9 TIPS FOR MODELING HOUSE INTERIORS in SketchUp!

What's up guys, Justin here with theSketchupEssentials.com back with another Sketchup quick tutorial for you. So in this video I wanted to talk about some tips for modeling interiors of buildings using Sketchup. Today's video is brought to you by the Sketchup Essentials course. The Sketchup Essentials course is a course I created to give some real in-depth instruction on using Sketchup. So in that course we cover everything from an introduction to all the tools of Sketchup all the way into more advanced concepts like interior design modeling, modeling for layout, that sort of thing. So if you're interested in some more in-depth Sketchup instruction make sure you check that out at theSketchupEssentials.com slash course. Now let's go ahead and just jump into it. So we talked last week about some tips for modeling the exteriors of different buildings in Sketchup. This week I wanted to talk about some tips for modeling interiors in Sketchup. So things that are going to make it easier for you to work within Sketchup when you're modeling like interior design models, things for layout, that sort of thing. So this is actually the example model that we create in the Sketchup Essentials course. And what we've done is we've gone through and we've grouped everything the way that it should be in order for you to be able to export everything to layout. But my first tip for modeling interiors in Sketchup is you need to save a working view scene. This is especially important if you have a building that you've modeled both the exterior and the interior. So right now in this model things are grouped so that you can turn the roof off and get in there and work on your interiors. But it can get really annoying having to come in here and hide different things every time that you're working your model, especially as you start to get into like second level type things, that sort of thing. But if you create a working view scene where everything is kind of set up the way you want it to be. So in this case I have this model set up where I can just click and get right in here into this view where I can work in my interiors. That means every time that you're trying to get into the interior model you're not having to mess around with visibilities. So figure out what you're going to be working on and then set up a working view so that you can just click on that. To do that you just get your visibilities the way that you want them. So turn on and off the different layers as needed and then go up to view, animation and click the button for add scene and what that'll do is that'll save your current view. So tip number two is to put your interior and exterior elements on different layers. And so the reason for that is right now, if you remember last week we went in and we modeled out the roof of this building. Well now I need to go in and I need to model out the interior partitions. And in order to do this, this can get a little bit tricky if my exterior walls are showing. And so what I've done is I've grouped my exterior wall geometry on its own group and I've also done the same thing with the windows. And so what that means is I can come in here and I can turn my exterior walls, my windows on and off so that I can get in here and I can work with this floor plan. And so basically what that means is I can get in and I can work with this without having to worry about those walls getting in the way. So when you're working with your floor plan it's generally a good idea to put your floor shape on its own layer because otherwise what happens is you'll come in here and you'll start drawing walls and geometry starts merging and it gets kind of difficult to work with. And I guess that's kind of my tip three is you need to use groups and components. And so when you use groups and components what that means is now I can come in here and I can start modeling out my interior walls so I know I've already got an exterior wall over here. But I can come in here and I can start modeling this stuff out and I can do that without having to worry about this merging with that different geometry. So let's say I was to draw a wall so you can see how now I can come in here and I can start modeling out where my walls are going to be without having to worry about it merging with my floor geometry. And so what that allows me to do is that's going to allow me to group my walls that I just created and I can hide those and you can see how I still have my floor plate in here if I want it. So by grouping the different kinds of geometry you can both organize these things in your outliner and you can also get in here and have a little bit easier workspace. So my next tip is to use guides. And so you can create guides using the tape measure tool. Basically what a guide is, is a guide is a guideline that you can create within your model that doesn't actually merge with any kind of geometry. So you can literally use this just to delineate certain points in your model and you can see how they don't split faces or intersect with geometry or anything like that. So in order to do that you're just going to activate the tape measure tool. And if you look at the tape measure tool there's a little plus next to it. That means it's in create guide mode. If you tap the control key that'll turn off. But basically what that's going to do is I can click on this line to set it as kind of a base point and then I can type in a value. Like let's say I typed in four feet. Let's say I wanted a door over here that's four feet off of this wall. This will create a guide four feet from this point. And then what I can do is I can come in here and I can create a guide off of this guide. So another three feet wide. And so basically what I can do is I can use that to delineate the position for my doors. So in this case let's say I wanted this six feet off of this wall. I could create another door guide right here. And then what I could do is I could come in here and I could model out that opening by kind of splitting it out using the line tool. So you can see how the guide tool is very useful for coming in here and basically setting up where everything is. It's actually a lot like using a tape measure in real life. But now these are in here and I can push pull them up without the doors getting push pulled up as well. And so the next tip is to organize your geometry as you go. So like for example I'm going to come in here and I'm going to create these walls. Well what I want to do is before I come in here and create these walls I want to go ahead and set this geometry in its own group. And so one of the most difficult things to do in a SketchUp model is if you have to go back and reorganize the entire model that gets really difficult. So what you need to do instead is you need to get in the habit of organizing things as you go. So in this case what I would do is I've got my interior walls which I realize is a very simple model. But basically what I would do is I would come in here I would right click and I would make them a group. And so when you make them a group you can use the outliner to keep everything organized. So like for example I've grouped my interior walls in here. Well now I can come in here and I can rename those. So in this case I'm just going to call this interior walls. And actually what I'm going to do as I go is I'm also going to create a layer called interior walls. And so then what I can do is I can take that group by clicking on it. I can go up into my entity info and I can set those on their own layer so you can turn them on and off. And so now what I can do is I can come in here and I'm going to turn my exterior walls on just for kind of a reference. But now I can come in here in my interior walls and I can just push pull these to the height of my exterior walls. And I'm going to go ahead and since I'm inside this group I'm going to hit a control A and I'm going to right click and I'm going to reverse the faces so they're facing out the proper way. And so another great tip is how you can create these doors. So what you have right now is we've kind of blocked out our door opening. But what we want to do is we want to come up here and we want to give this a little bit more. We want to give this kind of the head of wall condition. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go in here and in this case I'm just going to select this bottom piece. And I'm just going to use the move tool in copy mode to copy it up. The other thing you can do is you can come in here with the rectangle tool and draw across this face right here. But what I don't like about that is that fills this in so you're going to have to come back in later on. So what I like to do is I like to move this. So I click and drag across this. I use the move tool in copy mode to create a copy. And then now I can push pull this down. So since my door is going to be a 7 foot door and my wall is 10 feet high, I can just push pull this down 3 feet. And then you can just come in here really quick and just erase out these extra lines. So that gives you a really nice door opening. You could come in here and you could erase out this geometry at the base here as well. So you can see how that's a lot easier than coming in here and drawing a rectangle across this and then you could probably use the push pull tool and create new face mode by tapping the control key and drawing this down. And then push pulling this to the back of the wall. So if you like doing it that way you could do that as well. But figure out what works for you. And that's how you can create this kind of condition over your door opening. So again just select it, move tool in copy mode. So select, tap the M key, click on this point and tap the control key and then click up here. And then you can just use the push pull tool to push pull that down 3 feet and you have your opening. And so you'll notice when I did this when I created my interior walls group I put it on it's own layer. So I can turn that layer on and off. And then when you go in and you model your doors you can put them on their own layer as well. So kind of like I have my windows there's just a check box where you can turn those on and off. So by grouping things as you go and also putting them on layers messing with your visibilities later gets a lot easier. And so when you're working with your interiors, I'm going to go back to my example model here for just a second, getting the camera view that you want can be a little bit difficult. So let's say for example that I wanted a view basically looking from this living room into this kitchen. So what you would do is you would use the first person camera tools and in this case I would use the position camera tool. And so you can click on this person right here. You can click on a point and I'm still holding my mouse button down but you can drag and you can move your mouse to what you want your camera to look at within your interior. So you can see how when I do that this basically puts my camera on the ground looking at that cabinet. And obviously that's not ideal. So what we're going to do instead is now that we have our point set, you'll notice in the lower right hand corner, it gives us an option for eye height. And so in this case I'm going to type in an eye height of six feet. So this would be how this would look if you were six feet tall looking at this kitchen. So you can use the first person camera tools, specifically the position camera tool to kind of set up this interior model. And then in addition to that, sometimes you get in some tighter spaces. So let's say for example that instead of positioning my camera in here, I wanted to get kind of an overall view of this bedroom over here. And so like let's say that I wanted to kind of stand in this corner and look across at the furniture but also see the bed. So if I do that, so if I click and drag to set my camera, I'll set my camera height to six feet and then you can kind of click and drag to look around. You'll notice you don't get a whole lot of this room with your camera view. And so what you can do is you can use the zoom tool to set your field of view. So you can see how when I click on this tool down in the lower right hand corner, it gives me a note for field of view, 35 degrees. And so what field of view 35 degrees means is that that's basically an indicator of how much you can see with this camera. Well, what we want to do is we want to set that view wider so we can see more. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to hold the shift key and I'm going to click and drag back. And so you can see how when I do that, my camera field of view gets a lot wider and I can see a lot more with that camera. And so you can save a view with this revised field of view in it. So all you would have to do is go to view, animation, add scene, and you could save this scene. So you can actually preset your views in here with a wider field of view so you can see more in your interiors. So then the final tip, and I keep going back to the model that we use in my SketchUp course because it's all kind of set up the way that we want, is my recommendation is as you're going through and grouping things, you should group things like appliances in their own groups. You should group things like cabinets in their own groups, because you can see how I can come in here and I could turn all of those extra things on and off in order to get a better view of my space. So like for example, if I was to come in here and I wanted to create a floor plan view and layout, if I put all of that on its own layer, you can turn it on and off and then use this to create actual plans. And so all you need to do whenever you do that is whenever you bring things in, just put them on their own group. So like for example, if I had all of these sitting out within my model, I would just select them all, then I would right click and I would click make group, and then you can put that group on its own layer by clicking on the group, going up to entity info, and just using the drop down to set it on a layer. So that just gives you more options for what you can do easily later on. Leave a comment below, let me know what you thought. Was there anything I left out? Was it helpful for you? I just love having that SketchUp conversation with you guys. If you like this video, please remember to click that like button down below. If you're new around here, remember to click that subscribe button for new SketchUp content every week. If you like what I'm doing on this channel, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Every little bit helps, even if it's only a dollar a month, so make sure you check out that link in the notes down below. But in any case, thank you so much for taking the time to watch this. I really appreciate it and I will catch you in the next video. Thanks guys!