Hi all
I have had a scout around for the answer but cannot find a resolution.
I have modelled a building with floor, walls, windows, stairs, some floor to ceiling columns, a mezzanine level and some seating booths. I did this without creating any groups or components. Sooo now I find myself in a right mess and don’t really know how to proceed. I have tried to do this retrospectively e.g. select all the walls (by selecting each edge and face) but I inevitably miss some edge that I did not see. How would you recommend to proceed? Start again?
Or should I try and create groups? If I do miss an edge is there a way to just add this to the group without it being nested? Because otherwise I will have a group in a group in a group in a group.
And the last question in this post. If I create a component and rescale it for some other instances does it still remain a component when I come to applying material/colour to it?
Thanks in advance 
You can copy entities ( say edges and/or faces) to clipboard, then enter the group or component and then use ‘Paste in Place’ to add them to that grouped environment. So nothing gets nested.
I always find it easier just to select as good as you can and make the group. Then edit that group while having ‘Hide rest of model’ in [Window]->Model Info->Components ticked, so you can concentrate on that part only.
Then repair that group if there are missing faces and try to model ‘manifold’ objects (Solids)
When finished with that group, place it on a Layer which visibility is toggled off
go through the model until every thing is gone, but the loose or stray geometry and delete that!
Thanks for your replies. Unfortunately these solutions aren’t helping. The tip from g tubers is useful to know but the model is too much of a mess to use this.
Mike - I don’t have any components to hide so when I click on hide rest of model nothing changes. Thanks for the attempts though.
If you replace ‘group’ by ’ component’ in @MikeWayzovski’s reply, then follow the rest of his suggestions it would work.
Alternatively, Select all of your current model, make it a group or component, and assign a layer to it (say Old model).
Then draw over it, a piece at a time, making each piece into a component when you’ve finished drawing it. Make sure to give meaningful names to the components when you create them.
Assign meaningfully named layers to the components as you go.
Check from time to time by turning the layers off and on that things are looking right, and on the proper layers.
When you think you have finished, turn off the Old model layer, and check that nothing is missing.
Fix any missing pieces, any other errors, and when done, delete the Old model component.
Purge the model (Window/Model Info/Statistics/Purge unused) and save it.
It’s often easier and cleaner to redraw something than to try and fix it piecemeal.
Did you use layers? If so you can select a face on a particular layer, then right click and choose ‘Select all on same layer’…then group.
Alternatively, you could paint faces with different colors, one for floors, one for walls, columns, etc…then ‘select by material’ and group.
As a reply to myself here…I forgot to add that you could use an extension, Chris Fullmer’s ‘Loose to Groups’: Page Not Found | SketchUp Extension Warehouse …of course this solved only half the problem. The other half is components, which should be used for ALL repeating entities. So you’ll probably just need to recreate those manually as there’s no way to automate making or placing components. Live and learn!
See below for grouping either just selected entities or everything in model:
