Theme

Select

Pick what you want to work on.

Keyboard: Space - SketchUp's key for the arrow, and worth the surprise. Esc gets you here too, once it has finished backing out of whatever else was going on.

Picking

  1. Click a thing to pick it. An edge, a face, a note, a dimension - anything in the drawing but the guides, which belong to the tape.
  2. Click twice to take what is attached: a face and the edges round it, or an edge and the faces it holds up.
  3. Click three times to take all of whatever it is part of - every edge and face joined to it, however far that reaches.
  4. Drag a box to pick several. Dragged right to left it takes everything it touches; left to right, only what is wholly inside.
  5. Ctrl adds to what is picked, Shift toggles each thing, Ctrl+Shift takes away - for a click, two or three clicks, and a box alike.
  6. Click empty paper, or press Esc, to let go of the lot.
One click picks an edge, two clicks the face beside it, three clicks the whole box, and a dragged box takes everything it touches.
One click, two clicks, three clicks, then a dragged box. The count in the bottom right says what you are holding - one thing, then the face, then all eighteen.

The one that catches people out

The three clicks are not three separate gestures - they are one, two and three clicks of the same click, so they have to be quick. Pause in the middle and you have picked twice rather than picked more. It is the same in SketchUp and it is worth practising on a box.

What picking is for

Most of the program acts on what is picked rather than on what is under the cursor, and that is the difference between moving one edge and moving the wall it belongs to. With something picked: M moves it, Q turns it, Delete removes it, /center puts it on the middle of the floor, /tozero stands it in the corner at 0,0,0. With nothing picked those same tools work on whatever you point at instead.

The right button

Right-click anywhere for what can be done now: turn a face over, center the selection on the origin, stand it in the corner, cut a plan from the face you clicked, put the guides away or throw them away, and Erase at the bottom under a line.

The rows are always the same rows in the same order, and the ones that would do nothing are grayed rather than missing. That is deliberate: a menu that changes shape can put Erase under a hand that was aiming at something harmless.

What a picked thing looks like

A picked edge turns blue along its whole length. A picked face is dotted blue and keeps its own edges, so a face on its own and a face with its edges look different. The count is in the bar along the bottom.

What it will not pick

A guide, ever - not by a click, a box or /all. Guides are there to draw against, not to be caught by accident; the tape's right-click erases one (see erasing a guide). And of two edges lying close together on screen, the one in front at the spot you are pointing at wins: the rim of a knob rather than the wall underneath it.

See also