SketchUp Tutorial – How to Get Started with SketchUp (5 Tips for Beginners).

Why do you need to know SketchUp? Take a second to picture it. Maybe you're an interior designer and you want to put together a room for a client presentation. Or you're an architect and you want to put together a house so that you can create a set of construction documents. Whatever you have in mind, if you try to jump straight into doing that in SketchUp, you're making a huge mistake. If you're serious about why you're learning SketchUp in the first place, you need to take the right approach. I'm Alex Oliver, the founder of SketchUp School. SketchUp School is the place where professionals go when they're serious about learning SketchUp. And in this video, I'm going to give you our recipe for reaching your goal in SketchUp. Plus, I'll show you five critical concepts that most self-taught SketchUp users don't take the time to learn. Many of the things I'll share might surprise you, and you definitely won't find them in any other SketchUp tutorial. Keep watching. Over the last 10 years, I've taught thousands of professionals how to use SketchUp. I've taught advanced classes like photorealistic rendering, creating detailed construction documents, organic modeling, and other job-related topics. A lot of students in my classes have taught themselves SketchUp, and almost every single one of them really should have taken our Complete Intro to SketchUp class first. So why do I say that? I think it's because SketchUp feels so easy to use when you get started with it that people don't take time to stop and learn the fundamentals. But without a solid foundation, SketchUp users struggle to reach their ultimate goal. I'll give you a recent example. I had a student who was a residential architect, and his goal coming in was to design things in SketchUp and then create construction documents and layout. SketchUp looked easy enough to learn, so he dove right in and started trying to model his own house. And he did pretty well for a while. Then he hit a snag trying to make the roof. So he searched online for a tutorial, and he found one that looked good enough. And he was able to follow the steps in the tutorial and get something pretty close to what he wanted. But as he got a little further in the project, he found himself increasingly looking for more and more tutorials and getting stuck more and more often. Ultimately, he got to a point where he decided to call the model good enough. And he admitted to himself, hey, this isn't too shabby for a first go around with SketchUp. But the first time he tried to use it on the job, it was a totally different story. He got stuck right away. Things had to be accurate. There were design changes to be made. And he wasn't allowed to just skip over anything that he didn't know how to do. So he figured he'd sign up for our class that helps people get from a SketchUp model to detailed construction documents. But by the end of the first hour in class, he realized he was in way over his head. And he really needed to go back and relearn SketchUp the right way. So what is the right way to learn SketchUp? Our approach is based on a five-step method that was introduced to me from a book called Peak, Secrets from a New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Poole. You need to learn the right information in the right order. You need to practice what you've learned by using challenges that are at the right level of difficulty and get constant feedback on where you could improve. And ideally, you're guided by an expert every step of the way. Let's take a look at how this method applies to learning SketchUp. There are eight topics that you need to learn to be able to use SketchUp on the job. Drawing and editing fundamentals in 2D. Drawing and editing fundamentals in 3D. Groups, components, and layers. Colors, textures, and images. Styles, cameras, and views. Shadows, shading, and fog. And scenes and animations. The first topic you'll need to focus on is the first one on the list. Drawing and editing in 2D. Let's take a look at the first five things you need to learn on this topic. Number one, start in 2D. When you first open SketchUp, it starts you off in a view that's called ISO view. This is bad. No bueno. Trust me. It causes you to focus on the wrong things right out of the gate. By focusing on learning the fundamentals in 2D first, you'll avoid a ton of pain when it's time to model in 3D later. So let's switch your template so you're in a top-down view and you can work in 2D. If you're a Windows user, you'll go to the top of your menu and select the option for Window. If you're on a Mac, you'll pick SketchUp. From there, open the Preferences window and select the option for Template. Scroll down and pick the option for Construction Documentation Feet and Inches. If you're a Windows user, you'll click on the button at the bottom right to finish. Mac users, you just close the window. Your current file's template won't change. You'll need to start a new file and then you'll be in that new template. Then what? You're ready for the next step. Number two, go get a three-button scroll wheel mouse. Everything in SketchUp is better with a mouse. See, it's got three buttons. One, two, and the third one is a scroll wheel. And once you have your mouse, you'll need to learn to use it the right way. I'll talk about that next. Number three, learn how geometry works in SketchUp. In SketchUp, all geometry is made up of three things. You've got endpoints, edges, and faces. And SketchUp's tools mostly help you create, delete, or edit the position of those edges, endpoints, and faces. Easy enough, right? We'll put it all together to learn all of the drawing tools in one go. Remember to have your three-button scroll wheel mouse and be in your 2D template. Then pick one of the drawing tools. But before you do anything else, pay attention to this next part. There's a right way and a wrong way to use the mouse. So you'll click and let go of your left mouse button, move your mouse, and then click and let go. With nearly every tool in SketchUp, this is the right way to use the mouse. It gives you extra functionality. Most people do this wrong. They click, hold down, drag, and let go. You don't want to do that. Trust me. Okay, so with whatever drawing tool you've chosen, let's go ahead and try to use the mouse the right way. Click, let go, move the mouse. And just try every drawing tool in this way. Some require two clicks. Some need three clicks. Don't worry too much just yet about that. Just free draw with each tool and see what happens. Notice the types of geometry each tool helps you create. Some tools are for creating edges. Others help you create edges and faces together. Even tools that create curves are really just creating a bunch of edges that are connected. You should practice drawing in this way until you feel pretty confident that you're using your mouse the right way and that you've got a good sense for what each drawing tool helps you create. Number four, understand stickiness. Geometry in SketchUp sticks to other geometry in SketchUp. This is a good thing. You can overlap shapes and edit them to create new shapes. So try this. Practice overlapping shapes. Then use the eraser tool to delete edges that you don't need and create new shapes in the process. Or to get rid of faces, right click with your mouse on that face and select the option for erase. Stickiness is super helpful for creating things quickly in SketchUp. But stickiness will hands down create the most pain you will ever endure in SketchUp. Luckily, it's easy to avoid. Number five, group almost everything. For things that shouldn't get stuck, protect them from other geometry by turning them into a group. Group geometry can't get stuck to anything else. By far, the biggest problem that self-taught users run into is not learning to use groups. And by not using groups, they eventually end up with an uneditable mess. So be sure to group early and group often. Your future self will thank you. Hey, thanks, man. No worries, man. So that's the first five things you need to know about learning to draw in 2D in SketchUp. Just by watching this video, you'll avoid a bunch of pain in the future in SketchUp. Hey, I'm back with one more thing. Are you serious about learning SketchUp? If you are, we've got a SketchUp tutorial library exclusively for professionals. It's filled with $7,200 worth of SketchUp training. Head over to our website and try it for free. Hey, before you go, do me a quick favor. Leave a comment below this video and tell me which tip you found most useful. And if you like this video, give it a like. And of course, be sure to subscribe to our channel for more videos. Happy sketching!