The first assignment in my Hacking the Humanities class was to use SketchUp, a 3D modeling software, to create a rough rendering of my childhood home. I learned the hard way to remember to save at the start and continue to do so throughout the process, as I excitedly dove into the program and found, an hour later when SketchUp unexpectedly crashed, that I had not saved any of my work. I was caught up in the assignment and didn’t remember the most important part: making sure that what I had worked on would stick around.
One major challenge I had was in raising my shapes and then creating differentiated layers that I could paint in two tones. The top part of my house is painted blue, but white siding runs along the bottom, and creating that look gave me some difficulty at times. What came through in the end was the line tool, which enabled me to block out different sections of a face of my building.
For those starting out with SketchUp, be aware that when you zoom in and out, the zoom is based on the position of your cursor, not the middle of the screen. When I started this project I had some difficulty maneuvering and zooming using the orbit tool, but once I got the hang of the zoom function I was able to manipulate it to make things easier for myself. For example, when drawing a rectangle or line on another surface, I zoomed in when I was near the edge of the surface, which gave me greater control over the spacing and dimensions of the line. Additionally, SketchUp’s intuitive keyboard shortcuts allowed me to control my actions concisely instead of stopping and starting in order to move my mouse and select a new tool. When you hover your mouse over a tool with a keyboard shortcut on the toolbar, the shortcut is displayed.
All in all, it was incredibly rewarding to see my own progress with manipulating tools and shapes to create something from my memory that has personal significance to me. I found myself absorbed in the detail work, trying to remember the placement and shape of certain windows, or the height and angle of the roof. Even though this assignment is over, I have a feeling that I’ll find myself going back to “my house” to try and make it even closer to what I remember.
Nice to hear you had a good experience, Connor, despite considerable frustration! Getting absorbed in the detail work and finding rewards in making progress bodes well for your attitude towards DH going forward.
I didn’t know that there was a keyboard shortcuts options. That was a good thing to mention because that would help a lot of users, including me, that didn’t know that there was a feature such as that one.