Like all SketchUp users, you want SketchUp to be fast. Whatever your experience level or modeling style, the way you model impacts SketchUp's performance, and this article explains how to create 3D models in ways that optimize performance. Behind the scenes, you can check how your computer stacks up against SketchUp's requirements. And tucked into SketchUp's preferences, you find a few settings that might also boost performance.

Your model's template determines your model's default settings. SketchUp includes several templates for common applications, like architecture, construction, urban planning, landscape architecture, woodworking, interior and production design, and 3D printing.

Drawing 3D models in SketchUp requires a lot of back and forth between your keyboard and mouse. As you become a more experienced SketchUp modeler, you develop a sense of what commands and tools you use most often and what you do and don't like about the default keyboard and mouse settings.

In SketchUp, you can set a few preferences for how the software works overall and how files are saved. To access these preferences, select Window > Preferences (Windows) or SketchUp > Preferences (MacOS) from the menu bar. Most of these preferences are on the General pane, which you click in the sidebar on the left. As shown in the following figure, your options include Saving preferences at the top and Software Updates preferences at the bottom.

You can customize SketchUp so that it fits you like perfectly worn-in blue jeans - the pair you wear so often you worry how you'll ever leave the house after the inevitable hole appears in the seat, because how you could ever leave the house without those jeans? Or maybe you're more the button-down-shirt-and-trousers type? The point is that you can fashion SketchUp to reflect your specific situation: