

are completely enclosed you might say Solids are watertight, andĪside from letting you use the Solid Tools (which is pretty cool, we think) Solids are super-useful for another reason: SketchUp 8 (and SketchUp Pro 8) can calculate the volume of any Solid in your model.Solids are nothing more than groups or components that: The Solid Tools operate on a special class of entities called (you’ll never guess) Solids. It helps to think to yourself, “Use this to cut that” as you’re clicking. For Subtract and Trim, click the cutting object first, then the Solid you want that object to cut. For Union, Intersect and Split, it doesn’t matter what order you go in.

Just activate the tool you want to use, then start clicking on Solids in your model. Split takes two Solids and turns them into three it’s a lot like doing two Subtract operations and an Intersect all at once.Want to model joinery or other close-fitting parts? Trim is your tool. Trim (which is probably the most useful of the bunch) is a lot like Subtract, except that it doesn’t delete the Solid you use as a cutting object.Subtract uses one Solid as a “cutting object” to remove part of another.Intersect creates a new Solid out of the parts of multiple Solids that overlap.

