This article outlines the process of importing components, such as a carousel, into a digital design project, with an emphasis on file management. It also shares tips on how to efficiently organize files using tags, and how to add finer details to your digital design.
Key Insights
- Components like a carousel can be imported into a digital project, and then be rotated to match the angle of the existing design using the rotate tool.
- File organization can be improved using tags, which function like layers. These can be used to group certain objects together and hide them as needed, which aids in keeping the model organized and clear of clutter.
- More details can be added into the digital design, such as painting a planter box with grass, adding more materials to the park, and introducing people and cars, making the design look more realistic and complete.
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Welcome back alright in this video we are going to bring in a few of the components that we created the carousel and the welcome sign we are not going to bring in the fountain because we are using a different profile than what this is and then we're going to talk a little bit more about file management how to organize your files. So without further ado let's go to file import and let's import your carousel that you created. I'll click import and then click off to the side and then click on the middle button the top of your carousel and then click here.
Now we're going to want to rotate to match the angle that this is currently at so we'll go to go to your rotate tool and then hover over your open space to infer the blue hold down shift to lock that click this point in the middle click the angle the first angle that you want to reference and then move it to the angle that you want like just like that. There we go and now I will select the old carousel which is the white one and I will delete it. I just have my previous one and let's do the same thing for our community park so that we have our correct name.
So I'm going to file import and I'm going to bring in welcome sign DM for Derek McFarland and I'm going to import that. So again bring this and click this into space it does not matter where you drop it in at then click on a point to match the existing size. We'll click right here and then go to your rotate tool click this point again click your first line and then your angle of reference.
Go back to your selection tool click on the old park sign that's different than the one that you brought in and then delete. Zoom out and feel free to add in more materials to your park and anything else you want. I'm going to add a little bit more detail.
I'm going to double click into my component for my park and I decide that I want to paint this planter box with the same grass. So I'm going to go to my paint bucket tool holding down ALT to reference this grass material and I can paint this. I'll click out.
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I'm going to zoom extents and I'm going to save my file. Now for project organization it's best to use tags and with tags tags are essentially the layers. Think of layers as various groups that you can place certain objects under each groups and you can hide certain visibilities.
So for example if I click this building here and right now if I go to my entity info the tag is currently on untagged meaning everything in this model is under the untagged tag. If I click this eyeball it will you cannot hide the current tag but if I create a new tag and I said I call this one architecture and then move the clubhouse under architecture and then hit it it would hide the actual object. When we're using tags make sure that you only put in groups under tags and have all of your individual components or parts of your component as under untagged.
If you start being very specific about certain things you can hide parts of your overall component that you may not want and also if you double click into your geometry make sure that all of your geometry is under the untagged layer. That is the cleanest way to organize your model. So your overall object should be under a specific tag.
So for this case let's go select other components that are under the architecture tab. We'll do the carousel as an under architecture and I will turn off architecture so we can hide those from our model. Now let's go add in landscape.
I want to add all the plants and trees and fountain anything that's landscape related to the landscape tag. So I'm going to click all these things but what I can do is I can pan down and then use a selection window drag to the left and select all of these that were within that and I will put these all under landscape. Now I will hide landscape.
Again I will put the fountain under landscape and let's make an additional layer for entourage. For entourage we'll use people and cars. Right now I don't have any people in here but I do have cars so I can select and then holding down CTRL you can select both cars and add those to the entourage tag.
And next let's add another tag for furniture. This is going to be site furniture so this would include everything else in the component besides the site plan. But if I was to do a selection window I would select a lot of my site plan components.
So first of all what I want to do is I want to make my site plan a group. So I can triple click all the site plan making sure that none of my other components are selecting and I can right-click make group. And now I can do a selection window dragging to the left to select only the objects that are inside that selection window and then add those to the furniture layer.
Then I can hide my furniture layer. And now I want one final layer I will call this site plan. That is what I will use for the site plan.
I will move this site plan to the site plan tag and deselect that. Now if I was to uncheck the visibility on each of these you can see that I can turn things on and off. I can also adjust too that you know what I want the fountain to now be under architecture and not landscape and I can adjust that right here.
Let's go back to our components and let's add Neeraj into our site. And then once you click it you can see that you can change where he goes right off the bat. So move him to entourage.
And again I can put Neeraj over here by the fountain. Changing him to entourage. And then I can go into this dialogue box again and I can go to people and I can find all the various 2D people that SketchUp has to offer.
I can scroll down and I can see 2D silhouettes and then I can further scroll down I can see 2D objects that have more personality and faces to them and colors. I'll find 2D man singing Ryan. I'm going to bring in Ryan.
Click yes. I'll put Ryan right over here and I'll put him on the entourage tag. Again I'll go to people 2D and I'll scroll down and I'll find this time I'll find a woman.
2D woman walking. Excellent. I'll bring this lady right here.
I want this lady to be rotated but as you can see because this is a 2D object I'm not able to rotate and use my quick commands. So what I will have to do is I'll have to go into my rotate key and then making sure that this is in the blue direction inferring the blue axes. Click one point and then rotate this around.
And as I can see I'm not able to do that because this is a component and it's locked in this direction. I can however right-click flip along the green axes and it will flip it. The green axes would be if I'm going to this model I can see the green axes is this direction so it's going to flip it along the axis that's inside here.
I'm going to zoom extents. I'm going to save my file. I'm going to look in my tags and see if I decide to turn off entourage that all my people go away except for this last lady that I did not change.
So I'll go back and click her and put her on entourage and then I'll double check and make sure all my components are turned off as they are supposed to. And I will save my file one final last time and that completes our community park. In the next video we are going to look at setting up various styles and scenes and create animation for our park.
I'll see you in the next video.
