Any Google Sketchup Users On Here?

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I need to do some basic building design work.

I want something that will take an image (picture of a plot) and allow me to draw things onto it.

I've just spent an hour trying to understand Google Sketchup and it's completely alien to me.

Even basic things are driving me nuts, like you draw a rectangle (outline of a building) then you try and edit it (rotate it or stretch it) and instead of treating it as a single item, it just treats it as four separate lines and only lets you move one at a time.

I must just be completely miss understanding it as it's so different to anything I have used before. but the reason I'm trying it, is that I have seen a builder friend of mine design complete houses with it.  And he can get it to treat objects as the objects they are and not a collection of individual lines.

 
Ive done a bit with sketchup.

The lines have to meet properly to link and create a shape. They can look like they are meeting but move the drawing round and they are not.

It is a very powerful cad program for `free`.

Its hard to describe how to use it on here, it can find the centre of lines, mid-points of walls, you can pull walls up.....Also once you have made your building / house, you can fly through it and put in google earth (lord knows how!)

Ive done our proposed extension on it.

I may be able to help. (ish)

house_zpsd7a613df.jpg


 
Okay, so I am missing something completely fundamantal.

I'm starting by importing the google earth image of an empty piece of ground.

I want to draw a building on that piece of ground.

I pan and tilt (or whatever you call it) so I am looking directly down on the plot (at this stage I'm only interested in 2D)

I tried "add a building" It insists on loading a few plug ins, then tells me there are no buildings at my location : headbang

Okay, I'll draw my drawing from scratch.  Let's start with a rectangle.  I use the rectangle tool and draw a rectangle of roughly the right size.  It draws a rectangle, but frustratingly will only draw it square on to the page.

So I want to rotate it a few degrees. So I select it, select the rotate tool, and it rotates one side of the rectangle.

Clearly I lack enough intelligence to use this program :banghead

I then thought lets try something really simple. Let's draw a fence around the plot.  I select material, find a fence that looks nice, choose it's colour. Great I'll put one of those into my plot. Oh I can't find how to do that either.

It's as though I am missing something. A computer program is supposed to be at least a little bit intuitive, but this is sooo much different to anything I have used before, none of it is making any sense whatsoever.

Ultimately I want to end up with something like your picture, but drawn onto a real piece of land as photographed by google earth.

 
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It may be best to draw your building first then place it in google earth.

I always draw using lines not shapes.

Rectangle

Starting at base point ( Blue vertical line, red and green at 90deg)

Use pencil and drag it along red line a little, let go of your mouse and type the length of line eg 3000 (mm) hit enter. This will show up on the measurement box bottom left of screen, and your line will be 3000mm.

Dont click anything else. move mouse away, and a green line appears `on axis`, type in length you want it and hit enter. do this round to make the rectangle. If you have done it correctly it will automaticly fill the shape. with a plane (whatever color is default (grey?))

You dont want to move the shape, that needs to stay where it is. Use the Orbit Button (14th along) This allows you to view the shape from wherever you wish.

Now to make a solid.

Click on `Push Pull` (10th Button), Click on top of rectangle, pull it up and then type in by how much.

You should now have a rectangle solid?

Again using orbit, you can view this object from where you want.

I drew out our house in plan with wall thickness and pulled it up, if you get me?

Building a house is just like that!!!

You can also go on 3d wherehouse and download things like chairs, cookers, extractor fans to fit in your model

 
Thanks for that.  It's all very different to what I'm used to.

What I have found is this is a 3D tool that doesn't like you trying to use it as 2D.

Having drawn my rectangle, and "pulled it up" to form a cube, miraculously, it now stays together as a cube and can be rotated and stretched as a cube, something it resolutely refused to do as a flat rectangle.

It's a steep learning curve.

What I am modelling at the moment is what size and shape building will fit on a piece of real ground, so I want to be able to draw on the real google earth image.  Later on when I do the detailed design of the building I will probably use a different 2D package that I'm more familliar with. This exercise is all about visualising something on a real bit of ground.

One more thing.  I've drawn my cube. I now want to get it to the exact size.  I can push and pull it watching the numbers in the box, but how can I EDIT an existing shape so I can type in the dimension of each side? you would think I could pull up a "properties" box and edit the dimensions but I can't find that option?

Thanks.

 
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One more thing.  I've drawn my cube. I now want to get it to the exact size.  I can push and pull it watching the numbers in the box, but how can I EDIT an existing shape so I can type in the dimension of each side? you would think I could pull up a "properties" box and edit the dimensions but I can't find that option?

When you first `pull` the shape, just pull it a little then type in exact measurement like with the lines. You can pull / push any plane.

To edit any plane accurately, the only way ive found ( im sure there is a proper way to do it) is to draw a line the length you want on the plane and drag it to 

 
I have plenty of workable options for 2D that I am well used to using, so that's not the issue.  I just want to model a basic outline of a building in 3D.

I'm slowly getting used to it now.

thanks.

 
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