Making doors look right in different ortho views

While I was putting together this post last month, it dawned on me that doors are represented differently in plan, elevation and sectional orthographic views of a building. By which I mean:

• In plan, doors are generally shown in the open position.
• In elevation, doors appear closed.
• When cut through in section, doors disappear altogether.

In plan, doors appear open to show their swing. In the above image, the swing arcs, section cut graphics and arrows were added in LayOut.

In elevation, doors appear closed. Otherwise, you'd be able to see through them, which would be visually confusing. The scale figure and the dashed lines to indicate the hinge position were added in LayOut.

In sectional views, doors which are cut through don't appear at all. All that is visible of the doorway in the above section is the edges of the wall beyond the cut. Doors which appear in elevation (like the one on the left) are shown closed.

If I’m modeling a building and I leave the doors open, they’ll look correct in plan but not in other views. If I close them, the plans will look wrong. Clearly, I need two sets of doors—one open, one closed—and I need to manage which set is visible in each view. Layers, Scenes and nested components to the rescue!

The idea here is to create a door component that includes two sub-components: one that’s an open door, and one that’s a closed door. Mine looks something like this:

A door component which includes both open and closed door sub-components, each on its own layer. In the image above, "Color By Layer" is turned on to better illustrate the setup. The Outliner dialog box shows the nesting relationship of the three door components.

Creating a combination door component

Start by modeling both doors and turning them into a set of nested components:

Step 1
Create the hole into which you want to insert a door.

Make the hole exactly the same size as the door you're planning to model.

Step 2
Model a door in the closed position. Keep it simple; a rectangle is fine for now.

Fill the doorway opening with a simple face. Make it flush with the side of the wall into which the door will open.

Step 3
Select only the door geometry and turn it into a component. Give it a meaningful name that describes its size, orientation and position like “Door-36-L-Closed”.

Turn your simple door into a component by selecting its geometry and right-clicking to open a context menu.

Give your door component a meaningful name; "36" indicates the width and "L" indicates the left-hand hinge position. Make sure the "Replace selection with component" checkbox is selected before you click Create.

Step 4
If you like, add detail (like a thickness) to the door you just modeled.

Extruding the single face into a 3D object will make it read better in plan. Resist the temptation to add doorknobs, detailed woodwork or anything else that isn't in keeping with your model's current level of detail.

Step 5
Model the same door in the open position. Be sure not to duplicate the component instance you made in the previous step — the whole point of this exercise is to have two, separate components.

Model the same door again, this time in the open position. For accuracy, line up the edges where the hinges would be on a real door.

Step 6
Turn the open door into a new component. Call it something like “Door-36-L-Open”.

Make the open door into another component and name it accordingly.

Step 7
Select the open and closed door components and make a new component that includes both. A good name for this component might be “Door-36-L-Main”.

Select both door components (open and closed) and make them into a new component.

Using Layers to control component visibility

The next step is to put each sub-component on a separate layer:

Step 1
Choose Window>Layers to open the Layers Manager.

Step 2
Create a new layer called “Doors-Open”.

Step 3
Create another layer called “Doors-Closed”.

Use the Layers Manager to create two new layers.

Step 4
Choose Window>Entity Info to open the Entity Info dialog box.

Step 5
Start editing your Main door component (the one that includes both sub-components) by double-clicking it with the Select tool.

Step 6
Select the closed door sub-component and move it to the “Doors-Closed” layer using the Layer drop-down menu in the Entity Info dialog box.

Move the Closed Door sub-component to the "Doors-Closed" layer using the Entity Info dialog box.

Step 7
Select the open door component and move it to the “Doors-Open” layer.

Put the Open Door sub-component on its own layer, too.

Step 8
Click elsewhere on your screen to stop editing the Main door component.

Make sure the Main Door component (which includes both sub-components) is on LayerO. If you're really advanced, I suppose you could even have a layer dedicated to these "combo" door components. Tread lightly, though—layers can be tricky to work with.

