Edit Styles On SketchUp Model
Author: Jonathan C.
Learn how to enhance the appearance of your SketchUp model by exploring various style options. From adjusting edges and faces to adding visual effects and custom styles, we’ll show you how to create a unique look for your 3D house.
Here’s what you’ll discover:
- How to customize edges, faces, and backgrounds.
- How to add shadows, hidden geometry, and atmospheric effects.
- How to create personalized and totally unique styles.
Here's how to edit styles on SketchUp models
- First, open the SketchUp model you want to change the style of. You may want to make a copy of the original model and work on that.
- Once your model is opened and unlocked, press B to bring up your tray.
- Navigate to Styles and click on the Edit tab. Then, under Edge Settings, select your preferred edge style. You can choose from solid, dashed, or even no edges. Adjust these settings to match the style you’re aiming for.
- Now, still in the Edit tab of the Styles panel, move over to Face Settings. Here, you can adjust face colors, shading, and textures to match your interior or exterior design. Play around with different settings to see what looks best.
- Next, click on Background Settings in the Edit tab. You can either pick a color for your background or upload an image to create a custom backdrop. This is great for giving your model a more realistic or creative environment.
- To add depth and realism, enable Shadows by going to View > Shadows. Once enabled, you can adjust the time of day, light intensity, and shadow direction to match your model’s needs.
Choose your favorite style
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Each style, such as Wireframe, Shaded, Shaded with Texture, or Monochrome, can be applied on its own or combined with X-ray or Back Edges settings to reveal internal or hidden geometry.
- Wireframe shows only the edges of your model, without any surfaces.
- Shaded displays basic color shading without textures.
- Shaded with Texture provides a more realistic look with textures applied to faces.
- Monochrome simplifies the view to a black-and-white version, ideal for assessing structure without color distractions.
You can add X-ray for transparency, allowing you to see through surfaces, or Back Edges to show hidden lines as dashed outlines. Combining these options will give you a range of viewing styles to see internal or structural details clearly.
- Once you’ve selected the Back Edges option, it will display the outlines of hidden geometry.
- Click on the Hidden Line button, and your model will switch to black and white. You can also make the windows white by changing the transparency to 100%. This mode is especially useful for facade drawings and other sketches you send to your construction team.
- Try Shaded mode to see your model in color without textures. This mode is great for when you're building in SketchUp or exporting 3D drawings.
- Shaded textures is similar to Shaded, but it adds textures to the model, making it more realistic. This mode is probably the most realistic you'll get in SketchUp.
- Monochrome mode is similar to Hidden Line and is a great mode to use when exporting 2D documentation.
- In this example, you can see how great drawings can come from your model by changing the styles. The best part is that if you experiment, you can make mistakes in SketchUp without it costing you anything.
- In addition to the ones we've just gone over, SketchUp offers over 70 other styles. You can find them under Tray > Styles > Select Style. As you can see, we've chosen a pencil-like style, but there are countless other options available.
- And in this final example, we've chosen a Blueprint style.
It’s so easy to change the style of your SketchUp model. The best thing you can do is open your model right now and start experimenting—you’ll learn a hundred times more that way. Just remember to make a backup!
Create your own custom style
Finally, let me show you how to create your own style if you’d like. It’s really simple, just like everything else in SketchUp is.
- First a base style to start with, such as Shaded with Textures or Wireframe. You can always modify this later - now click on Create new Style.
- Your new style will be a duplicate of the one you've selected and will appear under "In Model." Select your new style and click Edit.
- Adjust your new style as you like and give it a name. In this example, we’ve just called ours Test.
- As you can see, our new custom style is complete. We’ve chosen to set the line color based on the axis, but really, it’s only your imagination that limits how your new style will look.
Are you ready to personalize your new design? Close this guide and open SketchUp right away—try it out instead of reading my boring guide! Just kidding, but seriously: don’t just read—do something, try something!
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