Creating and Editing a Style

In SketchUp, you can create and edit styles so that you can apply your preferred style settings with a single click.

To create a new style, follow these steps:

1. Open the Styles panel by toggling it open in the Default Tray. Or select Window > Default Tray > Styles so that the Styles option is selected.
2. Open the Styles panel by selecting Window > Styles.
3. In the upper right, click the Create New Style button (). SketchUp creates a copy of the currently active style in the In Model styles.
4. Click the Select tab, click the In Model icon (), and in the list of styles that appears, select your new style so that it’s the active style.
5. Click the Edit tab, click the Edge Settings icon (), and select your desired edge options.
6. Click the Face Settings icon () and select your desired face options. The following figure shows the Edge Settings (Callout 1) and the Face Settings (Callout 2). In the following tables, you find a basic illustration and explanation of each setting.   
7. Click the Face Settings icon () and select your desired face options. The following figure shows the Edge Settings (Callout 1) and the Face Settings (Callout 2). In the following tables, you find a basic illustration and explanation of each setting.  
8. Select the Background Settings icon (), and choose how you’d like the background to appear. See Customizing a Model’s Background with Styles for details about these settings.
9. (Optional) If you’d like to include a watermark in your style, click the Watermark Settings icon () and select your options. Your options are explained in Watermarking a Model.
10. (Optional) Check that visual cues such as selection colors work well with your new style. If needed, you can use the Edit tab's Modeling Settings pane to change the colors for selections and other modeling color cues.
11. Click the Update Style with Changes button () in the upper right of the Styles panel. If the Update Style with Changes button is grayed out, your style is up-to-date.

Option	Example	Good to Know
Edges		Toggles the display of edges in your model. The example shows edges toggled on (selected).
Back Edges		Displays edges obscured by other edges in your model. Obscured edges appear as dashed lines. When selected, this setting disables the X-Ray face style.
Profiles		Emphasizes the outlines of major shapes in your model. This style borrows from a drawing technique that emphasizes the 3D nature of geometry. Enter a thickness, in pixels, for the profile lines.
Depth Cue		Emphasizes foreground lines over background lines. Enter a foreground line thickness in pixels.
Extension		Extends each line slightly past its endpoint for a hand-drawn appearance. This style does not affect inference behavior. Enter a length, in pixels, for the extension lines.
Endpoints		Places additional line thickness at the endpoints of lines. Enter a length, in pixels, for the length of the emphasized endpoints.
Jitter		Renders each line multiple times at a slight offset, giving your model hand-drawn sketched appearance. This edge rendering style does not affect inference behavior.
Color: All Same		Displays all edges in the color defined in color swatch. This option does not actually change any edge color assignments you may have made, but preserves them if you choose to view them again.
Color: By Material		Displays edges with an assigned material color, such as those painted with a color.
Color: By Axis		Edges that aren't aligned with an axis are colored with the All Same color swatch. Also, an axis color doesn’t appear on hidden edges.

In the next table, you see all the ways you customize faces’ appearance.

Option	Example	Good to Know
Front Color, Back Color		Sets the default color for all front and back sides of faces. Materials assigned to faces override this setting. Here a face was removed from the cube so that you can see the front color is yellow and the back color is blue.
Style: Wireframe		Displays only the model’s lines. Because faces are not displayed, you can’t use face modification tools, such as the Push/Pull tool.
Style: Hidden Line		Display faces without any shading or textures. Tip: This option is handy for printing only in black and white.
Style: Shaded		Shades faces to simulate a light source.
Style: Shaded Using Textures		Displays shading to simulate a light source and any textures applied to a face. Tip: Textures require more memory to render your model. If you experience performance problems, switch to a style without textures.
Style: Shaded Using All Same		Displays faces with the default front and back face color.
X-Ray		Makes all faces transparent so you can see through your model. Tip: In this mode, you can easily visualize, select, and snap to points and edges that would otherwise be hidden behind faces. However, you can’t select and infer faces that would otherwise be hidden. Faces cannot cast shadows in X-Ray mode, which is different from material transparency.
Enable Transparency		Toggles global material transparency on or off.
Transparency Quality		Choose among the Faster, Medium, and Nicer options. Choose between the Faster and Nicer option. Each differs in its speed and quality of transparency sorting. Faster sacrifices accuracy to provide faster rendering, whereas Nicer performs additional calculations to correctly display transparent surfaces.
Ambient Occlusion		Selecting Ambient Occlusion enables the Distance and Intensity sliders. Adjusting Distance will increase or decrease how far away the effect of occlusion is from your edges. Adjusting Intensity increases or decreases the depth and strength of the shading used.