alt="9781119617938-ma006"/> The Eraser tool is specifically designed for erasing edges. Activate it by pressing the E key and then click the edges you want to delete. You can also drag over edges with the Eraser, but that’s a little harder. To erase several edges at the same time, select them (selecting is explained in the upcoming section “Selecting what you mean to select”); then start the Eraser tool.
TURNING OFF AUTOREPEAT LINES
This feature is desktop-only. If you’re running the web app, jump ahead to the next topic.
Many SketchUp tools repeat automatically until you launch a different one. With the Line tool, after you pick two points to define an edge and then pick a third point, a second line is connected to the end of the first line to the new pick point. Depending on what you’re making and how you work, you may want to turn off the Line tool’s autorepeat behavior. To do so, follow these steps:
1 Choose Window ⇒ Preferences (Mac: SketchUp ⇒ Preferences).
2 Choose the Drawing panel in the list on the left side of the Preferences dialog box.
3 Clear the Continue Line Drawing check box.
4 Close the Preferences dialog box.
Injecting accuracy into your model
Most of the time, you need to make sure that your model is accurate — that what you’ve modeled is precisely the size you intend it to be. In SketchUp, the key to accuracy is the Measurements box. This powerful little text box lives in the bottom-right corner of your SketchUp window.
Here are some things the Measurements box can do:
Make a line a certain length.
Draw a rectangle a certain size.
Push/Pull a face a certain distance.
Change the number of sides in a polygon.
Move something a given distance.
Rotate something by a certain number of degrees.
Make a certain number of copies.
Divide a line into a certain number of segments.
Change your field of view (how much you can see).
You don’t have to click in the Measurements box to enter a number. This one’s a big one: SketchUp beginners often assume that they need to click in the Measurements box (to select it, presumably) before they can start typing. You don’t have to click it; just start typing, and whatever you type shows up in the box automatically. Whenever you’re drawing, the Measurements box “listens” for you to type something that controls your geometry’s precision.
The Measurements box is context-sensitive. The box accepts values based on what you’re doing. If you’re drawing an edge with the Line tool, the box listens for a length; if you’re rotating a shape, the box listens for an angle.
You can set the default units for the Measurements box and override the default when necessary:You don’t need to type a unit if you want to use the default unit. Perhaps you want a line you’re drawing to be 14 inches long. If inches are your default unit of measurement, just type 14 in the Measurements box and press Enter; SketchUp assumes that you mean 14 inches.Do type a unit if you want to override the default unit. If your default is inches, and you want to draw something 14 feet long, type 14', and press Enter. You can override the default unit of measurement by typing any unit you want. If you want to move something a distance of 25 meters in an Imperial file, type 25m and press Enter.You can change the default units in the Model Info dialog box. You can open this dialog box from the Window menu. Click Model Info, click the Units panel, and choose your new default unit from the drop-down menu. Sorry, only standard Imperial and metric units are available — no fathoms, no furlongs, no light-years. The default units are initially set by the template file that was used to start the drawing.
Sometimes, the Measurements box does more than one thing. In certain circumstances, you can change the box’s mode (what it “listens for”) by entering a unit type after a number. When you draw a circle, for example, the default “value” in the Measurements box is the radius. If you type 6 and press Enter, a circle radius becomes 6 inches. But if you type 6s, you’re telling SketchUp that you want 6 sides (not inches), so your circle becomes a hexagon. If you type 6, press Enter, type 6s, and press Enter again, SketchUp draws a hexagon (a 6-sided circle) with a radius of 6 inches. Note that it’s an inscribed hexagon that fits exactly inside a 6-inch circle.
The Measurements box lets you change your mind. As long as you don’t do anything after you press Enter, you can always type a new value and press Enter again. There’s no limit to the number of times you can change your mind.
You can use the Measurements box during an operation. In most cases, you can use the Measurements box to be precise while you’re using a tool. Here’s how that works:Click to start your operation (such as drawing a line or using the Move tool).Move your mouse so that you’re going in the correct color direction, and be sure not to click again.If you’re using the Line tool, and you want to draw parallel to the green axis, make sure that the edge you’re drawing is green (displays the green edge inference).Without clicking the Measurements box, type the dimension you want.The dimension appears in the box.Press Enter to complete the operation.
You can also use the Measurements box after an operation. Doing so revises what you’ve just done. Suppose that you want to move a box, as shown in Figure 3-17, 5 meters in the red direction (parallel to the red axis). Here’s what you do:With the Move tool, click the box to pick it up.Move the mouse until you see the red linear inference.Type 5m, and press Enter.The box is positioned exactly 5 meters from where you picked it up. After you see that placement, however, you realize that the box needs to move a little farther.Type 15m, and press Enter.The box moves another 10 meters in the red direction.Keep changing the box’s position until you’re happy (or bored).
The Measurements box tells you what value or values it’s expecting. If you select the Line tool, the Measurements box tells you it’s listening for a length. Select the Move tool, and you see that the box is expecting a distance. This feature is great because remembering everything the box can do at any given moment is pretty difficult — even for experienced SketchUp modelers.
RESIZING EVERYTHING WITH THE TAPE MEASURE TOOL
Consider that you’ve been working away in SketchUp, not paying particular attention to how big anything in your model is, when you suddenly decide that you need what you’ve made to be a specific size. SketchUp has a terrific trick for taking care of this exact situation: You can use the Tape Measure tool to resize your whole model based on a single measurement.
Here’s how this tool works: In the following figure, the designer started to model a simple staircase. Making sure that it’s the right size will make working on it easier. They know that the riser height, the vertical distance between the steps, should be 7 inches, so this is what they do: