Groups and Components - What's the Difference?

Thanks, Dave. I appreciate this tutorial. It has helped me clarify the difference/significance of the two. This definately gives me a better handle on this subject.

Now, like dovetails, I have to practice, practice, practice…. :)

-- With God's help all things are possible- even woodworking. Woodworking is not just a hobby, it is an (expletive deleted) expensive hobby.

good info, but I think (and especially for something as visual as sketchup) it would be easier to follow this with more ‘picture, picture’ , and less ‘texty, texty’ :)

just my $0.03 (today it’s on sale… other places only give you $0.02)

-- When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.

Great as always, Dave. I work that way and, in addition, I tend to use groups of components during the editing process to easily hide them away turning their visibility on and off in a single click instead of hiding each instance individually.

-- Jojo, shopless in Kyoto · http://twitter.com/kagushokunin

Dave if I delete an instance of a copied componant like the scaled version…do the changes I make to the componant all revert like the scaling does? Then I delete the giant version. No need to scale it back down and move it back into place. SketchUp edits the original-sized instances at the same time. I can’t produce those results.

-- Dan, Sterling Alaska, http://sullcon.homestead.com/ Before you criticise some one, walk a mile in their shoes...then you will be a mile away and you have their shoes!

mics_54, are you scaling the component or opening it and scaling the entities? I scale the copy of the entire component in this situation. Then I delete that scaled one when I’m finished with it. the other copies all remain the original size as. I’ll see if I can make an illustration of this

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Dave,
I love the help… thank you. I have spent years working with Solidworks and believe that it is the cause of some of my frustration in learning Sketchup. I guess it is like driving an automatic car after driving a manual one, the left foot keeps looking for the clutch…

On one of your last posts, you talked about Kerkythea. I have installed it and have the plugin in place for Sketchup. Now I’m stuck with a wireframe of my part in Kerkythea. Any chance you could give us a little primer in Kerkythea?

Thanks,
Tom

-- Anybody can become a woodworker, but only a Craftsman can hide his mistakes.

Tom, I’ll see what I can work out for you. I’m only just able to get stuff out of KT. The wireframe view is normal. When you render the model though, you’ll have a separate window that shows with the textures and materials.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

I’ve tried it several ways. Each time I delete the giant version all the componants are deleted or remain the same size depending upon how I scaled it.

I’m getting all kinds of weird results. If I scale the componant to a giant version and “control V” copy it..the copy is the smaller version but all the other componants still remain large when I delete the giant version. If I select one of the other giant version componants and “control V” ...the copy is the smaller version.

GRR…sorry Dave…I was resizing with the measure tool…not scaling. My bad!

-- Dan, Sterling Alaska, http://sullcon.homestead.com/ Before you criticise some one, walk a mile in their shoes...then you will be a mile away and you have their shoes!

Could you e-mail me about this? Maybe send me the SKP file.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Hello DaveR
I am Andrea from Australia
i use sketchup from 3 years.
I found your sugestions
very interesting.
When i use Sketchup usually i import dwg drom autocad.
When i open the draw in sketchup i have to draw again over the lines because often they are not on the same plan so i can t extrude straigh away the draw in sketchup and i waste loot of time to draw over the autocad lines.
That you know wxist a command or a way to solve this problems?
Thank you a lot for every sugestion ytou can give to me.
Andrea

Andrea, there are a couple of plugins you might find useful. One is called Make Faces the other is Flatten. If you really have problems with the imported lines not having the same Z, Flatten will take care of that. Since the DXF/DWG files haven’t got faces to begin with, there’s nothing to import. If tracing over the lines adds the faces, they all have the same Z and the lines are coplanar. In that case, you can just select all the lines and run Make Faces. It’ll fill them in automatically.

If, after running Make Faces you still have holes, you’ll need to zoom in close and look for gaps in the lines. It isn’t unusual for lines drawn in ACAD or other CAD programs to be drawn so they don’t really intersect. It doesn’t matter in the CAD program but it will in SketchUp. You could also use Close Opens for that.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

DaaveR
Thank you a lot for your sugestions….
I will try to use those…
I like this website i think ….is addictive…