In the way clothes say something about the people wearing them, SketchUp styles convey information about your model. The sketchy edges style suggests that your model is still a work-in-progress whereas a finished concept might show a full-color mockup of a modern building with transparent window glass and limestone brick, custom paint colors, and a slanted metal roof.

As you create a model in 3D, you need to view it from all sides. In SketchUp, you orbit, zoom, and pan all the time as you draw:

To create a 3D model in SketchUp, you're constantly switching among the drawing tools, views, components, and organizational tools. In this article, you find several examples that illustrate ways you can use these tools together to model a specific shape or object. The examples illustrate a few of the different applications for creating 3D models in SketchUp: woodworking, modeling parts or abstract objects, and creating buildings. The examples are loosely ordered from the simple to the complex.

Fog is primarily used as a special effect during presentations. The fog effect mimics real fog, as shown in the figure, so your 3D model becomes clearer as you zoom closer to it, and less clear as you move away. To add fog-like effects to your model, follow these steps:

In SketchUp, you see a tan and blue background that suggests the earth and sky. The default background might be great for buildings, but looks a little strange for a model of a rocking chair, as shown in the upper-left corner of the figure. No matter what you’re modeling, you may just want a plain background with sketchy edges to communicate that your model is a blueprint or prototype. Or you may want a polished and detailed background that simulates an interior or a street scene. Notice how the different backgrounds change the look of the model in the figure.

The red, blue, and green axes seen when you first open a new SketchUp model are not only starting points but guides you can use throughout the modeling process. Adjusting the SketchUp drawing axes makes drawing a 3D model easier. Here's some examples:

Can you imagine Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press, learning how to create 3D models in SketchUp? Hopefully, he’d like the way SketchUp advances his groundbreaking invention - especially the text that moves and (in some cases) updates as you work on your model. In SketchUp, you can add four types of text, each depicted in the following figure:

With SketchUp’s Solid tools, you can create new shapes by combining or cutting one shape with another, making it easy to model an outer shell or joinery.

What distinguishes solid construction and design from an M.C. Escher optical illusion? Accurate measurements. In SketchUp, the Tape Measure tool, the Protractor tool, and the Measurements box enable you to model precisely:

When you create a 3D model, you often need to draw a slightly bigger or smaller version of a shape and keep the two shapes equidistant from each other. This is called offsetting a line. An offset is handy when