National Design Academy How 2 Guide Use SketchUp with LayOut COPYRIGHT NATIONAL DESIGN ACADEMY
Use SketchUp with LayOut In order to be able to produce accurate scale drawings in SketchUp, you must use LayOut to do this. LayOut is only available with the purchase of a full/student license with SketchUp Pro, or the 30-day free trial of SketchUp Pro. It is not available for download using the free version of SketchUp (SketchUp Make). To be able to present your drawings accurately to scale, follow these steps below: 1. Create your plan drawing in SketchUp. When you connect lines, you will notice that the inside space turns grey/blue. 2. Click the select tool (black arrow) and select each portion of grey/blue areas on your plan. When each grey/blue area is selected, small blue dots will appear in the centre. When each grey/ blue area has been selected, press the delete key on our keyboard. Continue this process until all grey/blue areas have been deleted from your plan. Step 1 Step 2 3. Re-save your drawing as a new SketchUp file so you are still able to access the editable version (grey/blue) if you intend to do further design work to this. 2
4. Open up LayOut (program). 5. When LayOut opens, you will be asked to select your desired paper size to produce your work on. When the dialogue box opens, select A3 Landscape, then click Open. 6. On the menu bar at the top of the screen, select File > Insert. This will allow you to search for your SketchUp file. When you have located your SketchUp file in the dialogue box, click Open and your SketchUp drawing will be placed on the LayOut page. 7. When you insert your drawing on to the page, it will have a blue box around it to note that the drawing is active and can be edited. Step 4-5 Step 6 Step 7 3
8. Ensuring that the drawing is still active (will have a blue box around it), looking at the tool bars on the right-hand side, click the title that says SketchUp Model. This is the section that will allow you to scale your drawing accurately. 9. You may notice that next to the Ortho button, the text is greyed out and looks as though it cannot be selected or changed. If so, click the Ortho button until the text to the right of this becomes active (this may take a couple of clicks). 10. When the text and drop-down box to the right of Ortho becomes active, click the drop-down box (will say something similar to Current Scale (1:#). The drop-down box will present you with numerous scales to use on your drawing. Looking down the scales, you will see near the bottom, that the standard scales we use in our drawings, such as 1:20, 1:50, 1:100 are located here. Scroll down and select a scale of your choice (from 1:20, 1:50, 1:100). You will notice that when you select a scale, your SketchUp model will change size on the layout page depending on the scale you select. Select a scale which is suitable for the page (don t forget that you need room to include your title block). 4
11. When you have selected your scale, click the drawing on the page to highlight (if not already highlighted). Next, click one of blue outer lines and drag your drawing over to the left of the page. Here, you want to imagine how much space you will need on the right-hand side to add in your title block. 12. We now want to add in a border and title block to our page. On the tool bar ribbon at the top, select the rectangle tool (highlighted on the image to the right). When the rectangle tool is selected, draw a box on the layout page which matches the outer edge of drawing page (the drawing page has the small blue boxes in the background). Drag the rectangle to the bottom corner so the rectangle is complete. 13. We can see that when we draw the rectangle, this sits over our drawing (like it has disappeared). Using the select tool (black arrow) select the rectangle, and then on the menu bar at the top of the screen, click Arrange > Send to Back. You will notice that the rectangle sits at the back and our drawing has now reappeared on screen. Step 12 Step 13 5
14. Selecting the rectangle tool again, draw a series of boxes on the right hand side to create your technical title block. 15. Now, select the text tool at the top of the screen. Draw a text box (click and drag with your mouse) within the sections of your title block. Type in the necessary titles such as Key, Noted, Project, Drawing title, Drawing number, Date, Scale, etc. 6
16. When you have added in all the necessary detail to your technical title block, your final drawing should be ready to save. To save your drawing for submission, follow these steps: On the menu bar at the top of the screen, select File >Export >PDF. This will open a new dialogue box to ask us to name the saved file and ask where you want to save. Fill in all the detail, then click save or export. This will open a new dialogue box (to the right) called PDF Export Options. In the Quality section (half-way down), click the drop-down box and select High. This will ensure your drawing is saved to the highest quality. When this is done, click Export and your scale drawing will be complete. 7