Make Component. 9. Assign a name for the component, make sure Replace selection with component is checked, and click Create. The whole component is surrounded by a blue box, which means it s a single object, and it s selected. Leave it selected. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

152 Linked Chain in Google SketchUp Step 2: Create the Chain 1. To copy the links to form the chain, activate the Move tool. Press the Ctrl key (PC) or Option key (Mac), which adds a plus sign to your cursor. (You don t have to keep this key pressed, just tap it once.) Click anywhere for the first move point, then move your mouse in the red direction and click again when the distance between links looks like this: 2. After the copy is created, type 4x (or 5x or 10x or any number you like), and press Enter. This creates as many links as you want. Except that they aren t connected to one another (yet). 3. To create the connection, we need to edit one of the components. So right-click on any link (except for the one all the way to the left or right) and choose Edit Component. Now the component you re editing appears within a dotted-line box, and the rest of the links appear a bit faded in the background. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

153 Linked Chain in Google SketchUp 4. We ll now create the vertical cylinder which will connect each link with the link directly to the left. Activate the Circle tool and place your cursor (don t click yet) on the midpoint shown below. You may have to zoom in closely to see where this point is. 5. Move the cursor slightly to the right in the red direction and click to place the center of the circle. Then click again to complete a small circle. 6. Paint the circle a new color if you like, and use Push/Pull to pull it up, stopping slightly past the top of the adjacent link. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

154 Linked Chain in Google SketchUp 7. For the next step it s helpful to clear the display, so that only the open component is visible. To do this, choose Window / Model Info from the main menu, and open the Components page. Check the Hide box for similar components. Now everything disappears except for the component you re editing. 8. Close the Model Info window. 9. We want to see exactly where the vertical cylinder meets the neighboring link, so we can cut a hole for it. So select everything, right-click on any selected face, and choose Intersect / Intersect with Model. Here s the result: intersection edges in two separate places. There are edges on the cylinder itself where it meets the link to the left (even though that link is currently invisible), and circular edges on the flat part of the link where it meets the cylinder of the link to the right (which is also invisible). 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

155 Linked Chain in Google SketchUp 10. We don t need any edges on the cylinder itself, since that part doesn t need to be changed. We only need edges on the top, flat part of the link, so that we can cut a hole there for the neighboring cylinder. So use Undo (Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z) to undo the intersection edges. 11. This time, right-click only on the top face of the link and choose Intersect / Intersect with Model. Now the circle is the only edge we get. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

156 Linked Chain in Google SketchUp 12. But this circle actually needs to be a little larger, since there needs to be a little wiggle room for the cylinder to pass through. So activate the Scale tool (Tools / Scale from the main menu) and click the circle face. There now appears eight green boxes around the circle, which are called drag handles. 13. Place your cursor on one of the corner drag handles, and press and hold the Ctrl key (PC) or the Option key (Mac). This means you ll be resizing the circle so that its center stays in place. 14. With the Ctrl / Option key pressed, click and drag the green handle slightly outward, to enlarge the circle. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

157 Linked Chain in Google SketchUp 15. Use Push/Pull to push this circle all the way through the other side. Stop when you see the On Face popup, and you ll get a cutout. 16. The only thing left to do is to smooth those little vertical edges in the cutout. To do this, use the Eraser with the Ctrl or Option key pressed, and click each of these little edge. (You can also keep the mouse button pressed and sweep the cursor over the edges you want to hide.) 17. Now the link is ready to attach to the links to the right and left. To get all of the links back, right-click in blank space and choose Close Component. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

158 Linked Chain in Google SketchUp 18. Your chain should look like this: 19. If you want, you can paint each link a different color (don t edit them, just paint them while closed. ). If you painted the cylinder it will keep its color; only unpainted faces will get the new color this way. If you try this project with your children or students, and have interesting painted models you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and maybe feature it in a future newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! You can make some fantastic models by intersecting components and groups. Some similar projects can be found in the book Crazy Shapes, part of our ModelMetricks Advanced Series. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month June

159 Creating Models for Google Earth The interaction between SketchUp and Google Earth was the driving force behind Google s purchase of SketchUp back in Many of the 3D buildings you see in Google Earth are, in fact, SketchUp models. For example, the buildings in this view of downtown Baltimore are nearly all SketchUp models, with the exception of some of the gray buildings (which come from satellite data). In some cities there are painted buildings that are not SketchUp models - these are usually created using street view images, some modeled by Google staff. Photorealistic buildings are replacing gray buildings each day! One of the most common questions I hear is, how do I get my own SketchUp models into Google Earth? Anyone can create their own Google Earth model, but the question is about getting models into THE Google Earth - the online version that everyone sees. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, rotate, and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Intro to Google Earth Buildings and 3D Warehouse 1. If you don t have Google Earth, download it from Download the free version (unless you want to pay $400 for the Pro version). 2. Open Google Earth, and in the Search window, enter leaning tower of pisa. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

