Architectural_Design_with_SketchUp

Architectural Design with SketchUp
When you send a model like this to rendering software, it typically uses only faces for
rendering. Points and lines are assumed to have zero thickness and, therefore, cannot reflect
any light, so they are generally ignored.
Two cases in which you might actually want to see lines in your renderings are (1) models
that contain thin wires and (2) renderings that are intended to have outlines (either for more
edge definition or for a more “cartoonish” look).
Let’s evaluate this by working with a wire-supported tension-fabric structure model, as
shown in Figure 5.21.
Figure 5.21: SketchUp model of a tension-fabric structure with guy wire and post
For the first case (making the wire visible), simply model it as a thin object to make it visible
in the rendering. One consideration here is that it is likely very inefficient to do this with
round objects (even though the wire may actually have a round cross-section). For example,
the default circle in SketchUp has 24 side segments—extruding it along a straight line creates
26 faces (24 sides plus the top and bottom faces). Extruding it along a curved line creates many
more faces because the geometry needs to fold around bends. (See Figure 5.22.)
Figure 5.22: Number of faces after extrusion (left: default circle extruded
along line; middle: default circle along arc; right: triangle along line)
156