I made a 2D floorplan of one floor. It is drawn in the x-y plane. I’m using top view and no perspective.
Now if I want to add another 2D floorplan say 10 feet above this one, how do I tell sketchup to draw on this new “plane” instead of on the x-y plane?
In case you wonder, when I finished the 2D floorplans I’ll extrude and modify them so I get a 3D model of my house. I’ve not used sketchup before so I’m starting in 2D to get familiar with it.
It is a fairly simple process to generate a plan above your already modeled 2D first floor plan. What you have described is probably the way most users approach developing a multistory building.
I suggest grouping the first floor plan and then using the Move tool to copy the plan along the blue axis (straight up) for a distance of 10 feet. You could then edit the upper floor plan independent of the original lower floor. If you find it distracting to work on the plan while it hovers above your original plan, cut the upper floor plan, paste in place to a new file. Perform your modeling on that file, then cut it and paste in place back to the original file location.
I’d suggest rather to create separate “floor” layers. (You’ll eventually wish to create stairs or elevators between floors.)
After copying the 1st floor group, use the EnityInfo inspector to set it’s layer to “Floor 2” or “Upstairs” or whatever the name is.
Select just the lower floor group and set it’s layer to “Floor 1” or “Groundfloor” or whatever it’s layer name is.
Then turn off the 1st floor layer via the “Layer Manager” whilst working on the 2nd floor.
(It is very important to leave geometric primitives, ie: edge and faces, on “Layer0”.)
SketchUp is cool because it allows multiple ways of “skinning the cat”. Before I figured out layers I would make the 1st floor a component, then after the move/copy. Make it a “Unique” copy so the edits would only effect it. From the View tab at the bottom there is a Component Edit selection. You can check either one “Hide Rest of Model” or “Hide Similar Components” so when you open to edit the 2nd floor. It will hide your other works, equivalent to Dan`s suggestion. In a sense I was toggling a layer on and off before I figured out how to work with layers. Plus you can apply your own keyboard shortcuts for each one. So you can quickly reference the 1st floor. Plus it will allow you to go from Window> Model Info> Components and by un-checking hide you can adjust visibility/gray out/fade the lower floor.
This will add an option if you apply scenes to your model. Just cool that it offers the flexibility and allows you make it unique to your style or what works best for you…Peace…
Oh and speaking of scene pages.
You can turn on the scene tabs, and create a scene for each floor, that has the other floor’s layer off, and only it’s own on. (Be sure to update the scene after making changes.)
Then just switch back and forth between “Floor” pages when editing.
You can also have some master scenes where everything is on. They can be set up to view the model from differing viewpoints, front elevation, rear elevation, SW Iso, etc. You can then make copies of certain pages, and apply different styles to them for printing, one with normal lines, one with extreme sketchy edges., etc.
And those scenes can link directly into layout for your 2d constructions drawings.