Five Issues Pushing Windows Through Walls - Skill Builder

We've heard a few times (ok, maybe more) that a lot of users struggle with using the push pull tool to get a window through a wall. Sound familiar? Well, we've come up with five things that could be preventing you from making this work. Check out these five issues to make sure they aren't clogging up your workflow.

[Inlearningmode]

Hi Aaron, I am a new user and I watch this video every few weeks. Push/pull is one of the things that makes Sketchup magical so I'm not surprised that it can get tricky every now and then. Thanks for your videos, I love them.

[davidbrown]

Aaron must have heard the dull thumping that inspired him to do this video about punching holes in walls for windows, doors, etc. The thumping yesterday was no doubt caused by the banging of my head against my office wall as I tried one thing after another to solve this very problem. Thank you Aaron!

[douglasmichel]

Thanks Aaron, probably have hit everyone of the five at one point or another in my career. Thanks for the refresh.

[designgroup]

I'm so glad to have this help. I've been frustrated many MANY times with not being able to create an opening in a wall for a door or window. Aaron, where have you been all my life?! 🙃

[stephanholland]

Now I'm finding wireframe useful for all sorts of operations in situations that are hard to view, such as scaling, moving, rotating, quick checking a bunch of measurements without changing camera position... I've been using Sketchup for 10 years. i don't know how I've managed to overlook this gem for so long.

[legacyfound]

Thanks Arron, I should have looked at this years ago. I was forcing the non planar surface to accept the window opening by nudging non planar surfaces (N +Return then using directional arrow keys. Wowsa, its a real headache removed..

[danimordecai]

Wow - I've spent hours trying to figure out why I can't use this tool. Thank you so much for this youtube video - brilliant!

[madwani]

I do have one more case I faced couple of months ago. Everything is perfect as wall dimensions is concerned height, width & thickness but some of the face edges are not exactly on axes. Sometimes even a fraction of millimeter could cause this issue to happen. I figured it out by setting the edges style to be by axes color. Then, I observed some edges are having a black color not any of the axes colors (red, green& blue) . To correct it, I redraw the deviated edge to match its relative axes.

[daviddickmeyer]

Gee, I think all of those have happened to me. Luckily I’ve been able to sort them out as you showed. But this was a great lesson for those caught in what I call “SketchUp phenomenon “! Thanks Aaron, always a great demo!

[chrisstrong]

Thank you. I have spent hours on this and ended up restarting my walls. Really useful

[georgedeeb]

Hi. How are you ? Thank you for all the efforts that you did in all your videos. They are so useful for beginners. You are a good generous teacher, you go slowly in order to help us to learn. Keep going.

[cienciadesignarquitetura]

I loved to learn how the lines change color when you create a face! Very
useful!!!

[stellaprincessedirectioner]

OMG ! YOU JUST SAVED HOURS OF RESEARCH !! I'M CRYING ! IT WAS THE FIRST ISSUE THANK YOU THANK YOU !!

[amandacursinoalvesdasilva]

Thank you Aaron! Here in Italy all the walls have different depths 😅 I couldn’t understand what was I doing wrong! Your video saved me!

[marciolangeani]

I remember another one you mentioned in a video that happens when you push pull a face but it also doesn’t creat a hole and you need to press the option key to create a new face and solve it. That saved me a lot of times. Thanks a lot by the way

[gnrbryham]

Thank you my man, my issue was the last solution you gave. So easy now thanks to you

[alinealvarenga]

Wow, I've had each and every one of these issues! Thank you, very informative.

[stephanholland]

Hello again. I've been playing around with push pull problems. It occurred to me to use wire frame view to get a better view. This is one for you, Aaron. I'll attempt to explain what I did. Play with it and see if it's useful, but I have managed to punch holes in things that I could not see in shaded view.
My model is a building. I want a door in an interior wall. Camera position is outside the building. I switch to wireframe view. I see the wall clearly since there are no surfaces, and because there are no surfaces I can only select the wall by clicking on an edge. When I triple click on an edge the dotted surfaces appear. I draw my door opening on the wall face. I click P for Push/Pull and push the rectangle through the wall. I have been using x-ray view for this type of thing with so-so results. Wire frame makes it much easier.

[captainsawdust]

I've had most of these issues also. Thanks for explaining the fixes.

[ellenbonsel]

Thank you so much; this video helped me solve my issues and taught me a few new tricks. I love your videos, thanks a lot!