SketchUp 2D Orthographic Drawings

For those with AutoCAD background or some type of two-dimensional CAD background, you might be right at home with this particular video. And what I'm going to show you is how to make an orthographic drawing of your particular project. A two-dimensional orthographic drawing. If you don't know what that is, let me show you real quick. This is an orthographic drawing where you have your top view above your front view and your right view to the right of your front view. And sometimes you may or may not have an isometric view up here showing a little bit more of three-dimensional visualization. And I'm going to show you how to do all of this in SketchUp. It's really cool. So first off, let's start out with a project. This is a small little breadbox that I've made. And it's, let me just cue for rotate here and show you how it works. Just a simple little breadbox, okay? Let me escape to back out of there. So first off, how do we get the orthographic views? Camera, parallel projection. We need to be looking right on this thing. So first off, right off the bat, let's go to the front view. And this may sound a little bit crazy at first, but it will make sense at the end. So what I want to do is make my entire object, my entire project, which is a bunch of components put together, I want to make every bit of that a new component. So G for component, enter. So now the breadbox is a single component. Now I'm going to do this with scenes and layers to give it a little bit more functionality here. So let's go with scenes. And I'm going to add a couple scenes. The first one is going to be overview. And you know what? Let's go all AutoCAD here. It's right in all caps. Overview. Second one is going to be the front. Third one is going to be the top. And the fourth one is going to be the right. Okay. Now my scenes are pretty much set. Now I need to make some layers for my individual dimensions. So window, layers, and I'm pretty much going to do the same thing. So overview, front, top, and right. All right. I'm going to leave this window open. And real quick, because this is one component, I can M for move. Control brings up copy. And I will put my top view in place. Not going to rotate it yet. M for move. Control brings up copy. And I'm going to put my right view in place. Now I can just rotate them in place and make sure everything lines up. So I'm going to change my view here. Grab this piece. Q for rotate. And really doesn't matter, because I'm going to adjust this. Click anywhere to start the rotation. M for move. And I'm going to grab the front most part. Hold shift so I stay on the green axis here. And I'm going to drop it off at the front most part here. And then just drag it up along the blue axis to give some separation. Now I'm going to, let me show you what that did actually. Let's click on overview again. I'm looking right on my front view here. And I'm looking right on my top view. Now I need to look dead on to my right view, which is this particular face. So select this one. Q for rotate. And just rotate it 90 degrees so that face is looking at the camera. M for move. And I will move the front most piece in this drawing, holding shift to constrain against the green. And I will line it with the front most piece in this drawing. Click overview to get back where I need to be. And just to space things out, I'm just going to, yeah, that looks good. Let's make a orthographic view. And this is kind of hit or miss here. So M for move. Control brings up copy. Set this whole component over here somewhere. And let's try and rotate this thing into some type of trimetric view. I'm sorry. Somewhat like that. And I'm going to use this face as a reference. I'm going to have to move that again. But somewhat like that. So let's go back to our overview. And yeah, that looks like a good view there. S for scale. And I'm going to scale this one down because this one is purely for visualization. M for move. And move it like so. So let's, everything looks good. I'm going to right click and say update my overview. Now on my front view, I want to control A to select everything. And then hold shift, deselect my front. So I've got all three of these selected. And I'm going to right click and say hide. And in the front view, those three are hidden. I'm going to zoom in on my front and right click and update. So now if I go back to my overview, they come back into play. Same thing with top real quick. I'm going to go to my top scene. Control A to select everything. Hold shift to deselect this. So only these three are selected. Right click and hide. Zoom in to where I'm at a comfortable position here. Right click and update. Let's go back to overview. Same thing for right. Control A to select everything. Shift to deselect that. Right click, hide. Zoom in where we have a comfortable view. And let's go to, I'm supposed to be editing my right view. So let's just right click on right and say update it. Now if I click back on overview here, I did not update the overview. So if I click back to it, I'm where I'm supposed to be. If I go to right, there we go. I hope that wasn't too confusing. So I've got zoomed in views on all three of here and a big overview. So the layers are purely for dimensions. On my overview, I only want overview to be visible. Now by default, layer