160 Creating Models for Google Earth Google Earth flies you to Italy, where you can see the famous tower plus a few surrounding buildings. If you can t see the buildings, make sure the 3D Buildings layer is checked. (Navigating in Google Earth is similar to navigating in SketchUp: zooming with the mouse scroll wheel, tilting with the middle mouse button pressed. You can pan in Google Earth by clicking and dragging.) 3. Passing your cursor over a building will tell you if information is available. If a building highlights in a light purple color, that means you can click on it for information. For example, click on the tower. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

161 Creating Models for Google Earth This opens a window with info, photos, model title, and details about the model itself and who created it (Jon, in this case). 4. Any building modeled either in SketchUp or Building Maker (a plug-in that enables you to use 3D templates and street view images to quickly create building models), can be download from the 3D Warehouse. Go to and in the search field, enter the title of the model ( leaning tower of pisa in this case). There are quite a few tower models in the Warehouse, but the one that made it into Google Earth is marked with a blue ribbon. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

162 Creating Models for Google Earth If you ever want to filter a search to include only Google Earth models, or another specific property such as author or minimum rating, there is search syntax you can use, like the one below. To explore the various syntaxes, click the Advanced Search link, specify what you want to find, and see what the syntax looks like. Step 2: Creating Your Own Model for Google Earth Modeling for Google Earth is a great student project. This could involve getting a single model accepted (a school, town hall, shopping center), or even an entire city block or entire town. Not only do you get the satisfaction of creating realistic models, but the whole world can see what you ve done! This project involves modeling a school for Google Earth. Of course, you should always check Google Earth first to make sure nobody s already added your building! Then you can follow these steps for your own project. 1. In Google Earth, search for your school either by name or address. I m using my first alma mater, Deer Park Elementary. Turns out there are a lot of Deer Parks out there, so I need to find my specific location on the list (in Owings Mills, Maryland), and double-click the name to fly there. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

163 Creating Models for Google Earth 2. Zoom in closely on the footprint where you want to place your model. 3. Now open SketchUp, and click the Get Current View icon. This imports the patch of land from Google Earth into SketchUp. This Google Earth land is protected in SketchUp as a locked group. You *could* unlock it and edit it (move, resize, etc.), but that will destroy your model s geographic accuracy. So it s highly recommended to leave the land as is. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

164 Creating Models for Google Earth Notice that the red and green axes of this model don t line up with the edges of the building itself. It s possible to work like this, creating lines that are perpendicular and parallel to one another, but it s easier to align your axes to the building. This makes tracing easier, since you can stick with the red and green directions. 4. To change the axes, choose Tools / Axes from the main menu. You need three clicks to set the axes: first, click a corner of the building (usually the lower left corner). 5. The next click defines the red direction, so click along the line you want to become the horizontal baseline. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

165 Creating Models for Google Earth 6. The last click defines the green direction, so click along the line that will become the vertical baseline. Now the red and green axes line up with the building. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

166 Creating Models for Google Earth 7. Activate the Line tool and trace around the building footprint. When you have a closed loop of edges, you ll create a face - the bottom of the building. This face will shimmer as you orbit around, because it s located in the same exact plane as the Google Earth land, and SketchUp can t tell which face is on top. The remainder of the SketchUp modeling requires some knowledge of the building - how high it is, where the window and doors are, what type of roof, etc. I haven t seen my elementary school in more years than I care to admit, so I m going to make something up! 8. I used Push/Pull to pull up the building 15 (I recall that there is only one floor). 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

167 Creating Models for Google Earth 9. I added some window and door components, added a large, sloped roof, and painted faces using some basic materials and colors. A much better way to model for Google Earth is to use digital photos. Painting faces with photos means a lower file size, because you re avoiding having to add lots of extra geometry in the form of windows, doors, and other details. One photo of each face of a building is all you need, or for repeating features like windows, you can use the same photo multiple times (or tile the photo). The Cheerios Box project from June 2010 shows how to use digital photos this way; contact me if you don t have this project and would like a copy. Also, be sure not to add anything inside your building! Furniture and walls are great for your own models, but they don t belong in Google Earth since nobody will see them. Interior models will make your file size unnecessarily large, and Google wants all models as small and efficient as possible. 10. As a final check, click the Toggle Terrain icon. If your land is sloped or hilly, you will see it in 3D, so you will know whether you need to move your model up or down, or add any fill. In my example the land is almost completely flat, so I don t need to change anything. But try this project in San Francisco to see what hilly means! 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

168 Creating Models for Google Earth 11. Because this model has Google Earth land imported into it, it is georeferenced. This means the model has a specific spot on earth. To check this, click the light bulb icon at the lower left corner. This opens the Model Info window to the Location page, which has Use geoferencing checked. There is no city or country listed, but the school s coordinates are displayed (and cannot be edited). Step 3: Getting Your Model into Google Earth 1. While still in SketchUp click the Place Model icon. 2. The building now appears on top of its footprint in Google Earth. (If anything looks like it needs changing, you could go back to SketchUp and make the changes, then use Place Model again to see the update.) 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

169 Creating Models for Google Earth 3. In Google Earth, the school model is listed as SUPreview, in the Places window. Right-clicking on the place name gives you all sorts of options: you can save the model as a Google Earth file (KMZ), you can change its properties, etc. Once you have the model s KMZ file, you can always open this model in Google Earth, and anyone else with this file can see your model in Google Earth as well. You can even upload a KMZ file to the 3D Warehouse. But so far, this model will only appear for anyone with this KMZ file - it won t appear on anyone else s Google Earth. 4. To get your model in the 3D Buildings layer of the real Google Earth, you need to upload it to the 3D Warehouse. So back in SketchUp, click the Share Model icon. 5. You need a Google account (free) to upload models, and once you enter your username and password, you ll get the upload window shown below. A name and description are required, and it s highly recommended to enter an accurate address as well. Make sure Google Earth ready is checked, which means your model will be placed into a queue for checking by Google staff. Google looks for accuracy, good use of materials or photos, file size, and a good description. The checking process usually takes just a few days, and I believe you get notified about whether your model is accepted or rejected (I m not positive about the notification). When in doubt, just check your spot in Google Earth to see if your model s arrived. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

170 Creating Models for Google Earth Note that the Google Earth Ready option is checked by default, which means people often upload models to the Google Earth queue without meaning to. So if you ever upload a georeferenced model you DON T want to appear in Google Earth (such as a spaceship landing on your roof), be sure to uncheck this option! If you try this project with your children or students, and have a fantastic georeferenced model you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and possibly mention it in an upcoming newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! Working with Google Earth and the 3D Warehouse is the topic of the book Where in the World?, part of our ModelMetricks Intermediate Series. You ll even learn how to create a Google Earth tour! 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

171 The Menger Sponge in Google SketchUp The Sierpinsky Carpet (shown below on the left) is a 2D fractal made from squares repeatedly divided into nine smaller squares. The Menger Sponge (shown below on the right) is the 3D version of this fractal. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, rotate, and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Make the Level 1 Cube 1. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 2. Switch to Top view (from the main menu, choose Camera / Standard Views / Top). You should see the word Top at the top left corner. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

172 The Menger Sponge in Google SketchUp 1. We need to start with a cube, and there are many ways to make one in SketchUp. We ll use the method of setting all edge lengths to an exact dimension. Activate the Rectangle tool and click the first corner of the rectangle. Then move the mouse, and look at the width and height listed in the Dimensions field. 2. Type the dimension you want to use (I m using 2,2), and the numbers appears in the Dimensions field. Use a number that s easy to remember. Then press Enter, and the size of the square updates. 3. Activate Push/Pull, click the square, and pull it up. Type the same dimension you used for the square (2, in my case), and now all edges have the same length. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

173 The Menger Sponge in Google SketchUp 4. The next step is to draw squares on three of the cube faces, which will be used to make a set of cutouts. To define where the first square will be drawn, we first need to divide one edge into three segments. So right-click on the edge shown below on the left, and choose Divide from the popup menu. Move your mouse until you see three segments (as shown below on the right), then click. 5. Activate the Offset tool, and move your mouse to the face below the edge that you divided (don t click yet). The face should highlight with dots, and the next step is to click along one of the face s edges. But where you click matters in this case: click anywhere on the left edge (the right edge would also work). 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

174 The Menger Sponge in Google SketchUp 6. Then move your mouse to the endpoint at the one-third point of the divided edge, and click again. You ve just created a square within a square, whose edges are one-third as long as the edges of the cube face. 7. With the Offset tool still active, double-click on the other two visible faces of the cube. This creates squares on those face that have the same offset distance. 8. Now use Push/Pull to push each small square through to the opposite side. To make sure the push operation ends at the right place, click any point on the side where you want to stop. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

175 The Menger Sponge in Google SketchUp When all three squares have been pushed through, you ll have a few extra faces in the center of the cube. 9. Before these faces can be erased, we need to create edges where they meet other faces. So select everything (press Ctrl+A for PC or Cmd+A for Mac), right-click on any selected face, and choose Intersect / Intersect with Model. 10. You may not be able to tell that any edges were created, but they re there. Each extra face inside the cube can be erased by first activating the Select tool and clicking on the face, then pressing the Delete key. Look into the cube from the top, bottom, and sides, and make sure all inside faces are erased. 11. Look carefully inside the cube, to see if any faces are missing that shouldn t be. If you need to replace any faces, just use the Line tool and trace any edge of the missing face. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

176 The Menger Sponge in Google SketchUp 12. To make the final product more interesting, paint the cube. I m using three colors: one for top and bottom, one for front and back, one for the sides. Step 2: Level 2, 3, and More To make the rest of this fractal project much easier, we ll make this first-level cube into a component. A component is a single object, which will make cubes easier to select, copy, and erase. Components also keep your file size low, since SketchUp will see each new cube as a copy, rather than a whole new set of faces and edges. Once you get to a few fractal levels, the total number of geometric objects will really mushroom, and if you don t use components, your model may perform slowly. 1. Select everything again, right-click on a selected face, and choose Make Compnent. 2. Assign a name (I m using Level 1 ), and make sure Replace selection with component is checked. Click Create, and the cube is now a single object, outlined in a blue box. This means the cube is selected; leave it selected. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

177 The Menger Sponge in Google SketchUp 3. We ll now copy this cube to make a 3 x 3 x cube (27 total cubes). With the cube component selected, activate the Move tool, and to make copies, press the Ctrl key (PC) or Option key (Mac). For the two copy points, click Points 1 and 2 below. 4. Once the first copy is made, type 2x, which appears in the Length field, and press Enter. This makes two copies, or three total cubes. 5. Now select all three cubes and copy them once vertically. Then enter 2x, and you will have nine total cubes. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

178 6. Select all nine cubes, and copy them twice to complete the 3 x 3 x 3 cube. The Menger Sponge in Google SketchUp 7. The Level 1 cube has cutouts going all the way through from each side, and so must the Level 2 cube. So select and delete seven cubes: one in the center of each of the six cube faces, plus one more at the center of the cube. 8. Now select the entire Level 2 cube and make it a new component. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

179 The Menger Sponge in Google SketchUp 9. Like you did before, make a 3 x 3 x 3 cube, and remove the seven center cubes. Here s Level 3: 10. If your display seems too cluttered, you can hide the edges. To do this, open the Styles window (main menu: Window / Styles), open the Edit tab, click the Edge icon, and uncheck Display Edges and Profiles. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

180 The Menger Sponge in Google SketchUp Another way you can set the display is to hide all edges except the ones around the small cutouts. To do this, you ll need to edit components progressively downward until you get to the original one. Then use the Eraser tool with the Shift key pressed, and click the 12 outer edges of the cube. I continued to Level 4, but at this point my model was working very slowly! 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

181 The Menger Sponge in Google SketchUp Try This Even though it doesn t meet the true definition of a Menger Sponge, you can do the same thing with a rectangular prism that has unequal edge lengths: If you try this project with your children or students, and have an interesting fractal model you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and possibly mention it in an upcoming newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you like fractals, you ll love 3DVinci s Fractal Patterns books, part of our GeomeTricks series. Check them out at 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

182 Animating Shadows in Google SketchUp You can display shadows in SketchUp according to time of day and year, and according to where the model is located on Earth. Taking this a little further, you can also set up an animation to show how the shadows will progress over the course of a day, year, etc. To see an example of shadow animation, see my blog post of June 21, 2010: For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, rotate, and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Create the Shadows and Scenes 1. To download the model used in this project, open the Google 3D Warehouse: In the search field, enter shadow animation roskes. For the model shown below, click the Download to SketchUp link. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

183 Animating Shadows in Google SketchUp 2. Open the model in SketchUp. There are two scenes marked by tabs at the top of the window: Exterior and Interior. You can click these tabs to change the view, but end on the exterior scene. 3. To create the first shadows, go to the main menu and choose Window / Shadows. Check the Display Shadows box, and set the date (the second slider) to a winter month. Set the time of day (the first slider) to sometime in the morning. The model will become rather dark, so adjust the Dark slider to the right a bit. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

184 Animating Shadows in Google SketchUp 4. To save the shadows, we ll need to create a new scene. Choose Window / Scenes to open the Scenes window, where the two scenes are listed. 5. Add a new scene by clicking the plus sign. 6. This creates a new scene with the default name of Scene 3, shown below on the left. Type over this name with a more useful name, like Winter Morning, as shown below on the right. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

185 Animating Shadows in Google SketchUp The new scene now appears after Exterior. 7. Before creating more scenes, the one we just created needs to be changed. Uncheck Camera Location (shown below on the left), so that the current camera view will NOT be saved. This means you can display these shadows from any other view, such as an interior view or a different exterior view. Then click the Update icon (shown below on the right). 8. You ll be ask to confirm that you want to update the scene with all of the properties checked except Camera Location, so click Update. 9. If this new scene isn t already active, click it to display it. This means that new scenes will be created after it. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

186 10. Now in the Shadows Settings window, move the time of day to evening. Animating Shadows in Google SketchUp 11. In the Scenes window, click the plus sign to create a new scene, and change its name to Winter Evening. 12. Now switch to a summer month and add two more scenes: summer morning and summer evening. Now you should have six scenes total. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

187 Animating Shadows in Google SketchUp Step 2: Check Out the Interior 1. Click the last scene, which shows an interior view of one of the rooms. 2. Then click one of the shadow scenes. Because there is no camera location set for any of the shadow scenes, the view stays where it is, and the shadow is added to it. You can click all of the shadow scenes to see how the shadows move inside the room. 3. Switch to any other view you like, and test the shadows from there. 4. If you want to save your scenes as an animation, go to the main menu and choose File / Export / Animation. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

