I often find myself replacing one component with another one that has the same geometric dimensions. When doing this i place the new component in the same position as the old one. Then i will want to delete the old component. The only way to do that is to look at the name in entity info. If its the old component then i just delete it. But if its the new component then i have to hide it, delete the old one that remains, then unhide the new one. So i was wondering if it would be possible to cycle selections of components or more specifically faces of components that are in the exact same position. And if its not possible is there any preferrable way of doing this. I am only asking because i find myself doing this procedure quite often.
Give each component a different tag. Then you can hide the one you want to keep and delete the other. Or you could keep both a switch back and forth between visible ones if that is useful. Here’s an example in SketchUp Pro but it works the same way in any version of SketchUp.
Tags are to be applied to components or groups, not faces and edges so you’d have to divide the thing into separate components which is probably more work than it’s worth.
I am usually replacing components that are on the same tag and i want to do the operation right away. Its not like what your doing where you want to compare. But given your answer then i am assuming that there is no simple way of cycling between different groups or components in the same position with a mouse click and a key, or right clicking and selecting from the menu. That would be the ideal solution. It takes 2 seconds to execute as opposed to 20 seconds doing it my way.
Outliner would be a good option but it’s only as good as your modeling process. Refusing to give useful names to the components and groups in your model hamstrings Outliner. It sounds like you want to continue with a less than efficient workflow.
Its not that i want to continue with a less efficient workflow its just that the naming in outliner becomes difficult because components cant have the same name.
For instance, in tags i could do the following:
room (folder)
living (tag)
office (tag)
…
wall (folder)
front (tag)
back (tag)
…
component (folder)
stud (tag)
plate (tag)
The names remain short with tags. I can also use the same folder name more than once. And if i want to select living room > front wall > stud, then i simply check each tag in each folder and the job is done.
What it really comes down to is the type of folder tree. There seems to be two types. There is the standard folder tree like in outliner and then there is the honing folder tree like the one i demonstrated above with tags. The honing tree is similar to how shopping works on websites where you select one option in one category and then another option in another category and then your left with the available products. That i find is preferrable to the outliner format because the vertical list that i have to manage is small compared to outliner which ends up being many with an entire house framing system.
So far i am only giving names to repeat components in my file in outliner. So if i make a stud with a standard height then i name it. But with other components i just dont bother because its too time consuming.
