Quick guide to viewing drawings with sketchup body { font-family: helvetica; font-size: 100%; } img { margin-right: 12px; margin-top:6px; margin-bottom:6px; } Quick guide to viewing drawings with sketchup Google SketchUp is a 3D cad program. Like any 3D cad program, it has a bit of a learning curve to become proficient at it. But if you only want to view a drawing, you only need to know a few things for it to be useful. The plan is set up with "scene tabs" at the top of the screen. Each of these scene tabs will toggle to a different view of some of the parts. In any drawing, you can zoom in and out by rolling the mouse wheel, and pan around the part by pressing the mouse wheel, and moving the mouse. In any view with multiple parts on it, you can double click on the part, which "opens" that part, or group of parts. Only that part is shown at this point. This can be useful for viewing one part specifically. If the part contains sub-parts, you can double click on those again to view just the sub-parts or sub assemblies. To back out of opening the parts, just push escape. If a part is obstructing your view, you can right click on it and select "hide". If the part you want to hide is part of a sub-assembly, you may have to open that assembly first before hiding the part individually.