zero is visible. And I don't think you can delete it. You might be able to take it off, but nope, not the current layer. Anyway, let's just select overview as our current layer and right click and say update. That way it updates my layers. Let's go to the front. And on the front scene, this may seem like a lot, but just bear with me. On the front scene, let's go to front as my current layer and invisible those, if that made any sense. Right click and say update. Let's go to the top, make top my visible layer or active layer and deselect these. Right click and say update. Let's go to right. My right scene, I want my right layer to be active. Let's uncheck visibility on these others and click update. So now let's just throw some dimensions in here. My overview, I don't need a lot of dimensions in overview. Basically, I'm going to press D for dimension if you already set that keyboard shortcut up. If not, it's right there. And just give me some overall dimensions. And you know what? Let me delete that. First, let me make my overview my active layer. D for dimensions, that way all my dimensions stay on this layer. And why aren't you clicking? Let me zoom in here. Drop that down. Bring my view back into play. There we go. D for dimension again. From here to here, this will give me my height. So we've got my box width, my box height, and I need my box depth. That's pretty much all my overview is going to show. All right, that's good for me. Let's right click and say update. Now, if I go to my front view, these should hide because they are on the overview layer. So let's go to front and they're hidden. So let's make front my active layer and D for dimension. Let's add some specific dimensions here that this piece is two inches. And let's just add a notation saying something simple like knob is centered. Obviously, but just for the sake of adding something here. And these are on my front layers only. Let's right click and say update. And let's go back to overview and those should go away. My leader here went away and this went away. So let's add some stuff to the top. Same thing. D for dimension and this little top shelf area is that big. Now my measurements here, my units are set a little bit too precise there, but that's irrelevant for this demonstration. And I drew that on layer zero. I did not want to do that. Right click, entity info, select this and say, whoops, hit escape, select this and say you are on layer top. All right, now right click and update. Actually, let's add the back piece here. D for dimension, the back piece and actually the back, the top and the front are shown as 15 degrees. And I did it again. Right click, entity info, layer top. Let's close this. My top is my active layer in this scene. Right click and say update. Now let's go to the right view. And this is where it's going to get pretty cool. You can't really see anything here, but if I press K for hidden lines, all of my box geometry is shown. So D for dimension. And let's just do some stuff that we couldn't do in the other views. My angled piece here is that long. My bottom piece is that long. And I can't seem to remember to change my layers. Let's select these real quick and say entity info, layer right, close, make the right layer active. There we go. And if we really wanted to, we can just add a couple more here just for the sake of it. Make sure that the door is labeled here. Also, let's make some notations here that both angles are 15 degrees. That makes a total 30 degree line here. And let's let's just put a notation here saying 30 degree cut. All of this was done on the right view. So now if I right click and say update, I can go back to my overview. All that is hidden. And of course, you can toggle whether or not you want your hidden lines to be shown. Now remember in the beginning, I made each one of these a component, a solid component, the entire project is one component, and these are multiples of it. And that was so if I needed to change something down the road, it will automatically update all of my drawings. And once I have my dimensions in place, it will update them as well. So let's just say for whatever reason, this needs to be a half inch wider overall. So I need to add a quarter inch of width to my side pieces. Okay, so if I, if I double click here, now I'm editing the project while I want to edit the part in the project, people push pull, and let's pull this and as you can see on the bottom there, it's kind of grayed out, but all my dimensions are being updated in real time. So if I just pull this direction 0.25 to one side, they are copies to begin with, so updates both sides. And just that easy, you can manipulate the entire two dimensional drawing. So let me control Z to back up. And I hope that makes sense. So once you have your completed project done, make the entire project a component before you make your multiples here. And that way, anything you want to update can be updated. I use colors here for my layout, on my layout and cutting diagram to get it to something printer friendly. You can select your hidden line option here. And whether or not your hidden lines are shown is whether or not they'll be printed. But this will be very printer friendly. And you have a very nice two dimensional drawing here with all of your specified views that you can print from as well.