Videos: SketchUp in Action  Watch the videos on this page to learn some fun and easy ways you can use SketchUp to teach 2D and 3D geometric concepts. Comments or suggestions for future videos? Please email 3DVinci's Bonnie Roskes.    Join our FREE Email Mailing List!

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2D Tesselation Any three- or four-sided polygon can tesselate. This video shows various ways you can tile regular and irregular triangles and quadrilaterals, as well as regular hexagons.You'll also see tesselations of some irregular pentagons and hexagons.

You'll find many more polygon tiling projects in 3DVinci's Periodic Patterns Series:

Hirschhorn Tiling This irregular, equaliteral pentagon can be used to make some fantastic rotational (aperiodic) patterns. You'll see how this pentagon is configured, learn how to create it from scratch based on its internal angles, and learn how to use the Move and Rotate tools to create several different patterns.

You'll find many more rotational and spiral tilings, including Kepler and Penrose patterns, in 3DVinci's Aperiodic Patterns Series:

Triangular Prism In SketchUp there is always more than one way to create any object. This video shows four different ways you can create a basic 3D shape: a triangular prism which has all edges equal. You'll learn how to create the entire prism by creating each edge, how to start with a triangle and pull it up to a 3D shape, and how to "glue" 2D shapes together and rotate them into place.

You'll find many more 3D geometry projects in  3DVinci's 3D Solids Series:

Cube - Three Pyramids On a cube, you can draw edges starting from a single corner, to divide the cube into three identical pyramids. This video will show you how to create a cube (no measuring required), how to draw the pyramid edges, and how to use groups to separate the pyramids from their neighbors. You'll also learn how to manipulate the pyramids to prove that they are, in fact, identical.

The cube is one of the Platonic solids, and can be created in a number of ways in SketchUp.  With some easy editing, the cube can be used to create some Archimedean solids. You'll find this and more in 3DVinci's 3D Solids Series:

Cube - Six Pyramids Starting with a cube, you can draw four edges between cube corners, to divide the cube into six identical pyramids.This video will show you how to create and divide the cube, and how to separate each pyramid. You'll also get an introduction into the concept of components - identical objects in which you edit one and similar components udpate accordingly. (When you use components for the pyramids, you can perform some neat tricks to change the entire cube - be sure to watch this video to the end!)

The cube is one of the Platonic solids, and can be created in a number of ways in SketchUp.  With some easy editing, the cube can be used to create some Archimedean solids. You'll find this and more in 3DVinci's 3D Solids Series:

Icosahedron The golden rectangle is an essential shape in 3D geometry. Among other things, it is a building block for many of the Platonic solids. In this video, you'll see how to create a golden rectangle, and arrange three of them in 3D space. This forms the basis for creating an icosahedron. This is a fun project; when you erase the 20 triangles, you get a star-shaped surprise. And you'll learn how to paint these solids so that no color repeats along any edge or around any point.

The icosahedron and the other Platonic solids are easy to create in SketchUp. And with a few extra steps, you can derive some of the Archimedean solids as well.  The books in 3DVinci's 3D Solids Series show how to create all of these objects, plus some interesting and fun derivate objects.

Conic Sections SketchUp has a great tool called Section Plane. It is used to create a 2D "slice" of a 3D object. When you start with a cone, you can place a section plane at various points and angles, to create four commonly-used 2D shapes: circle, ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola.