[00:00:00] In our last video, we downloaded SketchUp and OpenStudio and created an account at the Building Component Library.  In this video, we will do a very quick walkthrough of the SketchUp plugin and the standalone OpenStudio application so let’s get started.  Open up a SketchUp window.  Let’s start using SketchUp.  Now you’ll notice that the OpenStudio plugins do a quick upgrade and you can now see the evidence of OpenStudio having been installed along the top ribbon here.  We’ve got a number of menus that access the OpenStudio plugin and they give you a number of things that you can do to your energy model getting started right here in SketchUp.

[00:00:59] So let’s have a quick look through the toolbars and the menus and see what you can do and how to do it.  First of all, there is the File Management tools.  So from here, we can create a new OpenStudio model, we can save our OpenStudio model, and there are some modeling tools.  Create a new space.  The tools that we will use more often are the Surface Matching tools, the Create Spaces from Diagram, Project Loose Geometry.  There’s a few different Render modes and these become quite useful so if you render a building by surface type or by boundary condition for example.  Here are the information tools.  These give you access through SketchUp to the OpenStudio model that’s defined, so it’s a way of sort of interactively working with your energy model while you’re in SketchUp.

[00:01:55] So the Inspector.  This will be a very useful tool and this gives us a peek under the hood so we can see the progress of our OpenStudio model as we’re here in SketchUp.  Another one we’ll use is the Surface Matching tool.  And once we’ve sort of completed our workflow in SketchUp, we’ll transition into the standalone OpenStudio application.  So to do that, we can use the Launch OpenStudio button here, and from there you will need to save a OpenStudio model before you can open it in OpenStudio.  So I’ll just save this somewhere here on my machine.  So I’ve set up a folder for this course called OpenStudio Getting Started, and here under Tutorials, I’ve got number one and I’m going to save my OpenStudio model here as Video1.  So I’m just going to replace what I’ve got there already.  Now once that OpenStudio model is saved, we can launch that OpenStudio standalone application.  And this is what you’ll see once you launch that.  We’re not going to go too deeply into the OpenStudio application here.  We will do that in a later video.

[00:03:34] So let’s go back to SketchUp.  There’s a few more things I want to show you.  Under the main menu along the top ribbon here under Extensions, there are a number of OpenStudio menu options.  Some of the more well-used menu options that we will cover are adding new thermal zones.  You can also set a window to wall ratio.  Those are some of the more useful sort of menu options.  The other one that you will probably have to use is to open an existing OpenStudio model, what you’ll need to do is open SketchUp and then from within this Extensions menu, go to File and Open OpenStudio Model.  So that’s another one that you should take note of.

[00:04:28] While we’re here in SketchUp, it may be useful for you to know just a few very basic things about 3D modeling in SketchUp.  What I’d like to show is how to create and manage layers, how to draw a very simple geometry, and then what I’ll do is set up a file for getting started in our next video.  What I’ll do is just import a couple of floorplans, set up a couple of layers, and then save a file.  So we’ve got a scale for the year and the century of the SketchUp window.  We don’t need that, so I’m going to delete that guide.  Next I’ll create a new layer.  I’m going to call this Plans Level 1.  I’m going to create another layer called Plans Level 2.  I’ll make Plans Level 1 the active layer.  And now what I’m going to do is import a background image that I’m going to be able to then trace over that image to create our floorplan diagram.

[00:05:38] So with Plans Level 1 the active layer, under File, Import.  Navigate your way to the floorplans that are made available with this course.  Here I’ve got the Floor Plans 1 image.  I’m going to open that.  Let’s drop that at the origin and now scale that image.  Let’s scale that up to a width of 161 feet.  So there’s my floorplan imported.  At the moment, that’s an image.  So SketchUp has imported that as an image and that’s kind of a SketchUp geometry thing that we need to manage.  So what I like to do at this point is to lock that image.  If you don’t lock it, you find that when you draw surfaces, surfaces and lines can intersect each other and create false geometry.  You don’t want that to happen; you want to have a very clean separation between your floorplans and your building geometry.  So to do that, what I want to do is convert this image into geometry and then lock that.

[00:06:45] So I’ll select the image, I’m going to explode.  And that’s now a SketchUp geometry.  We can now make it a group and now that it’s a group, we can lock it.  It’s evident that it’s locked because the border has become red.  While it’s locked, we can still hide it.  So we can switch the active layer back to layer zero and then hide the plans level one.  You’ll find that that’s a very neat way of managing your floorplans and I recommend you do that.  So while we’re here, I’ll just do the same again for the level two layers.  I’ll make Plans Level 2 the active layer.  File, Import, Level 2 image, drop it here at the origin.  Now what you’ll find is this is a little bit kind of tricky.  You want to make sure you’re dropping that on the blue axis but don’t drop it at the origin because you want that to be sort of 12 feet higher than level one.  So just get that end point here onto the blue axis, drop it there.  We’re now in the scaling mode, so we scale that up to 161 feet width.

[00:08:13] Now we’ll go through the same steps of converting this and locking it.  Select Explode Group, lock.  So now we can just make sure that that’s on plans level two.  So there we see that it is.  Now just to put it at the right height, above the level one layer, I’m going to unlock it momentarily and select the Move tool and select that group.  And now I’m just going to move it up the blue axis and I’m going to type in 12 feet.  You’ll notice 12 feet comes up in the Dimensions window in the bottom right of your screen.  So that hasn’t done exactly what I intended so we’ll just try again.  Move that up the blue axis 12 feet in length.  And here you can see we’ve put that at 12 feet above the origin.  Space bar gets you back to the Select tool.  Select that and lock it.

[00:09:13] So that’s how I recommend you import your floorplans.  Put them on their own layers and lock those.  That’s quite a useful little step that you’ll find can help you to manage your background floorplans.  I’m going to save my SketchUp file at this point.  Let’s go to File, Save As, and into my Project Directory under Tutorials and number one.  I’m going to save that as Video1.  I do want to replace that, thank you.

[00:09:49] Okay, so that’s the sort of SketchUp basics I wanted to show you.  There’s a few more that you will find useful.  Here’s the Section tool.  That Section tool allows us to peer into things so we can drop that Section tool.  What I’ll do is I’ll just create a quick box to show that on.  So let’s go to the Rectangle tool.  We’ll draw a rectangle.  We can extrude that up into a box.  We can use the Section tool to peer inside this.  So once that section’s been dropped on a particular plane, we can use the Move tool, select that and just sort of zoom through, looking at the building in a section view.  You’ll find that that’s quite useful.  Another very useful one is the x-ray mode so we can view the model in x-ray mode and that allows us to see through surfaces.

[00:10:45] You may also find that setting up your own shortcut keys can help you, so here on Assistant Preferences under Shortcuts, what I like to do is set up a plan view.  So the camera standard view’s top.  I’ve assigned that to Shift T.  So back in the window five, if I hit Shift T on the keyboard, that puts the view into a plan mode.  That’ll make more sense if you turn on parallel projection and there we see a sort of a plan view of our model.  So this video, we’ve done a quick walkthrough of the OpenStudio plugin and the OpenStudio standalone application.  I’ve shown you a few SketchUp basics to sort of maximize your workflow for energy modeling.  In the next video, we will continue from this SketchUp file that we’ve created and we’ll get started drawing the building geometry.