Setting up Scenes to control layer visibility

After you’ve placed doors wherever you need them in your model, you can control which set is visible by creating (or updating) scenes that show only one “Doors” layer at a time. It’s pretty straightforward, really:

Step 1
Activate the scene that corresponds to a plan view of your model. If you don’t have one yet, just create a new scene called “Plan” and worry about getting the camera position in order later.

Right now, both the Doors Closed and Doors Open layers are visible. We only want the open doors to appear in the above plan.

Step 2
In the Layers Manager, hide the “Doors Closed” layer.

Uncheck the Doors Closed layer to make its contents invisible.

Step 3
Right-click the “Plan” scene tab and choose Update.

When the doors look the way you want them to, right-click the relevant scene tab and choose Update.

Step 4
Repeat the above three steps for any other planimetric scenes in your model.

Step 5
Go through the above process again for any scenes where doors should appear closed.

In the above elevation view, I want only the Doors Closed layer to be visible.

Dealing with doorways in section

What about doors that are cut through by section cuts? They shouldn’t appear at all. The solution here is simple: Just hide the offending door components and update your scene.

Doors which are cut through in sectional views shouldn't appear at all. Those which appear in elevation (like the one on the left) should appear closed.

Simply hiding door components you don't want to see (then updating the corresponding scene) is the easiest way to deal with this conundrum.

One more thing: I've added the above example model to the 3D Warehouse so you can download it and do some of your own experimenting. You can find it here (click the 3D Warehouse logo to go to the model in the 3DWH):



Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Getting better sectional views in LayOut

Cutting plans and sections through your SketchUp models is the very definition of "hott"—everybody knows that. Getting those plans and sections to appear properly in your LayOut documents is a tricky proposition, though. Maybe this will help.

The Problem

Here’s the scenario: You have a building model. You want to show a plan and a section in a LayOut document derived from your model. This involves using Section Cuts to make the slices. This sounds simple enough, but there are two factors that complicate matters significantly:

• You need to create a new style specifically for the scenes that show your Section Cuts. If you don’t, it’s really complicated to make sure unsightly Section Plane objects don’t show up in your LayOut document. The image below provides a visual explanation.

Top: If you're not careful, your Section Plane objects will show up in your LayOut document. Bottom: Things look much better when they don't.

• You need to use Scenes to let LayOut “see” each of your two Section Cuts (plan and section) independently. Without setting up scenes in your SketchUp model, there’s no way to assign specific a Section Cut to a viewport in LayOut. The blog post Connecting SketchUp Scenes to LayOut model viewports goes into more detail about this.
  

The Solution

The key to making this process work is to create a custom style specifically for sectional views of your model. Here’s how:

Step 1
Choose Window>Styles to open the Styles Manager.

Step 2
Click the Create New Style button (see below).

Click Create New Style in the Styles Manager.

Step 3
Give your style a meaningful name; I suggest something like “Sections”. Press Enter on your keyboard to make sure it sticks.

Type in a new name for your style, then hit Enter to make the change stick.

Step 4
Use the settings in the Edit tab to make your model look exactly the way you want it to.

I use these style settings for sectional views of my model.

Step 5
IMPORTANT: Under “Modeling Settings”, make sure the Section Planes checkbox is deselected.

Deselecting the Section Planes checkbox in the Modeling Settings section of the Edit tab is the key to making sure your Section Planes are invisible.

Step 6
Click the Style thumbnail image to update your style with the changes you’ve made since you created it in Step 2.

Click a style's thumbnail image to update it. This saves the settings you've changed since you started editing it.

Now that you have a custom style just for sectional views, you can apply that style to all the scenes that show Section Cuts. In my case, I created a new scene for each Section Cut. They’re called “Plan” and “Section”, appropriately enough.

The "Plan" and "Section" scenes in my SketchUp model are set up to show different active Section Cuts. The style "Sections" is applied to both.

To make sure that the Sections style is applied to each scene, do this:

1) Activate one of the Section Cut scenes by clicking its Scene Tab.
2) Apply the Sections style by choosing it from the Select Tab in the Styles Manager.
3) Right-click the current Scene Tab and choose Update Scene.
4) Repeat Steps 1 to 3 for each of your other Section Cut scenes.
5) Save your SketchUp file.

