Discover how to enhance the realism of your 3D models by modifying components, in particular adding door handles to windows and creating distinct door panels. This in-depth guide will walk you through the necessary steps to achieve a more detailed and accurate representation of your design.
Key Insights
- The article provides a detailed process to modify window components in a 3D model by dividing a single door into two individual panels. This process involves making groups, adjusting views and orientations, and editing components to achieve a more realistic depiction.
- A comprehensive guide is provided on how to add door handles to the window panels by creating a guide, downloading and renaming the doorknob utility to window handle, and positioning it on the guide. The process also includes modifying the component by scaling it down and relocating the origin.
- The further modification of the panel is illustrated by flipping it along the red axis, ensuring alignment on both sides. The changes made to one component are automatically reflected in the other due to their status as copies, simplifying the editing process.
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So in this video, we are going to edit some of our components and clean up our model. Let's get started.
Let's orbit around to the inside of our main room of our clubhouse. Zoom into these windows. I would like to add some door handles to these windows, and let's see if we can modify these windows a little bit.
So as we can see, we have this line dividing the two panes. I want to make this a little bit more realistic and maybe have these be sliding or opening doors. We're going to add handles, so let's imagine that these are hinged doors.
So this is just one door, right? Let's see if we can create two individual door panels from this. So how can we do that? Well, I will go to Edit or View Component, Edit, hide the rest of the model, and let's see. Let's kind of create our view so this line is just about vertical.
When we want to click and drag here, we're only clicking on this portion of the window frame. I will make group, right click, Make Group. I'll double click on this, and I'll make sure that I selected everything.
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I see here that I added an extra line right here that I don't want. So I can actually select that and delete it. And now I will go into this one and right click, Make Group, and double click into this component to make sure that it all looks right.
I see that we're missing a face right here, so I will use Auto Heal by drawing a line to auto-heal that face. And then select out of that and double click into this group. Make sure that all looks good.
I see that this is showing this kind of gray-blue, so I want to right click and orient, or I want to click the white area, then right click and select Orient Faces so it's all oriented in the same direction. And then select out. Now I have two groups.
I will escape to close out of that. So I have a window pane and frame that are connected, so I can actually right click, Explode. So I have one frame and one window, one frame and one window.
What I want to do is I want to delete this portion and delete this window and make this glass and this frame an actual component. So there's going to be a nested component inside of this other component. I'm going to cancel this for now so we can see what this is called.
If we zoom down or scroll down to Window 6056, let's make a component from these elements and let's call this Window Pane 6056. And then I'll select. I'll just set my component axes right at this corner, keeping the same direction of my other axes.
Red axis in this direction, Green axis in this direction. I will select or hit Create and now I will go to my Move tool, hit CTRL to copy this over to this side. Now I have a pane here and a pane here.
And so if I was to modify one, it'll modify both. Same with each of these. So that's a really nice way to kind of modify that if I wanted to change things later and get more detail into it.
And you can see that this is a component, a separate component, and this whole thing is another component. If I modify this window, it'll modify this window. Now let's add some door handles to this component of this door panel.
We'll double click into this door panel and I want to add it in. Right now it's showing both of these, right? If I want to go to View > Component Edit, and uncheck 'Hide Rest of Model', we can see everything. When we go into component edit, we can always see what the other component is.
And so knowing that we're inside of this component, we want to add in a door handle right around here in the center. So let's create a guide and click from the bottom. Let's go in the blue direction, let's find this center point right here—the little round purple circle—and make sure that this is blue up.
And then we want to do a vertical guide into the center point. We see that this measures two inches. So let's do one enter.
This is where we want to put our door handle. Let's go into our Components > Construction > Doors > Low Poly. Let's add this Doorknob Utility.
We'll download this into our SketchUp model. And we'll just click anywhere for now, since we won't use this instance.
We'll click once and then use the Selection tool, select it, and then delete. Now we click our Home button in Model in our Components. And we can see we have Doorknob Lever Utility.
I will click this and then I will rename this component to Window Handle. Enter. And now I can place this onto this guide that I created.
As I can see, it does not want to snap on this guide in the vertical direction. So I will just place it right here where I can get into that vertical position and then move it down. I will go to View > Face Style > X-Ray so I can see inside of this handle.
I will select this end right here, which is origin in Window Handle, and then find where my intersection of my guides is and click. Then I'll go back to View > Face Style and turn off X-Ray. And then as I look at this door handle, I realize that it is larger than what I want.
The actual mounting is larger than the frame itself. So I want to decrease the size. If I was to just scale this entire component, it actually won't modify this handle.
Like if I was to add an additional handle, they’ll still be the original size. So I want to undo and undo by hitting CTRL Z. And now I want to modify this component. So I will double click into this component and then I will go to View > Component Edit > Hide Rest of Model.
So I only see this component. As you can see, the origin is right in the middle. And that’s where I want it so I can snap it right to that intersection of guides I created.
When I click and drag this entire thing and then scale, you can see that the origin does not move with it. If I was to scale it to 0.75, I’ll need to relocate the origin. Since there’s no center marker or snap point, I will need to create a guide from the bottom to the center.
And then I can redefine my axes from the center, following the same orientation of axes: red positive this direction, green positive up this time, and blue going straight perpendicular. And now I can select out of this component.
We want this to update. And then orbiting around and maybe zoom extents if you get a little bit lost in your model, you can see that I have this window handle located right here. I want to position this right into this intersection.
So I will go to my Move tool and then click on this portion here. We want to make sure that we have our center origin of Window Handle. There it is.
And then I can select my intersection of my guide. And let's do Edit > Delete Guides, and then View > Face Style > X-Ray Off. And now I can click out of this component of my window frame.
And now I can see that I have a door handle over here and a door handle over here. Remember that I made a copy of this door panel and I did not flip it. So I want to flip this panel: Flip Along > Red Axis.
So that way they're aligned on both sides. Now I can click out of this component and I can see that all the modifications I made to this window, I made to this window. I will Zoom Extents and save my file.
In the next video, we will discuss how to edit additional components such as our door handles. I will see you in the next video.
