0:02 Are you ready to learn all about scan essentials? My name is Tyson. Welcome to this

0:08 course on using the scan essentials extension.

0:12 Now, if you happen to come to this course from our YouTube video on scanner essentials, this

0:18 introduction video is going to be the same, so feel free to skip ahead if you watch that video

0:23 already.

0:24 Otherwise, don't skip ahead, we're going to cover all the basics here. If you have scan

0:31 essentials already, it's likely you have it through SketchUp studio.

0:36 If not, however, you can purchase it separately and use it with SketchUp Pro and there is a 30

0:42 day trial.

0:43 Now a note before we dive fully in. Unfortunately, scan essentials only works on

0:49 Windows, it does not work on a Mac. And we don't have a timeline for when it might. Sorry about

0:56 that.

0:58 So let's start by opening the scan essentials toolbar. These icons are broken up into several

1:11 groups, which is nice, we'll just work our way through them.

1:15 The first three are for managing your scans, we can open and close scans and also open the Point

1:25 Cloud Manager.

1:26 Let's grab a point cloud right now.

1:30 As you can see, we can import a number of common formats. I've got this scan in e57 format, so

1:39 I'll choose that.

1:41 The file doesn't open right away though we are prompted to save this file as an rwp or real

1:48 works file, which is the actual format SketchUp will be using and scan essentials will convert

1:56 this file for us. This particular scan is the front side of our local fire station. I was out

2:03 testing Trimble's X-7 scanner. And you can see this was a cold February day, we've got some

2:10 snow, and my bundled up outline at each scan location. Now depending on how you want to view

2:18 and reference the scan, opening the Point Cloud Manager gives us some viewing options, including

2:25 the colorization and shading. Depending on your project, and whether it's an interior or

2:32 exterior scan, play with these settings. To see what's going to give you a good visual

2:39 reference. I'm going to return to a simple color view and close the manager. Another option for

2:47 changing the display of your point cloud are the next set of icons in the toolbar. This will

2:54 allow us to toggle the point cloud off completely. or apply various modes of

3:00 transparency between the cloud and the model. Let me start building out this model. So we can

3:08 see these options better. I'm going to zoom in and use this section of the wall as a nice flat

3:15 surface to draw a rectangle. Let's draw a few more rectangles, while we're here. Just to show

3:23 how the plugin allows you to snap to all these accurate points in the model. It's really quite

3:30 remarkable. The point cloud does not act like regular geometry though. If I draw a wide

3:37 selection window to select and delete these rectangles, the point cloud is not selected and

3:44 not deleted. Think of the point cloud as a locked down stationary reference. We'll see

3:51 later on that you can reposition the point cloud. But in general, think of it purely as an

3:59 outside reference to your model. Okay, back to our wall. As I pull this surface out, it's a

4:06 simple matter to reference the point cloud as we go along. For most buildings like this one, once

4:14 you've established one good surface, you'll want to keep building off that original SketchUp

4:21 surface. In that way you're making sure that you are getting completely accurate 90 degree

4:28 corners and that all your drawn geometry is going to work well together. So for the most

4:35 part all keep using push pull and reference these points as needed to create my basic

4:42 blocks. And remember to use the modifier key with push pull to create new surfaces. using

4:49 just a few tools, we can really quickly create the basic massing of this building.

4:55 So, now that we have Some geometry in the scene, let's look at our toolbar. Again, it's really up

5:05 to your own preference, the amount of transparency or blending you prefer. For these

5:11 exterior models, I like this last: 'Conditional blending' mode. But that also may change as your

5:18 model gets more detailed. Similarly, these icons are for changing the snapping behavior of your

5:26 model. And like the display, you may change the snapping behavior as your model develops, you

5:33 can turn off snapping completely, or tell it to favor the cloud points or the SketchUp geometry

5:41 more highly. These two icons are for creating construction points and guidelines. These are

5:49 the same type of guidelines you could create with the tape measure tool, so use them in the

5:54 same way as any other reference guide. Remember that all guidelines can be deleted through the

5:60 Edit menu. Now let's zoom away from our model for a moment to show an important concept. When

6:08 using scan essentials. The imported point cloud will have its own axis, that will almost surely

6:16 not line up with the building and geometry you are creating. For this reason, once you've

6:23 established your first surface or box, it's a good idea to realign the model axis to your

6:31 SketchUp geometry, for ease of modeling. The other reason to know about the point cloud axis

6:43 is that you can create a clipping box to refine how much of your point cloud is displayed. That

6:51 clipping box though, is going to be based on the original cloud access, I'm going to toggle the

6:57 cloud off, draw a large box, roughly the size of the building we're creating. And because we

7:04 changed the axis to align with our SketchUp geometry, this box is on that axis as well. I'll

7:15 select this box group ID. And then with this icon, we can create a clipping box from this

7:22 SketchUp selection. I'll toggle the point clouds back on to help show this. Clipping the poin

7:32 cloud is a great way to refine the points yo want to actually see and use. Notice however th

7:39 clipped points actually align with the origina cloud axis, not the new axis we've chosen. It'

7:46 still very useful, just something to keep i mind. Okay, we've worked through most of th

7:53 toolbar, there are just two icons left for us

8:03 If you need to reposition the point cloud, these final tools will let you move and rotate your

8:11 imported cloud. Maybe you have an existing model, and you want to align a newly imported

8:17 scan to your model. Or you are bringing in multiple scans that aren't registered to each

8:22 other. Whatever the reason, move and rotate will snap points in your cloud two points of the

8:29 model. And if you need to reset the transformation, you can find that option in the

8:35 Point Cloud Manager. Okay, with that introduction and overview of what you can do

8:43 with Scan Essentials, in the next videos, we'll go in more into the best practices and tips and

8:50 tricks for modeling with point clouds. So join us if you'd like thanks for watching