188 Step 3: Where are You? Animating Shadows in Google SketchUp Why are the shadows placed where they are? Because the model already has a specific location on Earth. 1. Go back to the Exterior scene, then click one of the shadow scenes. 2. From the main menu, choose Window / Model Info. Open the Location page, and the geographic location is set to Boulder, Colorado (this is where the SketchUp office is). 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

189 Animating Shadows in Google SketchUp 3. You can change this location to anywhere you want. If your city or town isn t listed, you can enter your own latitude / longitude data. (Also, the north angle affects where the shadows go; you can click the Select button under Solar Orientation, and drag your own north direction on your model.) I ve chosen North Cape in Norway, since it s quite close the north pole. 4. Here s what neat about this location: in the winter there are only a few of hours of daylight (about 10 AM to 1 PM according to the picture on the left). And in summer, there s practically no darkness (midnight to midnight according to the picture on the right). A note about geographic location: if your model has a location in Google Earth (which is described in one of the other projects this month), you don t have to enter a location in the Model Info window. In fact, if the location is already set by Google Earth, you should stay away from the Location page, since any changes you make could really confuse things! If you try this project with your children or students, and have a fantastic shadow model you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and possibly mention it in an upcoming newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month July

190 Replacing Text with Graphics in Google SketchUp This project was inspired by a museum project created in SketchUp by a 14-year student. For details, see my blog post dated July 16, 2010 ( One view of the museum is shown below. There are pictures on the wall, 3D models of benches, plants, and prehistoric animals, and text explaining the exhibits. SketchUp has two tools for creating text (Text and 3D Text), but neither were used in this model. Instead, each text object was created outside of SketchUp and saved as a graphic, then pasted onto the wall in SketchUp, like a poster. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, rotate, and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

191 Step 1: Download and Explore the Model Replacing Text with Graphics in Google SketchUp 1. To download the model used in this project, open the Google 3D Warehouse: In the search field, enter graphics instead of text. For the model shown below, don t download it right away; first click the model name to open its details page. 2. This open the model s 3D Warehouse page where you can see comments, ratings, etc. What I want to show here is that you can also see the model s file size. Click the Download Model button, and the drop-down menu shows that the size is around 1 Mb. This is a pretty simple model, so this file size seems high. Download the model and open it in SketchUp. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

192 Replacing Text with Graphics in Google SketchUp What we have in this model is a couple of pictures on the walls, and next to the Van Gogh is some text with information about the painting. This text was created with SketchUp s 3D Text tool (main menu: Tools / 3D Text). 3. Zoom in to see the text up close. Each letter is 2D, lying flat against the wall (even though the 3D Text tool can also make 3D letters that would appear raised from the wall). If you look closely, you ll see a few minor problems with some V s and W s, which happens sometimes with various fonts. But the main problem with this sort of text is that it adds a LOT of geometry to your model. Each letter is a face surrounded by several edges. In particular, the curved letters are surrounded by lots of small, segmented edges. This is why the actual file size of this model is about 1.4 Mb. For a model with just one or two words, all this extra geometry wouldn t be a big deal, but if you have lots of words, like in this example, all the extra faces and edges add up quickly. So the more efficient way to include large amounts of text is to create the text outside of Sketchup, as a graphic. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

193 4. Orbit to face the other wall in the model, with the painting of dogs playing poker. Replacing Text with Graphics in Google SketchUp 5. Find some text you want to cut and paste next to this painting. The text shown below comes from (there really is such a website!), and I want to use the first paragraph, which is about the artist, Cassius Coolidge. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

194 Step 2: Create the Text Graphic in Inkscape Replacing Text with Graphics in Google SketchUp I m going to use a free vector drawing program called Inkscape to create my text. You can download Inkscape from Or if you have Photoshop or another graphic program you like, feel free to use that application instead. (If you re not using Inkscape, create and save your text graphic then skip to Step 3 on page 9.) 1. Start a new Inkscape file and click the text tool. 2. Click somewhere near the top left corner of the canvas to start the text. (Your canvas should be outlined in a black frame.) Then type the name of the painting and click again when finished. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

195 Replacing Text with Graphics in Google SketchUp 3. You can zoom in and out with the scroll wheel, keeping the Ctrl / Option key pressed. To change the size or font of this text, it must all be selected first. With the text tool still active, click three times quickly on the text, which should all be highlighted in green to show that it s selected. 4. Then click the icon shown below, to open the text properties. 5. Choose the font and size you like. You can click Apply, try new settings, and continue clicking Apply until you re satisfied with how the text looks. Click outside the text to unselect it, and close the fonts window. 6. To change the text color, click the text once to select it again, and click a color from the color samples at the bottom of the Inkscape window. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

196 Replacing Text with Graphics in Google SketchUp If you want, you could set a different font and color for every word, or every letter. This is something SketchUp s 3D Text tool doesn t allow you to do (at least not easily!) 7. Now go back to the website where you found the text you want to use, and copy it (Ctrl + C or Cmd + C on the Mac). Go back to Inkscape, click the text tool again, and paste in the text using Ctrl + V or Cmd + V. In my example, the text becomes one long string - it doesn t wrap around because no line breaks are defined. 8. So double-click the text to edit it, and use the Enter or Return key to insert line breaks manually. You can also change the color and font of some or all of the text. Click outside the text when finished. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

197 Replacing Text with Graphics in Google SketchUp 9. To size the text to fit within the canvas, click the select icon. Drag a window around all of your text, and resizing arrows appear all around. (You could also select everything using Ctrl + A or Cmd +A.) 10. Drag the lower right corner arrow so that the text fits entirely within the canvas. 11. To save the text as a graphic, use File / Save As and choose the PNG format since that s importable into SketchUp. Or you could use File / Export Bitmap, which exports as BMP and enables you to define the graphic size, or to save only selected objects. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

198 Replacing Text with Graphics in Google SketchUp Step 3: Paste the Text into SketchUp 1. Go back to the SketchUp model and choose File / Import. Make sure you re looking for graphic files (as opposed to SketchUp file) and choose the Use as Image option. Find the text graphic you saved and bring it in. 2. The graphic is now attached to your cursor. Click first to place the lower left corner... 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

199 Replacing Text with Graphics in Google SketchUp then click again to place the top right corner, making the graphic the size you want. 4. That s it! You ve placed a poster on the wall with the text you need, without adding all that extra text geometry to the model. And if you check your model s file size, you ll see that it s just a tiny bit larger than before you added the graphic. If you want to see how much the file size goes down after removing the 3D text, use your Eraser tool to remove it all. Because the 3D text objects were all components, they actually remain in your model. So to clean out your model completely, go to Window / Model Info, open the Statistics page, and click Purge Unused. Then check the model s file size. Another thing to think about is the size of your graphics. If you import a huge picture with very high resolution, that picture s file size will be entirely added to your model, even if you shrink the picture in SketchUp to be very small. You can usually reduce a large picture s file size by shrinking its size in a graphics program like Photoshop. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

200 Background Colors Replacing Text with Graphics in Google SketchUp In my example, the background color of the imported text is white, and the wall color is yellow. There are two ways to solve this problem (if you think it s a problem): making the text with the same background color as the wall color, or creating text with a transparent background. If you want to match the exact wall color, you can get its color values within SketchUp. First, open the In Model or Colors in Model collection of the Materials or Colors window. Then find the color square with the wall color. Double-click this square to edit the color. If you set the picker option to HLS, HSB, etc., you can get the color s exact values. These values can then be used to define the background color in Inkscape, Photoshop, etc. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

201 Replacing Text with Graphics in Google SketchUp To make a transparent background, save the text graphic as a PNG file. Different graphic editors have different ways to define transparent colors, so check your program s online help. The advantage to a transparent background is that you can change your wall color, even use a texture, and your text will always look the same. If you try this project with your children or students, and have an interesting text-graphic model you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and possibly mention it in an upcoming newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you like using graphics in SketchUp models, you ll love 3DVinci s books Painting with Pictures and Using Pictures in 3D, part of our ModelMetricks series. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

202 Iron Fence in Google SketchUp In this project, you ll start with just one rectangle and a few simple lines. After copying and mirroring, you ll end up with a neat-looking iron fence with symmetric bars. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, rotate, and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to Step 1: Create the Set of Bars 1. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

203 Iron Fence in Google SketchUp 2. Switch to Front view (from the main menu, choose Camera / Standard Views / Front). You should see the word Front at the top left corner. 3. The entire fence will be based on just one rectangle. So click the Rectangle tool and draw a rectangle of any size. 4. Then click the Line tool and draw some lines that go from edge to edge. Yours don t have to look exactly like mine, but your lines should intersect each other in a few places. These are the lines that will become the bars of the fence, but they need to be thicker than just lines. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

204 Iron Fence in Google SketchUp 5. The best way to get bars that all have the same thickness is with the Tape Measure tool. This tool has lots of uses, but this time we ll use it to create guide lines. Click this tool, then click on any of the lines you drew inside the rectangle. (Be sure to click when you see the On Edge popup; don t click on a corner or intersection point.) 6. Move the cursor to either side of the line, and the offset distance appears in two places: next to the cursor and in the Length field at the bottom of the SketchUp window. You can click to place the guide line, or just leave it unfinished. 7. Type the offset distance you want to use for this bar and all the other bars (so make it an easy number to remember), and that number appears in the Length field. (Don t click in this field, just type). Then press Enter, and the guide line is placed that distance from the line you clicked. 8. Now make offset guide lines from all of the other lines, using the same offset distance you typed before. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

205 Iron Fence in Google SketchUp 9. Now we need to trace lines to define the bars. So activate the Line tool again, and trace between intersection points (look for the red X s that mark intersection points). 10. When the tracing is finished, the guide lines are no longer needed. So use the Eraser to erase them one by one, or choose Edit / Delete Guides to get rid of all them at once. 11. The bars should be one, single face. So use the Eraser to remove all those small lines where the bars intersect, until you have something like this: 12. Paint the bars using a color or texture (click the Paint Bucket icon to get the collections of colors and textures). 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

206 Step 3: Copy the Rectangle Iron Fence in Google SketchUp This rectangle with its bars can be considered a unit cell from which the rest of the fence can be copied. For a rectangular unit cell, the rest of the pattern is created by joining three mirrored copies - one on one side, and two above or below. 1. To make copying and editing easier later, this unit cell should be a component. So select the whole thing (you can use Ctrl+A or Cmd+A for this), and right-click on any selected face. From the popup menu, choose Make Component. 2. Name the component anything you like, and make sure Replace selection with component is checked. Then click Create. The entire rectangle should now be highlighted in a blue border, which means its selected. Leave it selected. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

207 Iron Fence in Google SketchUp 3. To make the first copy, activate the Move tool. Press the Ctrl key (PC) or Option key (Mac) to make a copy, and click any two points to make a copy of the component in blank space. 4. The copied rectangle should now be selected. Activate the Scale tool (Tools / Scale or press the S key). This tool provides one way to make a mirrored copy (there are some other ways, too). Click on the green drag handle indicated below. 5. Move your cursor to the right, turning the rectangle inside-out, and click again when you see -1 in the Red Scale field. (If you can t get -1 to appear there, just type -1 and press Enter.) 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

208 Iron Fence in Google SketchUp 6. With the mirrored component still selected, activate the Move tool again and click this corner point: 7. Then click the point on the original component where the two rectangles should meet. 8. Now select both components and copy them above or below. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

209 Iron Fence in Google SketchUp 9. Activate Scale again, and drag the handle shown below either up or down, until -1 appears in the Green Scale field. 10. Move the mirrored components into place. Then select them all and make some more copies, to form a few rows and columns. Useful fact about the Move tool: when you make a copy, you can change the number of copies by typing something like 2x or 3x and pressing Enter. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

210 Iron Fence in Google SketchUp Step 4: Finish and Add a Frame 1. To make the frame around the entire fence, draw a rectangle that surrounds all of the components. This creates a new face on top of the components, covering the painted bars. We ll remove this face later. 2. To make it easier to edit the unit cell component, we ll set SketchUp to hide everything else in the model during component editing. To do this, choose Window / Model Info and open the Components page. Check both Hide boxes at the top of the window. Then close the Model Info window. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

211 Iron Fence in Google SketchUp 3. Right-click on any component and choose Edit Component. Now just that one component appears, and everything else is hidden. 4. Use the Eraser to erase all of the border edges of the rectangle, except for edges of the bars themselves. You should be left with just the face of the bars. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

212 Iron Fence in Google SketchUp 5. This is a minor detail, but it s nice to also remove the small edges at the ends of the bars. If you erase them, the face will also disappear, so we ll hide them instead. To do this, use the Eraser and press the Shift key when clicking an edge. 6. Then use the Push/Pull tool to give the bars a little thickness. 7. When finished, right-click outside the component and choose Close Component. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

213 Iron Fence in Google SketchUp 8. To complete the frame, activate the Offset tool, and click anywhere on the face inside the fence (the face that was created when you make the rectangle surrounding the entire fence). 9. Make the offset slightly outside the rectangle. 10. To remove the face inside the fence, right-click on it and choose Erase. 11. Here s the final fence, after painting the frame and using Push/Pull to make it as thick as the bars. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

214 Iron Fence in Google SketchUp Now that you have a cool fence, what are some uses for it? Maybe to divide a shared bedroom, or to keep the neighbors out of your pool! If you try this project with your children or students, and have an interesting fractal model you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and possibly mention it in an upcoming newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you like the idea of unit cells and making mirrored and symmetric copies, you ll love 3DVinci s Symmetry Series books, part of our GeomeTricks series. Check them out at 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

215 Castle Turret in Google SketchUp One of our projects from May 2010 was on using the Follow Me tool to create round chess pieces. (If you don t have this project, contact me and I ll send it to you.) This project prompted a few subscribers to ask how to create the castle piece: The trick with this type of piece is how to create the little cutouts along the top. Rather than recreating another chess piece project, this project will show something similar: how to create a turret of a castle, such as the ones shown below. For this project, it helps to have some basic knowledge of Google SketchUp (though detailed instructions are provided). In particular, it s important to know how to zoom, rotate, and pan the view. If you need more information on how to get started, and a description of some basic tools, please read 3DVinci s Getting Started Guide (PDF). PC users: go to Mac users: go to 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

