Can you "edit" an item imported as .dae?

I used “Gear Generator” to create a gear shape. Round, has teeth, a hole in the middle etc.
Gear Generator can export as what it calls “Sketchup”, (it’s a .dae file), and I can import it into Sketchup. That’s about as far as I can go, I’d like to “edit” it. Like use push-pull to give it 3d shape.
No matter what I try, I cannot make any changes. I can double-click and the ghostly edit box shows up, but I can’t affect any changes on it (like push-pull).

I’m missing something important or I’m lacking a basic concept. Either way, can someone give me a hand?
Thank you!
:Dave

Upload an example SKP file so we can see what you are working with. Once the file has been imported, it should be geometry that can be edited. Clearly there’s a step in your workflow that is missing.

Please complete your profile with SketchUp version and license type along with your graphics card.

Thanks for reminding me about the profile. I keep forgetting that.
And I’m having trouble finding a function to upload a file. Is uploading a limitation becuase I haven’t posted much?

Seventh icon from the left at the top of the message window, or drag and drop into the message window.

CannotEditThisGear.skp (348.6 KB)

As I expected, no faces.
Faces

That’s cool.
It looks like you are using the pencil and drawing a short line on top of the lines in the image.
I’m not seeing the same results.
The first short line you drew caused the whole image to “darken”. Mine doesn’t.
Going a step at a time, you ARE just drawing a short line along the existing shape, right?

Yes, but make sure you have opened the component for editing first.
As you see at the beginning of the gif, first click the bounding box turns blue, then a double click opens it…

this is what I see before I use the pencil tool.

I clicked it, it outlined in blue including a bounding box.
Double-clicked it, got the image I uploaded.

So far so good.

I’ve drawn a pencil line just like your example. Nothing in the image changes. What am I missing?

To simplify further and not have to trace the lines on each part you can use the handy “make face” plugin, which generally does a good job making editable faces.

In your video, the first small line you draw is from left to right. Then you drew another, from right to left. After the second line, your image changed. Was that second line intentional?

o.k. I’ll look for that plug in. Thanks for your help, I’ll update you…
:Dave

My bad, the first click was supposed to show all the faces were the same on selection. For the make face plugin to work you just need to select everything. It could of been a triple click, or a marquee dragged around it.

Dragging right to left will select everything within the selection - including faces, but dragging out left to right will only selct complete elements within the marquee. will edit that post.

Notice, that when I marquee-selected the image, the bounding box shows up too. that isn’t happening in your example.

In simple terms, tracing one segment creates a face if all the edges are coplannar. In my gif the first line missed the endpoint so I did it the other way.
This creates the ‘dark’ change you see and show in your image, this is simply the back face colour of the face that has been created.
The cutouts of the wheel show as a thick profile line, meaning they haven’t split the face, so tracing a segment on each of those will break the face so that you can delete them.
The delete is done by Triple click to select all then hold shift and double click on the area you want to keep, this deselects the face and edges of that area, allowing you to delete the ‘holes’.

Some how you have double wrapped it. Explode it down to raw geometry.

Ah, I had to “explode” the image.

I’m so close.

What is this control?snip

Delete, right click erase, delete on your keyboard or that Icon on the ‘standard’ toolbar.

You must think I need a slap upside the head. I just couldn’t see that control on any toolbar.
I do see what you did. And it worked!
I thank you very much. Fist-bump.
:Dave