• SketchUp has many different ways of viewing your model. We will start by adding the camera toolbar, View->Toolbars, then select the camera box. This will bring up a tab that looks like this icon:

• The most common is the orbit tool. To use hold your middle mouse button down and slide mouse around to get different perspectives of your model. Or select orbit icon from the view tab and hold and drag left mouse button to move perspective. Icon:

• Panning, The panning tool is to move across the view face in a left, right, up down way. To use this tool hold shift+middle button and slide mouse across the screen. Or select hand icon from the view tab and hold left click and drag to move your perspective.  Icon:

• Zoom, the zoom tool is to get a close up or zoom out of a model. To use, scroll middle mouse button forward and backward to zoom in and out of your model. Or select icon from view tab and drag left mouse button up and down to zoom in and out. Icon:

• Zoom window, this tool allows you to select an area of the screen and it will move your perspective to fill that selected area. To use this tool select the icon from your views tab, hold left click and drag from one corner to the other. Icon:

• Zoom fit, this tool allows you to zoom out until the model fits your perspective screen. To use select icon from the view tab and will bring the perspective to see everything in your model. Icon:

• View Undo, this tool allows you to go to your previous perspective view. To use simply select the icon and will bring you back to your previous perspective. Icon:

• Position the camera, this tool allows you to set the camera at a specific hight and location. To use select icon and attach to a plane, line segment or point and type in the eye hight to set the perspective. Icon:

• Pivot camera view, this tool allows you to stay at the current location but turn the view left, right, up, and down while keeping the location stationary. To use select icon and hold left mouse button and drag to change view. Icon:

• Walk camera view, this tool allows you to walk around your model. To use select icon and hold left mouse button and move up and down to walk forward and backward. Icon:

Since my last post I was playing around trying new things with SU Podium. Created a simple room, 12'x12' and added a couple windows and a bed and hit render.

Before each render I change the rendering definition to fast. This creates a lower quality render but it reduces the time of render by a lot and so making small changes and hitting render over and over takes hardly any time.

The first render came out semi decent, it was just a plain room with about nothing in it. So I added some window frames, curtains, & a picture and hit render again. This time it came out much better, it was starting to look like a room and not just a box.

One thing I did notice though that there wasn't enough light in the room. When I added the windows I didn't think about them being tinted, because they are there isn't as much light coming in. I tried adding some lights and it did add to the render but it was out of place, it was like a black room with a dot of light. It didn't light up the entire room but only a few feet around the lamps.

Then I realized, this render wasn't a actual room and no one could see the other side of the room. So I took out the back wall behind the camera and hit render again. This time the room was flooded with light, almost too bright, I took a paint brush and colored the walls a dark yellow and hit render, this was horrible, there was light but it made the color look really ugly.

I decided to go with a lighter yellow but even so it still seemed like a fake light if you know what I mean. This time I decided upon a very light blue, almost white blue for the walls and that did the trick. It gave it more of a soft light rather then a fake or hard light from the yellow.

After that I added a bunch more detail, another picture, baseboards, window sills, wardrobe, and some odds and ends of random things you might find in a bedroom. After this I did a HD render of it and posted it to my instagram page. 

Here is a photo of the finished render:

And here is a picture of what it looks like from my point of view when rendering:

I started working on another rendering of a room, this time its a living room rather than a bedroom but so far I don't like how its turning out, still playing around with different settings.

SU podium is a rendering system for SketchUp.

And lately its been having some strange Issues.

When I hit render there is a little icon on the logo down on the task-bar signifying that it is rendering but when I try clicking on it to open the tab nothing happens. I try opening several times but still nothing happens. I try googling the problem but it appears that no one has encountered this issue. Then I try un-installing it and re-installing. I go under the extension manager where I can find extensions I've downloaded in the past.

I find SU podium there but it appears that it has already been shut off.

I'm really confused at this point so I google "how do I uninstall su podium" and apparently SU podium is a program of its own and not a SketchUp extension. 

Now I go under programs and features in my settings. Finally I find SU podium there and hit un-install, nothing happens for a moment then it says uninstall complete even though I still see the tab. I never did figure out why it didn't remove it entirely.

Anyway, so I go to the download site to re-download SU podium. Everything went fine for a couple minutes and when I hit finish installing nothing happened once more. I tried installing it again but still nothing happened.

I re-open SketchUp and SU podium did install after all. I make a test model and hit render. Everything works like it is supposed to but when I try hitting the tab indicating that it is rendering nothing happens as before. Getting kind of frustrated I hover over it and it shows that it is a tab but when I click on it nothing happens.

