When you release the mouse button, everything in the box you drew fills the drawing area.Ĭhanging the field of view or focal lengthĪ lesser-known Zoom tool feature is changing the field of view, or how much of your model you can see. Click and drag to make a box appear around the area that you want to zoom in on.(You find Zoom Window in the same places where you find the Zoom and Zoom Extents tools, with the exception of the Getting Started toolbar.) To zoom in on a portion of your model: To zoom in on a specific rectangular portion of your model, use the Zoom Window tool. You find Zoom Extents in the following corners of the SketchUp interface: To instantly make your whole model visible and centered in the drawing area, click the Zoom Extents tool ( ) or press Shift+Z. The zoom speed feels slower when your geometry is relatively close to the Zoom cursor. When geometry is farther away, SketchUp zooms quickly. Note: The zoom speed depends how far your geometry is from the Zoom cursor. In the SketchUp interface, here’s where you find the Zoom tool ( ): SketchUp also has two specialized zoom tools, Zoom Extents ( ) and Zoom Window ( ), which you learn about later in this section. As you draw a 3D model, zooming in can help you align edges and faces more precisely, whereas zooming out enables you to see your overall model or re-orient yourself so you can find a different part of your model to work on. In SketchUp, as in many other programs, you can zoom in for an extreme close up, or zoom out to see the bigger picture. In the drawing area, click and drag the cursor in any direction.Select the Pan tool ( ) or press the H key.To pan using the Pan tool, follow these steps: On any mouse, if the Orbit tool is selected, press and hold the Shift key.On a one-button mouse or trackpad, press and hold the Control, Command, and Shift keys simultaneously while holding down the mouse button.On a three-button scroll wheel mouse, hold down the scroll wheel and the left mouse button.Tip: You switch to the Pan tool temporarily while you’re in another tool: When you pan, SketchUp’s camera (your view) moves vertically or horizontally.
This suspends the Orbit tool’s built-in sense of gravity, which keeps vertical edges pointed up and down.
On a one-button mouse: If you use macOS, press and hold the Control and Command keys while clicking and holding the left mouse button.On a three-button mouse: Click and hold the scroll wheel.Tip: You can temporarily activate the Orbit tool while in any other tool (except the Walk tool): In SketchUp, choosing this view aligns your perspective so that the view has two vanishing points. Two-Point Perspective: Illustrators often use two-point perspective to draw 3D buildings and concept art.Perspective: In this view, lines vanish to a horizon, so certain items appear closer while other items appear to be far away.When you print in this view, line length has a scale (for example 4’ in SketchUp = 1" on paper). This view is also known as an orthographic view. Parallel Projection: In this view, lines appear parallel in both 3D and 2D space.SketchUp’s Camera menu also has three perspective options, shown in the following figure, that change how you view your model: As you switch and modify your view, it’s as though you’re looking through a camera.
Tip: When you use the standard views or the more advanced features of the navigation tools, remember that SketchUp uses the concept of a camera to represent your view.