Architectural_Design_with_SketchUp

Chapter 3 Using SketchUp to Inform Your Designs
Effective Use of Groups and Components
Let’s look at a mock-up of a stud wall assembly as an example of what we can do when we are
consistent in using groups and components to organize our models. The following is a reasonably
detailed model of a common part of house construction. This method is very applicable
to construction and architecture (because of a building consisting of actual components like
bricks and studs), but it should be mentioned that it is of equal value if you use SketchUp for
woodworking, interior design, robot building, and many other tasks.
It is possible to model this construction detail in a variety of ways. If you wanted, you
could start by drawing the base and use the Push/Pull tool to extrude the footing. You could
then draw new outlines on it and extrude the foundation wall. After this, you could make
your way upward simply by drawing outlines on surfaces and extruding them. This modeling
approach is similar to modeling something out of a block of clay (by pinching, pulling, and
pushing). You would finish your SketchUp model by adding appropriate textures to all faces
and making the model look like Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1: A detailed mockup of a construction detail
While this approach visibly gets you the result you want, it is not very flexible and—worst
of all—it limits you in what you can do with this model later. As you can see in Figure 3.2,
simply moving some faces distorts and ruins the entire model (after all, everything is attached
if no part of the model has been grouped).
Because our case deals with many individual objects (the concrete foundation, the studs,
the joists, etc.), it is much better and more efficient to approach modeling this detail by either
grouping each object or turning it into a component while we construct it. In essence, we are
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