How To Draw A Triangle In Sketchup

In my previous tutorial, we talked about how SketchUp uses faces to fill in areas within bounding lines. You can read that tutorial past clicking here.

Now that you have a basic understanding of how SketchUp creates shapes using faces, let's get through and check out some of the tools that SketchUp has for creating and modifying different two dimensional shapes.

The Circumvolve Tool

The first tool in the shapes palette in SketchUp is the circle tool. This tool allows you to describe a circumvolve by specifying a heart point and a radius. To access the circumvolve tool, click on the round icon in your toolbar, or press the "C" primal on your keyboard.

If yous look at the measurements bar in the bottom right paw corner of your screen, you'll notice that information technology gives you lot an option to select the number of sides in your circumvolve. It will default to 24, then you don't need to change anything right now. We'll talk more than near number of sides in circles and model speed in a future tutorial, but for at present, just leave this at 24.

The way that you create circles in SketchUp is by setting a center betoken for your circle, so defining a radius length. The radius of a circle is ½ of the full width of the circle. Once you've clicked once and fix your center indicate, you can set the radius of your circle by clicking again on the screen or by typing in the length of your radius and hitting the "enter" key on your keyboard.

The Rectangle Tool

You tin can access the rectangle tool by selecting the drop down pointer next to the circle on your toolbar and clicking on the rectangular icon, or by using the keyboard shortcut, which is the "R" key.

When this tool is active, you can create a rectangle by clicking in one case on your screen to set up the first corner of your rectangle, then clicking once more to set the opposite corner.

One thing you might notice is that occasionally when you're setting your second point, SketchUp shows a piffling dotted line with the text "square" effectually it. This is the SketchUp inferences engine guessing what you lot might want. This is useful because sometimes you desire to draw a rectangle with 4 equal sides (a square), so this shows yous where to click if yous'd like to practise that.

The rectangle tool is unique because it'south the first tool we've talked almost that requires two dimensions in the measurements bar. Once you set up your beginning corner, if you'd like to draw your rectangle using dimensions instead of clicks on the screen, you lot can practice that by typing in your dimensions separated past a comma. Permit'southward say I wanted to describe a rectangle that is 5 feet wide, but 12 feet long. I would create this by setting my first corner, so typing 5', 12' and hitting the "enter" key.

If you lot enter negative dimensions in the measurements box, SketchUp will draw the rectangle in the contrary management of the management you were indicating with your cursor.

The Polygon Tool

The side by side shape cartoon tool in SketchUp that we're going to talk almost in this tutorial is the polygon tool. This tool allows you to draw a polygon by specifying the number of sides of the shape, a middle bespeak, and the distance from the center point to an outside point in your shape. Click the drop down in the shapes palette and select the icon that looks like a lilliputian pentagon within a carmine circumvolve.

Once you've activated this tool, yous'll find that the measurements bar changes to a box allowing yous to point the number of sides your polygon should take. You tin can betoken as many sides as yous want, just once you get past nigh 10, your polygon just starts looking like a circumvolve. This tool is especially helpful considering information technology allows you to draw shapes like triangles, pentagons, hexagons, and octagons. Go ahead and blazon in the number of sides (in this example I've picked 3) and striking enter. Your cursor should alter to a triangle. Now click in one case to set the center point of your triangle, so click again to gear up an edge betoken. This will draw a triangle. Similar the other drawing tools, you tin blazon a length and striking the "enter" key to specify the distance between your center point and your edge point (letting you lot gear up the size of your triangle).

This concludes my tutorial on drawing shapes in SketchUp. In the next tutorial, we'll use SketchUp'due south drawing tools to create a model that has 3 dimensions. Y'all can admission that tutorial here.

For more SketchUp tutorials, click here.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________