Calibrating the axes in Sketchup.

[Andy Kev.]

Good Morning All,

I've recently bought and Macbook and have downloaded Sketchup. To help me use and understand the latter I bought Sketchup A Design Guide for Woodworkers by Joe Zeh.

The big problem I have is in customising the template and specifically the calibration of the axes. Mr Zeh says that one must use the Rectangle Tool and pull out a rectangle and then simply type in e.g. 12,12 and hit Enter. I've obviously done this but it doesn't seem to be taken up by the software, so if I create e.g. a simple table leg which fills the screen and should be about 18" x 1" x1" it turns out that the computer thinks it's about ten feet long.

I'm sure that all this is down to operator error and I am doing something wrong or could it be that the Apple system requires specific action?

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,

Andy.

 

[pulleyt]

I think the problem is not that the axes need calibrating. Instead you need to zoom in (or out in some cases) to view the object as large as possible on screen.

I'm no expert in Sketchup but the advice from your book is how I work. In your example of a component measuring 1" x 1" x 18" high I would start by drawing a rectangle of any size and then type in 1,1 in the dimension box and click enter. This will resize the rectangle to a 1" square, assuming your units are set to inches. Then I zoom in far enough so that I can see the face of the square well enough to click on it with the Push/Pull tool and extrude the face upwards a little and then type 18 in the dimension box and click enter. Now you have the object set with your chosen dimensions you can use the view tools (zoom, pan and orbit) to view the component as large as possible on the screen.

I hope this helps, Trevor

 

[HOJ]

Not familiar with Sketchup on a mac, but assuming in principal the screen is the the same.
If you go to the top left of the screen and select "View" then select "Toolbars", find and check the box adjacent to "Measurements" this should now bring up a box on the screen to show the measurements you are entering.

You may also need to check the units that are being used, go to "Window" - "Model Info" - "Units" and see what is set there, mine is usually Decimal and mm.

Then follow pulleyt's method

 

[Eric The Viking]

Model Info is the place for all that.

There you can set the units you use. You can work in imperial (feet, inches and fractions), but you might find it easier initially to work in millimetres, simply because you can probably work in whole numbers.

So it's not "calibrating the axes" as much as selecting the right units to work in, and then getting used to typing in values rather than busking it with the mouse (or in my case a graphics stylus).

The other useful feature is the view button that "snaps" the zoom to show the complete model in the drawing window. It's very handy when you're starting a new model.

I'd also heartily recommend Dave Richards's tutorial videos (found via SketchUcation and, I think on YouTube) - he's done basic ones and more advanced, too.

Trust me: it's well worth persevering with it.

HTH, E.