Civil Engineering Association

The exercises presented in the following chapters are designed to completely familiarize you with every aspect of SketchUp itself. Here is the chapter layout:

2. Basics: Short exercises on each of the drawing and manipulation tools (Line, Arc, Push/Pull, Protractor, Axes, etc.)
3. Intersect and Follow Me: These tools are often used together, so they get their own chapter.
4. Multiple Copy: Exercises on rows of copied objects, linear arrays, and angular (rotated) arrays.
5. Roofs: Everyone works with them, and they can sometimes get tricky. SketchUp enables you to create, modify, and resolve roofs easily.
6. Groups and Components: Groups are used to make a collection of objects that act as one object. This is useful for isolating geometry, and to keep things from sticking to one another. Components enable you to insert external objects into your model and use
them multiple times. This is equivalent to external references used in other CAD packages.
7. Materials: Applying materials, colors, and textures to faces to enhance the display of your model.
8. Sectioning: Using section planes to cut into your model, to look inside, create floor plans, or produce a drawing to export to CAD.
9. Presentation: Usage of the walk-through tools, layers, pages (views) tour guide (slide show) and shadows.
10. Sandbox: Tools for creating and modifying TIN surfaces, used in terrain modeling.
11. Exact Dimensions: While SketchUp’s strength lies is its simple, non-rigid modeling ability, you can also use it like a standard CAD application by working with known measurements. This chapter shows ways to specify exact values when using any tool.
12. Tips and Tricks: Exercises that show handy ways to solve typical problems.
13. In Depth Exercises: Two exercise that combine many of the concepts presented throughout this book. One exercise results in a steel building frame created from structural shapes that were saved as components. The second exercise is to create a simple log cabin.
14. Program Settings: General knowledge of the display tools, preferences, keyboard shortcuts, and import/export.
15. Ruby Script: Some basics on how to use Ruby programming to create macros.

Robin de Jongh - SketchUp 7.1 for Architectural Visualization: Beginner's Guide | Packt | 2010 | 408 pages | PDF | RAR | 15 MB

Google SketchUp, the most popular architectural software package, is used by millions of architects and visualizers throughout the world. But what you may not know is that it's also the most powerful 3D design software on the market. With this book in hand and patented technology such as the PhotoMatch, Push-Pull, and Face-me components you can produce commercial quality photo-realistic or artistic output of your designs. This book shows you how to master SketchUp's unique tools to create architectural visuals using professional rendering and image editing techniques in a clear and friendly way. You'll be able to get started immediately using these SketchUp tools and open-source rendering software. The book shows you how to create architectural visuals from your SketchUp models. In no time you'll be creating photo-realistic renders, animated fly-overs, and walkthroughs. You will also create composites of real and rendered images, creating digital and paper presentations to wow clients. For the impatient, a "Quickstart" tutorial is provided in the first chapter to get you rendering a photo-realistic scene immediately. The rest of the book builds on this knowledge by introducing in-depth concepts, tricks, and methods in an easy-to-follow format through quick tutorials.
What you will learn from this book
* Render ultra-realistic soft shadows from multiple light sources
* Master low polygon modeling techniques that you need to adopt for visualizations
* Work with texturing techniques utilizing PhotoMatch and your own digital photos
* Enhance your models by adding depth of field and other post-process tricks in GIMP
* Learn and implement a fool-proof visualization workflow
* Devise movie-set scenes to digitally photograph your projects
* Enhance your SketchUp scenes by adding lamps, sun, and sky lighting
* Add smooth camera paths for airborne and walk-through animations
* Learn all of the simple tricks to ensure great-looking models when rendered
* Benefit from SketchUp's mind-blowing features and clear your mind of any preconceptions