With the right style applied to your sectional scenes, you’re ready to assign those scenes to different viewports in LayOut. Again, I covered the nuts and bolts of this process in this blog post from last year.

Another thing you should know

Every time you add a new Section Cut, all of the existing Section Plane objects in your model become visible. The custom style you created doesn’t change, though; as long as that style is applied to your scenes, and those scenes are assigned to your viewports in LayOut, everything should be fine. If (after adding a new Section Cut) you want to hide all of your Section Plane objects, all you have to do is choose View>Section Planes from the menu bar. Voilà!

Extra Bonus: This blog post from last year provides some suggestions for ways to poché (fill in) your Section Cuts.

Update: A previous edition of this blog post included some (bad) advice about waiting until you get to LayOut to assign orthographic views. On the advice of an expert, I've taken that bit out. Apologies for the confusion.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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New SketchUp 8 book in Portuguese

We know from examining our charts and graphs that the good people of Brazil are crazy about SketchUp. We can officially add 3D modeling to the long, long list of things for which that country is famous.

The first book about Google SketchUp 8 is now available, and it’s in Portuguese. Written by architect João Gaspar, Google SketchUp Pro 8 passo a passo was launched in Sao Paolo on December 3rd, 2010. It’s the author’s third book about SketchUp; he also wrote volumes about SketchUp 6 and 7.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Making your rounded models look better

When you're working with rounded objects whose edges have been smoothed, it's sometimes hard to make things look good. That's because curved surfaces don't automatically produce a profile edge that helps to differentiate them from the background. You can see what I'm talking about in the images that follow; notice the (what I consider to be) unsatisfying outline of each of the rounded objects below?

Without Profiles turned on, rounded objects don't stand out.

Turning on Profiles in the Styles dialog box produces a completely different result. At a Profiles setting of 2 pixels, perimeter edges become clearly visible. They're a little chunky, though—and that's not always the effect I'm aiming for.

Profiles that are 2 pixels thick often look too bold and cartoony.

Dialing down Profiles to 1 pixel solves the problem (see below).

Using a Profile thickness of 1 pixel makes rounded objects pop out from the background.

While this trick might seem obvious, it actually took eight years to soak into my brain. I never understood the benefit of setting my profile thickness to a single pixel. After all, edges are already that thickness—why spend the computer cycles to draw them again? Now I know. I thought others might benefit from my epiphany, embarrassingly late though it is.

It's worth mentioning that telling SketchUp to draw Profiles can slow things down considerably if your model's pushing the limits of your polygon budget. I only switch Profiles on when I need them.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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The HOVER Challenge

It’s a fact that people who use SketchUp also use other tools; we live in a multi-app universe, and I like it that way. Figuring out what program to use for what, and when, and how to move data between them is the tricky part. And that’s why blogs like Ronen Bekerman’s are so useful. It’s chock-full of information about all things related to architectural visualization. V-Ray, Maxwell, 3ds Max, Photoshop, Fryrender, SketchUp – it’s all there.

W Boutique Residential Tower by Ronen Bekerman; SketchUp, 3ds Max, MultiScatter and V-Ray

I just found out about Ronen’s HOVER Challenge. Participants are designing, modeling and rendering structures that appear to float. The format is what interests me most: everyone is posting their progress to a forum where others provide advice and encouragement. Two caveats: You need to be logged in to see images, and only some of the participants are using SketchUp.

The deadline is coming up fast (October 20th) but I think it’s worthwhile to at least peek at what folks are up to. As I’ve said in the past – you should see at least one beautiful, inspiring thing a day.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Geo-modeling features in SketchUp 8

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it. – Steven Wright

If modeling the planet is like painting a house, Google provides a lot of different brushes. Internally, we have these big paint sprayers that we’re using in major cities to cover huge swaths of suburbia in a single stroke, but when it comes to the fine work, Google SketchUp and Google Building Maker are the hand brushes. They allow people all over the world to fill in the gaps, perfect signature buildings, and smooth over the mistakes left by the big rollers. With SketchUp 8, the geo-modeling brush set is better connected with Google’s massive geo-data paint bucket than ever before.

