How to Rotate 180 Degrees in SketchUp
- 1). Click the "Camera" menu, then click the "Orbit" command. You'll orbit the viewpoint to be able to see the three axes clearly. Such a viewpoint is needed to tell SketchUp which axis you want to rotate around.
- 2). Drag the mouse until you can clearly see the red, green and blue axes, then press "Space" to release the "Orbit" command.
- 3). Click the toolbar's "Rectangle" tool, then drag on the canvas to produce the rectangle. Click again to complete the rectangle.
- 4). Triple-click the rectangle to select all its edges. Doing this prevents the rotation tool from rotating only certain edges, which would warp your object's shape.
- 5). Click the toolbar's "Rotation" tool. The mouse cursor will change to a protractor with either a red, blue or green color. The color tells you which axis the tool will rotate around.
- 6). Move the cursor gradually to each part of the screen, and jot down an answer to this question: "In which part of the screen does the protractor change color?" SketchUp uses algorithms that make statistically based guesses of which axis you want to rotate around. SketchUp's developers called these algorithms SketchUp's "Inference engine."
- 7). Move the cursor to the part of the screen where the protractor becomes red, then press and hold the "Shift" key. Pressing that key tells SketchUp that you want to lock the inference, which will let you rotate the rectangle around the red axis.
- 8). Drag the mouse to hover the protractor over a corner of the rectangle. When the protractor snaps to the corner, click the mouse. This action tells SketchUp where you want to position the center of the protractor.
- 9). Release the "Shift" key, then drag the mouse to a corner adjacent to the one you just clicked. When the protractor snaps to the next corner, click the mouse again. This defines the lever you'll move with the mouse to rotate the rectangle.
- 10
Drag the mouse to rotate the rectangle. While you're dragging, read the text box at the bottom right corner of the canvas. The text box displays the current rotation amount, in degrees. - 11
Click the mouse once the text box displays "180." This completes the rotation around the red axis. - 12
Repeat Steps 6 through 10, but do so for the green, and then the blue axis.
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