SketchUp for Interior Design Course

Lesson 1 • 3D Navigation and Camera Controls

Teaches Orbit, Pan, Zoom, and Look Around tools for moving through a model. Efficient navigation is essential for all subsequent modelling and review tasks.

Lesson 2 • Drawing Axes and Inference System

Explains the red, green, and blue axes and SketchUp's snap-and-inference engine. Accurate inference use prevents geometry errors throughout the course.

Lesson 3 • Workspace Layout and Preferences

Covers the menu bar, toolbars, and status bar, plus setting units and templates for interior design. Establishes the correct file environment before any modelling begins.

Lesson 4 • Basic Selection and Entity Info

Covers single-click, double-click, and window-selection methods plus the Entity Info panel. Proper selection technique is the foundation of all editing operations.

Lesson 1 • Circle, Polygon, and Offset Tools

Covers curved and multi-sided shapes plus the Offset tool for wall thickness. Offset is critical for generating interior and exterior wall boundaries simultaneously.

Lesson 2 • Push/Pull and Follow Me Tools

Teaches extruding flat faces into 3D volumes and sweeping profiles along paths. These tools convert 2D floor plans into full 3D room structures.

Lesson 3 • Line, Rectangle, and Arc Tools

Introduces the Line, Rectangle, and Arc tools with typed-dimension input for precision. These tools generate the primary edges used in all interior floor plans.

Lesson 4 • Eraser, Trim, and Cleanup Techniques

Addresses removing unwanted edges, healing faces, and keeping geometry clean. Clean geometry prevents rendering artefacts and component errors in later chapters.

Lesson 1 • Stairs and Level Changes

Teaches step-by-step stair construction using the Line and Push/Pull tools with riser and tread dimensions. Level changes are common in interior projects and require precise vertical geometry.

Lesson 2 • Modelling Walls with Correct Thickness

Teaches tracing wall centre lines, applying offset for thickness, and extruding to ceiling height. Proper wall thickness is essential for realistic space planning and material takeoffs.

Lesson 3 • Importing and Tracing Floor Plans

Covers importing CAD files and images as underlays and scaling them to real-world dimensions. Accurate underlays ensure all modelled walls match design intent.

Lesson 4 • Creating Doors and Window Openings

Covers cutting rectangular and arched openings in walls at standard rough-opening sizes. Accurate openings allow door and window components to fit without geometry conflicts.

Lesson 1 • Using the 3D Warehouse Effectively

Covers searching, evaluating polygon count, and importing models from the 3D Warehouse. Low-polygon imports keep file performance acceptable for complex interior scenes.

Lesson 2 • Groups vs. Components Explained

Clarifies the behavioural difference between groups and components, including instance updating. Choosing the right container type prevents unintended geometry merging.

Lesson 3 • Building Custom Furniture Components

Guides students through modelling a sofa, table, and chair as reusable components with gluing planes. Custom components ensure accurate scale and style consistency across a project.

Lesson 4 • Layer and Tag Management

Teaches assigning geometry to tags, controlling visibility, and organising by building system. Tag discipline is required for producing clean construction document views.

Lesson 1 • Importing Custom Textures

Covers importing image files as textures, setting real-world scale, and adjusting position. Custom textures allow accurate representation of specified flooring, tile, and fabric.

Lesson 2 • Editing Material Colour and Opacity

Teaches adjusting hue, saturation, brightness, and transparency within the Materials editor. Colour editing enables rapid design iteration without sourcing new texture files.

Lesson 3 • UV Mapping and Texture Positioning

Addresses the Texture Position tool for aligning patterns on non-rectangular and curved faces. Correct UV alignment is critical for tile grids, wood grain, and wallpaper patterns.

Lesson 4 • Material Organisation and Purging

Covers the In Model material list, identifying unused materials, and purging to reduce file size. Lean material libraries improve rendering speed and file sharing performance.

Lesson 1 • Parallel Projection for Plans and Elevations

Teaches switching to parallel projection and aligning standard orthographic views for drawings. Orthographic views are required for construction documents and contractor communication.

Lesson 2 • Creating and Managing Scenes

Teaches adding scenes, controlling which properties each scene saves, and reordering the scene tab bar. Scenes are the primary delivery mechanism for client walkthroughs and exports.

Lesson 3 • Style Settings for Presentation Views

Covers edge styles, face styles, background colour, and watermark overlays in the Styles panel. Visual style choices directly affect how professional and readable exported views appear.

Lesson 4 • Interior Perspective Camera Setup

Addresses setting eye height, field of view, and two-point perspective for interior shots. Correct camera settings produce photorealistic-looking perspective views for presentations.

Lesson 1 • Post-Processing and Image Delivery

Addresses exposure, white balance, bloom, and denoising adjustments in the render output panel. Post-processing finalises images to professional quality without external software.

Lesson 2 • SketchUp Native Shadow Settings

Covers the Shadow panel, geographic location, date, and time controls for sun-based shadows. Native shadows provide quick daylighting feedback before committing to full rendering.

Lesson 3 • HDRI and Natural Light Setup

Covers loading HDRI environment maps and combining them with sun and sky for daylight renders. HDRI lighting produces soft, realistic ambient light that complements artificial sources.

Lesson 4 • Introduction to Render Plugin Workflow

Introduces the render plugin interface, material linking, and the basic render pipeline. Understanding the pipeline prevents common errors like missing textures and black faces.

Lesson 1 • Creating Floor Plan and Elevation Sheets

Teaches arranging multiple viewports for plan, elevation, and section on a single sheet. Multi-view sheets are the standard format for interior design construction document sets.

Lesson 2 • Exporting and Packaging Final Deliverables

Addresses exporting PDFs, DWG files, and image sets and organising them into a client package. A well-organised deliverable package reflects professional practice and reduces revision cycles.

Lesson 3 • Furniture and Finish Schedules

Covers creating tables in LayOut and linking component attributes to populate finish and furniture schedules. Schedules reduce specification errors and support procurement workflows.

Lesson 4 • Dimensioning and Annotation in LayOut

Covers placing linear and angular dimensions, adding text labels, and formatting to office standards. Accurate annotation communicates critical measurements to contractors and fabricators.