Jumpstart your model with Building Maker

SketchUp 8 can open Google Building Maker models downloaded from the 3D Warehouse, and every image used for texturing is automatically created as a Match Photo scene, saving you huge amounts of time gathering measurements and photographs of a building.

Open your Building Maker model and the new Outer Shell tool can merge its primitives into a single SketchUp mesh. From there, the revamped Scenes dialog box and Igloo Mode makes organizing and navigating between your scene tabs a snap. There are even new Style settings for the opacity of Match Photo overlays and backgrounds. A new Back Edges line style provides traditional hidden-line visualization of edges behind or inside your building, and the Push/Pull tool now has a preselect mode that allows you to move faces that you can’t see from a given scene.

Get highest quality, full-color terrain and imagery

The new Add Location feature allows you to import terrain directly into SketchUp without having to fire up Google Earth. Your imported terrain is higher resolution than it was in SketchUp 7, more accurate, and now in full color. Also, Photo Textures from Street View in Google Maps are now part of the revamped Google toolbar.

Model in context

If you’re designing a new building, you can use Building Maker right inside SketchUp 8 to create context models around your site. Simply Add Location to geo-locate your model, and then click the Add Building button. If your site lies in one of the (ever growing) list of Building Maker cities, you’ll be able to create the surrounding buildings in a fraction of the time it would take to model them from scratch. Also, you can find nearby buildings that others have modeled by selecting “Nearby Models” from the Navigation drop-down menu in the Components Browser.



Posted by Scott Lininger, SketchUp Software Developer

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Winning more jobs with LayOut

Most people we’ve met know what SketchUp is and what it can do, and those people generally think it’s the greatest thing since the three-button mouse. But what about LayOut? LayOut? What is that? How much is it and how do I get it?

Well, if you own SketchUp Pro you already own LayOut. It comes bundled as a part of SketchUp Pro. Robbie Blance of RB3D shows us how SketchUp Pro modelers are putting their models to work in LayOut – and winning more jobs.


Robbie has created professional construction documents. Everything shown in the images above was done using LayOut, including the title blocks. Robbie says:

“I have been using Sketchup LayOut for about 2 years. Originally I used it to only to show prospective clients what their new deck was going to look like on their house. I produced an A3 presentation sheet with four views of their new deck. As I got faster with my modelling and learned more about Layout I started building the decks and patios with more detail, in fact I built them completely using all the material the carpenters were going to use, so I then started producing working drawings. Now I use Layout to produce the drawings for the development applications as well, nothing is wasted, the original concept model simply gets more detailed.”

Posted by Brandon Feltman, SketchUp Sales Team

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Connecting SketchUp Scenes to LayOut model viewports

Here's a juicy little factoid that experienced SketchUp Pro users know: When you're working with multiple SketchUp model viewports in LayOut, it really helps to create corresponding scenes in your SketchUp model.

The primary reason for this is pretty simple. While it's easy to pan, zoom and orbit your model view around in LayOut until it's exactly right, there's no easy way to save that view in case you need to come back to it later. If there's a particular camera angle you want to use in your LayOut doc, it'll save you time in the long run to open the model in SketchUp and create a scene with the view you want.

Follow these steps to associate a scene you've created in SketchUp with a model viewport in an existing LayOut file:

1. In LayOut, right-click on a model viewport and choose Open with SketchUp from the context menu.
2. In SketchUp, use the navigation tools to frame the view you want.
3. Add a new scene to your model (View > Animation > Add Scene).
4. Save your model.
5. In LayOut, right-click on the model viewport and choose Update Reference from the context menu.
6. Make sure the model viewport is selected, then open the SketchUp Model dialog box (Window > SketchUp Model).
7. In the "Scene" drop-down menu, choose the scene you created in Step 3.