By accident I right clicked the icon and clicked maximize tab, and it opened! I was really shocked it worked like that.

So it doesn't work like its supposed to but it does open if I click maximize tab. This is really strange and I hope I can fix this in the near future.

We have a family friend that does carpentry for a living. Last year I started doing some work for him by drawing up the plans that he has. What he normally does is draws the plans up by hand then whenever there needs to be a renovation he re-draws the plan, again by hand. This is very time consuming for him.

Now, he does draw the plans out yes, but after he draws them he sends them to me and then I would draw them up again in SketchUp and send them back. When he needs something changed he would then ask me to move this line 4" forward or up or down. Add a drawer? No problem!

So what I do exactly is take the drawings he gives me then in SketchUp I would re-draw them and cross reference them with the plans he gave me then send them back to him. 

Another thing I do with the drawings though its more of a side project, is making the plans he gives me and turning them into 3D models which I would then make a 3D perspective drawing of them rendering with SU Podium - a rendering system.

The benefit of drawing them up in SketchUp rather then on a piece of paper is making large changes and even small ones are really simple and accurate and harder to loose.

When I start out drawing it I have a few presets I made for doing this particular thing. First one is setting this to what is called Construction Documentation, which is pretty much the same thing as what the default is, however it automatically sets the background to white and starts at a overhead view, which you might think  isn't a big deal but its really handy.

I just use the pencil tool and rectangle tool, pencil draws in one strait line from point a to point b, a rectangle tool allows you to draw a rectangle from one corner to the other with whatever size you want. 

Once I am finished drawing up the plan I send it to Layout. Layout is another program owned by SketchUp that allows you to send plans for the final touches and ready for printing or sending however you choose.

In layout, I add notes, dimensions, dates and title block. I would then double check that the dimensions add up from the plan he gave me and cross reference that it is linked with SketchUp still. Once this is complete I export the final document as a PDF and ready to send out.

I love using SketchUp and have been for the past few years. However, it is not as advanced in some qualities as I once thought it was, it has a bunch of great features but is missing several key components and tools as well which makes it difficult for documentation and for setting material properties and the list goes on.

I talked to an architect a while back and asked him what programs he used specifically and he said that he used multiple software engines to get his work done rather than using only one. He gave me a list of programs that he used and said I should learn them all and that each had a certain use even though many could all do the same thing. SketchUp was a good modeling tool but didn't focus on documentation or some other key points. Photoshop was good for finished renderings for project proposals or to envision what the project outcome will look like, and so on and so forth.

He said that each of the programs he outlined were necessary and each had special qualities that all fit together, and each focused on a certain area.

On the list was a program Revit, he suggested I get into that as it is one of the most commonly used and advanced programs for architecture and said that it was a very important program to get to know as it was one of the centerpieces in the way of architectural software engines. He also let me borrow a book to learn the program and said that it was one of the best books for the program and should teach me everything I would need to know about the program.

I put a pause on SketchUp and starting reading into this new program. As I was going through the basics I was amazed at how detailed and simple but advanced, way beyond SketchUp. However I noticed that it was very advanced in some things, SketchUp had other qualities that outdid Revit.

So from all that. I am working to learn Revit and master it.

This is the second part of explaining what I do for making diorama parts.

While I was googling tutorials on how to make terrain and etc I found one on how to make model tree's. The tutorial started by showing how to cut the right length and how many to cut. If you wanted lets say a 3" tree you would cut 7" pieces of wire, and if you wanted lets say 24 total end branches you would cut 12 7" pieces of wire. Next you would hold them all together then bend them in half and twist a little loop on the bottom around 1"  loop, then keep twisting until you have a good size trunk about 2/3 of the rest of the wire.

Next you twist two of the top wires together until you can't go any farther with your hands, and do this to every single one until you have 12 wires. Next you take two of those and twist them almost all the way, and do this until you have 6 wires left, next do the same to these but instead of doing almost all the way you do it half, so you end up with a bunch of branches branching off of the 3 main ones, you can then fix anything that looks out of shape and curve everything into a circle at the top so it looks like a tree without leaves.

