Soften/Smooth Selection

In SketchUp, you can soften/smooth edges in order to create the illusion of a curved surface. In this article, I’ll show you how to soften/smooth selectively over a large selection of entities.

To understand what soften/smooth does to your model, you have to understand one important fact about EVERYTHING in SketchUp.

There is no such thing as a curved surface in SketchUp. 

When you use the Circle tool, you’re creating a series of connected segments. You DO have control over the number of segments used to create the “circle”. (With the Circle tool activated, just type a number followed by the letter “s”,  and press ENTER.)

If you type “3s”, you’ll make a triangle.

If you type “5s”, you’ll make a pentagon.

If you type “24s”, you’ll create a shape that looks sort of like an acceptable circle… (from a distance). If you zoom in though, you’ll see it’s just a series of segments.

Now, if you extrude that circle using the Push/Pull tool, you won’t see all the segmented faces. Instead, the edges will be softened, and the faces will be smoothed so they blend together to create the illusion of a continuously curved surface.

To learn more about the differences between Soft, Smooth and Hidden, check out this article I wrote detailing the differences.

 

Watch the video tutorial below, or scroll down to read the rest of the tutorial.

Soften/Smooth multiple entities

Circles, curves, and arcs will automatically extrude with softened and smoothed edges. But sometimes you’re stuck extruding a polygon shape that you want softened/smoothed. You may be aware of the Eraser tool’s alternate function by holding down the CTRL key.

1. Activate the Eraser tool.
2. Hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard.
3. Click and drag over edges that you’d like to soften/smooth.

That’s a great way to quickly edit a few edges, but it’s very tedious to have to edit a whole bunch of edges using this method.

Soften Edges Window

A better way to Soften/smooth multiple edges at the same time is to use the Soften Edges Window. It gives you full control over which edges to soften by measuring the angle between adjacent faces.

1. To use the Soften Edges window, you need to first create a selection of entities with the Select tool.
2. Right click the selection, select “Soften/Smooth Edges.”
3. Adjust the slider to determine at which angle you’d like edges to be softened.
4. Check the box that says “Smooth Normals” to blend the shadows on faces that have softened edges.

I actually found the default 20° to be perfect for most situations. You don’t want to go too high with the angle because then you lose a lot of detail in the model, and the smoothing effect becomes overly dramatic and unrealistic.

 

 

The post Soften/Smooth Selection appeared first on www.MasterSketchup.com.