LayOut's SketchUp Model dialog box lets you assign a specific SketchUp scene to a model viewport.

Voilà! Your scene is now associated with your model viewport.
Using section cuts in LayOut

There are a few situations when you MUST use SketchUp scenes in combination with LayOut viewports. One of these involves section cuts. Because you can't create, activate (or de-activate) section cuts directly in LayOut, you have to set up scenes to be able to make use of them*.

In this example, I've modeled J.R. Davidson’s Case Study House #1, and I want to create a two-page LayOut doc as a presentation file. The first page will show a bird's-eye perspective; the second page, a first-floor plan. I use a horizontal Section Plane to produce the plan view (see below).

I use a Section Plane (Tools > Section Plane) to create a cut plan view of this building.

Still in SketchUp, I save a scene for each of the two views I want to present in LayOut:

I create two scenes in my SketchUp model.

In LayOut, I create a two-page doc and insert the CSH#1 model on each page. Using the SketchUp Model dialog box, I assign one scene to each of the two viewports (one on each page).

I assign each of the scenes I created to different viewports in LayOut.

*It’s technically possible to show/hide section cuts in LayOut by making clever use of Styles, but even that has its limitations. Section cut visibility in Styles is either on or off; as soon as you add two section planes, you’re back to needing Scenes. For this reason, I prefer sticking to Scenes all the time -- it’s simpler and it works all of the time.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Using Scenes to control layer visibility

In a previous blog post, I talked about how I use the Outliner and Layers to organize my models once they start getting big. The short version is that I prefer to use the Outliner to control the visibility of individual groups and components, but that I sometimes use Layers to turn on and off large sets of objects that affect my computer's performance.

This time, I'm going to focus on a faster (some might say smarter) technique for controlling the visibility of elements in your models: You can use Scenes to hide and unhide things without having to go anywhere near the Outliner or Layers dialog boxes.

The key to using all of the deliciousness built into Scenes lies in expanding the Scenes Manager (Windows > Scenes) to reveal its extra functionality; the part we're interested in is the "Properties to Save" section at the bottom:

Click the Expand toggle in the upper-right corner to see the rest of the Scenes manager. The "Properties to Save" section lets you determine which display settings each scene should remember.

You can customize a scene you've created by telling it which properties (display settings) it should save. Just select a scene in the list at the top the Scenes manager (single-click to select it), then choose which properties you want from the list. There's no "save" or "update" button to press; a setting is automatically saved as soon you select its checkbox.

Example

Consider the simple building I created for a previous post. In it, I created a layer specifically for all of the furniture in my model. For this example, I’ve added another layer to contain all of the elaborate trees I’ve added. Isolating the geometrically-complex parts of my model on separate, discrete layers makes them easier to hide when I want to boost my computer’s performance and get a better view of what I’m working with. See below for the updated, leafier model:

Placing "heavy" stuff like furniture and trees on separate layers makes it easier to hide everything quickly.

I’d like to use Scenes to turn on and off my Furniture and Trees layers without having to access the Layers manager. To do so, I make two new scenes which will each have only one saved property: “Visible Layers”. Here’s how:

1. Open the Scenes manager (Window > Scenes) and expand it by clicking the toggle in the upper-right corner.
2. In the Layers manager (Window > Layers), turn off all the layers you want to control with a scene. (In this case, Furniture and Trees)
3. Create a new scene by clicking the Add Scene (+) button.
4. Name the new scene “Entourage OFF”.
5. Make sure only “Visible Layers” is selected in the list of Properties to Save.
6. Turn on the layers you turned off in Step 2.
7. Repeat Steps 3 through 5, naming the newest scene “Entourage ON”.

Use the "Visible Layers" property to create scenes that control layer visibility.

Now all I have to do to hide my furniture and trees is click the “Entourage OFF” scene tab at the top of my modeling window. Since the only property saved by that scene relates to which layers were visible when it was created (or updated), no other display properties are affected by activating the scene. To turn everything back on, I click “Entourage ON”.

Feel free to download the model (SketchUp model) and try it yourself. Open the Layers and Scenes managers to see how everything’s rigged up.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Layers vs. the Outliner

Lots of people ask me how I keep my SketchUp models organized; there seems to be plenty of confusion about when to use Layers and when to use the Outliner. Both devices let you control the visibility of different parts of your model, but each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

First things first: Make groups and components

I always use groups and components as my primary means of organization. This is critical regardless of whether I'm using Layers or the Outliner. How come?

Using Layers doesn't keep geometry isolated; edges and faces on one layer can (and will) interfere with edges and faces on another layer -- UNLESS those edges and faces are protected as part of a separate group or component. Making liberal use of groups and components is the surest way to avoid spending hours repairing your work.

The Outliner (Window > Outliner) is basically just a hierarchical list of the groups and components in your model. Only these two types of things show up; "loose" geometry (ungrouped edges and faces) doesn't. If you want to use the Outliner to control the visibility of different parts of your model, you need to make groups and components.

Why I use the Outliner most of the time

I like using the Outliner because it's a straightforward way of seeing all the bits and pieces of my models: If I've been careful to name everything as I go along (the only place in my life where I exhibit tidiness), the Outliner makes managing everything relatively easy. I can hide and show groups and components by right-clicking on their names, instead of having to dig through the geometry in my model with the Select tool.

I tend to use the Outliner much more than I use Layers because I find nested groups and components to be a very logical way to organize objects in 3D space. Any given entity can only exist inside one group or component at a time. This means that when I hide a group or component from the Outliner, I can be sure that everything inside it is hidden, too. If I unhide a group or component and something inside it still isn't visible, I know that all I have to do is turn on Hidden Geometry to find it.

With Layers, it's possible for a group or component to be on one layer and the entities it contains (edges, faces, groups, components, etc) to be on a completely separate layer. Turning on one layer is no guarantee that everything it contains will become visible. When this happens, turning on Hidden Geometry won't help -- stuff that's hidden on a layer which is turned off doesn't show up, even when Hidden Geometry is turned on.

Using Layers to control the visibility of individual entities in your model can be very, very tricky. Layers have, on occasion, made me want to throw my computer through a wall.

How I use Layers

Their sometimes frustrating nature notwithstanding, Layers are a pretty important part of the way I organize complex models in SketchUp. I can think of two major reasons why:

To improve system performance

I use Layers to control the visibility of large sets of similar objects -- furniture, plants, scale figures, cars -- that I want to be able to turn on and off all at once, regardless of which group or component they're a part of. Generally, this is so that I can control the way my model performs on my computer. Turning off "heavy" stuff like trees speeds things up.

Suppose I have a building with three floors (see below). Each floor has some furniture on it. I model each floor as a separate group so that I can show and hide it easily via the Outliner. Each group contains the furniture on that floor. The building envelope is a separate group.

Use the Outliner to control the visibility of individual groups and components.

So that I can quickly turn on and off all of the furniture in the building (which will make the whole model easier to work with), I move each furniture component from Layer0 (the default) to a new layer called "Furniture".

Use Layers to turn on and off sets of similar objects that "cut across" groups and components.

Now I can easily control the visibility of individual aspects of my building independently. Being able to turn on and off the furniture all at once makes it a lot easier to get things done.

To keep some things really separate

As I mentioned earlier, turning on Hidden Geometry only shows hidden geometry on layers which are visible. I take advantage of this fact to make sure that when I'm modeling and I need to turn on Hidden Geometry for some reason (like maybe to unsoften an edge), I don't end up getting confused by every hidden entity in my model. I use Layers to organize big, unwieldy chunks of geometry that I don't need to see all the time, but that I can't delete. Examples of these are contour lines, imported CAD drawings, previous design iterations, and large amounts of entourage (trees, furniture, etc). I keep these things on separate layers (as part of groups, of course) and I turn them on only when I need them.

Disclaimer

Plenty of modelers use Layers and almost never use the Outliner. Which system you choose is entirely up to you -- there's no right or wrong way to do things. As long as your big models aren't driving you crazy, you're doing fine.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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