After that you go to the bottom of the tree where you have the loops, you take one of the loops and twist it until you have only a little loop at the end, you do this to every one until you have 12 little loops, next (this is optional) you can twist two of those wires together half way until you had 6 left. After that you take a pair of wire cutters of scissors and cut all the loop ends so that there would be now 24 ends, then use your pliers and twist them to about the shape of roots and you should have a tree that looks like this:

After you finish that you are on to the next step, and that's plastering it. Make up some plaster and get a paint brush and paint it onto your  tree until it drys and paint another layer on until it looks like a tree and not showing any wire like this:

One of the things I most love doing is making miniatures, and today's post I will talk a bit about how I made terrain

A little while back around Christmas I got a bunch of different materials for making a miniature scenery. I used card board to make the terrain and cut it out layer by layer until I had what I wanted:

After that I painted the entire thing green for the grass, now I wasn't finished with the grass but I painted green so that what I sprinkled on top would not show any white underneath it. Next I took some "Woodland Scenics course turf" which is like fluffy green cotton but a whole lot smaller, I mixed that with some other darker stuff to really add some texturing to the terrain. After that I made tree's, I used the same course turf but without the darker stuff, and picked up some twigs from a Manzanita tree as it branched out a lot more. Then I applied the course turf by using spray on glue and did it layer by layer until it looked like a tree. Next I sprinkled some of the darker stuff onto the top of it for more of a realistic look to it. After that I did some smaller detailing to the terrain to give it more of a realistic look to it:

I had the strips of cardboard in the back as I was also making a stone path and when I applied the turf it didn't get onto the places I had it covered

My Uncle is thinking of building a in-law house on his property and asked me to make a blueprint/diagram for it in SketchUp

Describing the building

I started by Skyping my Uncle and then he started explaining how he wanted the house, and I made it from there. Its going to be under 600 Square Feet because anything over that he would have to get a special permit to build over the 600 square feet. He wants one bed, one bath, kitchen, living room/dinning room all up and with a lot of natural light. He wants several closets for the utilities and ext. Here is a picture of what we made:

I took a bunch of stuff out of the 3D warehouse to furnish the 3D model. Since the house is so small most of the things that I brought in didn't fit correctly, I had to rearrange them a lot and resize them to get them to fit. I added a little person in it for perspective so that my Uncle could really get a good sense of size. I used screen-share so that he can see what I doing and that I don;t have to take a million pictures and send them to him as it is very time consuming.

This is my first actual project that might actually be used. While I was modeling it, I didn't have much time to get everything exact, so I will be re-doing the whole thing to make the size correct and build the furniture into the building not out of it.

I recently bought SketchUp Pro, and today I will talk a bit about it

The version I have of SketchUp is a student version of it and that means that I can't use what I make on there for commercial use, basically meaning that I can't make a business using SketchUp in any part of it. Now that I have SketchUp Pro I can use it for a business and I get a bunch of other features like Layout, which lets you lay your 3D Model out into a printable form.

The reason I got this was for two reasons, number one is that I could use Layout and then having access to Layout I can really go through the book "SketchUp & Layout for Architecture". The second reason is that I can someday make a business, which I hope will be soon.

SketchUp Pro costs $695.00 USD

SketchUp Student Costs $49.00 USD

If you are new to SketchUp and not sure if you want to really get into SketchUp and you are still a student I would deffinitly suggest you get the student version even if you have enough money for the Pro version.

"SketchUp & Layout for Architecture" is written by Matt Donley and Nick Sonder. Today I will be talking about it

My mom is a part of a group that brainstorms ideas for their businesses. One of these people in the group is "Matt Donley." He is an experienced SketchUp user. He wrote a book called "SketchUp & Layout for Architecture" where he takes you through a step by step process of constructing a house and getting it ready to be built. Not only that but it gives you a detailed instructions on how to use the different tools in SketchUp & Layout. You use Layout to literally lay your model out.  Let's say you created a building and want to print up the blueprint for it, you would use Layout to do that. He came over last week and gave me a signed copy of his book

Matt Donley went to several Maker Faires where he found SketchUp and later helped the SketchUp team present their program. He also went to a 3D Boot camp and did a presentation on SketchUp. While he was there, he met up with Nick Sonder who is a architect and talked about SketchUp and such. After talking it over a bit Matt found that Nick needed someone to uncover any problems in his building model. Matt found that there are other people wanting the same thing, but couldn't find anyone to do it. Basically how it works is he gets the blueprint of the model and reconstructs it in SketchUp.  If he finds any errors in it he would tag it and then once done reconstructing the building he would send it back the his employer and his employer would fix it up and that would go to the contractor building the house or building.

Let's say you didn't double check for any errors in your model and you sent it off. Well, let's say you have a wall that goes out in a vertical line in your model but when you look at the blueprint it shows it going horizontally. You would want to fix those problems before sending them out to be used to construct the building. If you didn't do that, once the building was finished you would find that the person you hired to build it decided to make it horizontal and it made the building look funny.