And in the process of making Sketchup users’ lives easier, here are a few more hacks to help you have a more pleasant and time saving modeling experience.
In case you missed the previous part, here it is.
Multiple Selections
Multiple selections can be a hassle sometimes, especially if you’re dealing with a lot of tiny objects or ones that are all tangled together. Few things you should know about selecting multiple objects, using your keyboard and mouse:
Ctrl Button : Select Only (A tiny plus sing appears next to the pointer.)
Shift Button: Select, and if you click on a highlighted/selected object it Deselects it (A tiny minus sign appears next to the pointer.)
Ctrl + Shift Buttons: Deselects Only. (Both a plus and a minus signs appear next to the pointer.)
Hide and Visibility
Sometimes certain objects can get in the way when working on details in your model.
Solution: Hide them!
You can do that by Right Click>Hide. Just be careful because Hide is just under Erase. You can get them back by going to Edit>Unhide>All or Last depending on what you want as visible again.
Copy and Paste
Usually computer savvy people use CTRL+C and CTRL+V to copy and paste. It can be a hassle at times, though. All you have to do is select the Move tool 
, press CTRL once and you’ll see a small plus sign near your pointer, click on your Object and you’ll see that it got duplicated; you can then place it wherever you like since it sticks to your pointer.
, press CTRL once and you’ll see a small plus sign near your pointer, click on your Object and you’ll see that it got duplicated; you can then place it wherever you like since it sticks to your pointer.Axis and How to “Lock Them”
We all see those three lines (Green, Blue, Red) that represent X,Y,Z.
Whenever you want to move an object or draw a line it could get frustrating since usually they either snap to the wrong axis or snap to the nearest Edge. So here’s a small hack you can use.
Try this:
– Draw a line, and if it snaps to the right axis then hold the Shift key to keep it that way, same goes for when you’re moving an object.
OR
– Use your keyboard keys to MAKE IT snap to the axis you want, while drawing a line or moving an object just click on any of those arrow keys on your keyboard:
- Up and Down: Blue Axes
- Left: Green Axes
- Right: Red Axes
If only everything in life “snaps to axis” this easily..
What can also save your time (and sanity), is when your Sketchup isn’t lagging. Check out the post on lagging here.
Part one of this series can be found here.
Part three of this series can be found here.
For one on one training for Sketchup + VRay, go here.
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Leave a comment with any questions or suggestions that you have and I’ll get back to you ASAP 🙂
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