From the course: SketchUp 2020 Essential Training

Creating copies and an array - Sketchup Pro Tutorial

From the course: SketchUp 2020 Essential Training

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Creating copies and an array

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- [Instructor] There are a few different ways to create copies in SketchUp. The first way is using the copy and paste commands that work much like other software programs. To make a copy of this chair, I'm going to click on it to select it and then I can go to edit, copy and then edit, paste. And another chair will be attached to my cursor and I can click and release to set that copy down. However, SketchUp has a function to create multiple copies that are equally spaced and in line with each other. I'm going to go ahead and delete this chair by hitting my Delete key. And I'm going to create multiple copies of this chair running along the table. This is what is called an array. So to do that I have a few steps that I need to take. The first one is pre selecting the chair. So I'm going to hit my space bar to activate my select tool and I'll click on this chair. Next, I'm going to use my move tool. I'll click the letter M or this icon here. Now if I look in the lower left hand corner, I can see a few hints as to what I'm trying to do. I can see that the option key will create a copy and if you're on a Windows machine, this is going to be the Ctrl key. But if you forget which key to use, you can always look at your hands in your lower left-hand corner. So I'm going to tap my Option key cause I'm on a Mac and you'll notice a little plus sign pop up next to your move icon on your cursor. That means I'm about to create a copy. So I can click and release somewhere on this chair, I'm going to click on this lower right hand side of the bounding box, click and release and it creates a copy in place. And the nice thing about this because I'm creating it in place, I can move it right along that red axis and set it down right next to itself, click and release. Now I've created the first copy. Instead of repeating that action, I can tell it how many copies I would like it to create. So I'd like it to create two total copies, so I'm going to type two and then the letter X, X enter.xx Now I have three total chairs; the original and the two copies. I can also create copies in between the original and the first copy. So I'll go ahead and undo that. Edit, undo array and I'll repeat the function. I'm going to click on the chair to pre-select it, activate the move tool, I know that option creates a copy. I'll click and release and move right along that red axis and set it down on the opposite side. Click and release to set that down and now instead of two X, I'm going to do two forward slash Enter And now it's created two copies instead of placing the copy after the original copy, it's set it down in between. If I'd like to see if I can fit more copies in there I can override that and type three forward slash and then enter.ss If I for some reason want to see if I can fit even more I can type four forward slash enter. Now I can see that that's too many chairs and I can hop back to either two or three. So either way there's no need to click inside of this lower right hand box, it's simply waiting for my input. So I'm going to go back to two copies by going two forward slash Enter and I'm happy with that. So to quickly review when I would like to create a copy after the original copy, I have the original, I set down the first copy if I want another chair after that, I would type two x. If I'd like the copies to be created in between the original and the first copy I would type two forward slash. So it doesn't matter how many copies you're creating it's always the number plus X or the number and forward slash. So I really encourage you to use the array tool which is activated by using the move tool plus Option or Control, because it's very helpful in making copies whether you're making one copy of something or multiple copies of something and whether it's an edge or a face or maybe something from the 3D Warehouse, it is a very efficient way to create copies.

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