216 Castle Turret in Google SketchUp Step 1: Make the Basic Turret Shape 1. Open Google SketchUp. If your file contains a person standing on the ground near the origin, click the Eraser tool and erase him. 2. Switch to Top view (from the main menu, choose Camera / Standard Views / Top). You should see the word Top at the top left corner. 3. The red and green axes should be displayed. If they re not, choose View / Axes from the main menu to display them. 4. Activate the Circle tool. Click the origin for the center of the circle (the origin is where the reg and green axes meet), and click again to make the circle any size you want. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

217 Castle Turret in Google SketchUp 5. Activate Push/Pull and pull the circle down to create a cylinder. (The reason to go down instead of up is so that we ll see the axes on top of the cylinder.) 6. Draw another circle starting at the origin, making it a bit smaller than the first one. 7. Use Push/Pull to pull down this smaller circle. Don t pull all the way to the bottom, go about halfway. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

218 Castle Turret in Google SketchUp Step 2: Make the Cutting Shapes 1. Switch to Front view (menu: Camera / Standard Views / Front). 2. To see how far down smaller the cylinder cutout goes, choose View / Face Style / X-ray. This makes all faces translucent. 3. Activate the Rectangle tool, and in some blank space, draw a rectangle whose top is higher than the top of the cylinder, and whose bottom stops slightly before the bottom of the cutout. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

219 Castle Turret in Google SketchUp 4. The rectangle will be moved into place and made into a cutting shape, but first it needs to be selected. Activate the Select tool and click the rectangle to select it. 5. Then activate the Move tool, and for the first move point, click the midpoint of the top edge of the rectangle. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

220 Castle Turret in Google SketchUp 6. We want to move the rectangle directly in the red direction, so press the right arrow key to lock this direction. Then for the second move point, click the origin. Now the rectangle is centered with respect to the cylinder. 7. Turn off X-ray view by choosing View / Face Style / X-ray again (this toggles off the transparency). 8. Use Push/Pull to pull the rectangle past the outside of the cylinder. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

221 Castle Turret in Google SketchUp Step 3: Copy the Cutting Shape 1. This box will be copied radially around the origin, but first it needs to be selected. Activate Select and triple-click on any face of the box, which selects the whole box. 2. Activate the Rotate tool, and press the Ctrl key (PC) or Option key (Mac). (You don t have to keep this key pressed, just tap it once.) The first click defines the center of rotation, which can be the origin. But if the origin is too hard to find, you can also click the midpoint of the box indicated below. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

222 Castle Turret in Google SketchUp 3. Click once to start the rotation, then move your cursor to start rotating the copy. You can either click again to place the copy anywhere, or just leave the copy hanging. 4. We want to place this copy all the way around the cylinder, so that the copy is placed directly on top of the original box. So type the number 360, which appears in the Angle field at the lower right corner of the SketchUp window. (Don t click inside this field, just type and the number will appear.) Press Enter, and the copy is created, though you can t see it since the original box is in the same exact spot. 5. Now type 6/ (don t forget the slash symbol, which means division) and press Enter, and you will get six boxes. You ve divided 360 degrees into 6 equal spaces, so each box is 60 degrees apart. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

223 Castle Turret in Google SketchUp 6. If you d rather have more cutouts than just 6, you can create more. Type 7/ or 8/ and press Enter, and you ll get the desired number of boxes, evenly spaced. You can keep changing the number of spaces, until you activate a new tool or start a new rotation. Step 4: Make the Cutouts 1. To cut the cylinder where the boxes are, first select the whole model (use Ctrl+A or Cmd+A, or you can activate Select and draw a window around all of the objects). Then right-click on any selected face and choose Intersect / Intersect with Model (Intersect Selected will also work). 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

224 Castle Turret in Google SketchUp This creates edges everywhere one of the boxes meets the cylinder. 2. Now comes the fun (but tedious) part: erasing all of the extra objects. Use the Eraser and click each box edge that sticks out past the cylinder. You can click each edge individually, or keep the mouse button pressed and sweep over several edges at once, which will all disappear when you release the mouse button. If you re good at using selection windows, you can select groups of edges first, then press the Delete key to erase them all at once. Right-to-left selection windows work best for this. 3. After cleaning up the outside of the cylinder, start erasing the parts of the boxes that are filling the inside of the cylinder. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

225 Castle Turret in Google SketchUp When all of the extra edges are gone, this is what you should have: 4. Finally, use the Eraser on the edges shown below, for each of the cutouts. Here s the final product: the cylinder with its cutouts. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August

226 Castle Turret in Google SketchUp 5. To make the model look more castle-like, use some colors or textures. You can also add models from the 3D Warehouse, such as a 3D knight. (The Get Models tool can be used to find 3D Warehouse models.) If you try this project with your children or students, and have an interesting cutout model you d like to share, please let me know! I will be happy to blog about it, and possibly mention it in an upcoming newsletter. Contact me at bonnie@3dvinci.net. Thanks! And if you like interesting ways to use shapes to intersect and cut other shapes, you ll love 3DVinci s Crazy Shapes books, part of our ModelMetricks Advanced series. 3DVinci SketchUp Projects-of-the-Month August