I use the Tape Measure tool to measure from an edge of one component to the edge of another component. Without actually creating any guide line, I click on the first edge and then hover over the second edge, looking at the distance measurement in the VCB (lower-right corner of the SketchUp viewport box). Slide the cursor along the target (second) edge to see if the distance changes. Press ESCape (or select another tool) to avoid creating a guide line. I have display precision set to 0.000000 so small deviations are easy to detect. (This will work to assess either parallelism or perpendicularity, assuming that the boards have square corners. Judicious choice of the edges on the two boards will yield an assessment of either aspect, such as an end-edge of one board and a long-edge of the other board to assess perpendicularity, or two long-edges to assess parallelism.)
Similarly, the Tape Measure tool can be used to check if two faces are on the same plane, if the faces are aligned with a pair of axes. Click somewhere on one face, move the cursor to the other face and press the appropriate arrow key to constrain the measurement to a single axis (e.g., press Up Arrow to constrain the measurement to the blue axis if the two faces lie in the red-green plane). If the distance is 0.000000 then the two faces are co-planar.
Double click “Shelf_” to open it for editing (or right click and choose edit), copy/move one additional “Shelf”. Click outside group to close it. Done.
I have my display precision set to 1/16" because those are the units I want to constrain the things I wish to be building. Also, I’ve not set precision to the millionth because when, for example I’m setting a rectangle on a board from which I want to build a shelf (the analogy’s tiresome, but it does effectively indicate the units must be parallel/perpendicular) and the return measurement I get is, say ~12 5/8" (snap), ~ 2", it’s a lot easier typing in 12 5/8", .75" than it is typing in an eight place decimal for the first dimension. (Does that reason make sense to you?) I just keep on running up against situations where the shelf I thought I perfectly snap-fit to two vertical boards keeps on looking like it’s a miniscule bit off on one or the other side. (Then I correct the one end and the other end is that slightly off…)
Also, I’ve wondered if when one does what I just did to construct an extruding plane for a shelf, if there was a way to accept one of the dimensions, and just type in the shelf thickness–e.g., “(ditto),.75” for the other.
Setting your units to 1/16 doesn’t constrain anything, it means sketchup will only display to that level of precision. So if your geometry is actually within 1/16 either way of 1/16 it will tell you it is 1/16. This is a sure way to incorrect models. In certain cases it will show a ~ in others not. You should set you Display precision to 1/64 if you really want fractions.
How you have it set doesn’t effect what you can type. You can even enter it in millimeters and it will convert it to fractional inches.
Yes in a sense you can ‘ditto’ ,you can leave the space blank and it will use whatever is manually created. So you can drag a rectangle out until it shows 2’,7 9/64" and you can leave either blank as long as you use the comma. Typing ,9 1/4" will give you a rectangle 2’ by 9 1/4"
Would that I never see Tildes!!!
I have it set to 1/64". Now I have extruded a shelf so it protudes way out of the cabinet (no possibility an edge might be buried in a vertical member). I take the tape measure to its edge (and for good measure hold the right arrow down to ensure I’m on the red axis): it snap-reads “~ 33 17/32” If I see tildes, what does that mean is wrong?
I’d like to get into creating views, and dimensioning (hopefully, on the drawing), but I still have questions regarding Tags (that you created for me). They seem such a dangerous way to manipulate labels (considering that, because tags can drift between one item group and another, one can inadvertently cause cross group mayhem without knowing it (something one’s less likely to do in the Outliner)), if I read it correctly.
The tilde means that the displayed dimension is approximate (constrained by the user’s chosen display settings). You probably never want to see tildes displayed, as @Box mentioned, assuming that the chosen display precision is suitable for the model (that is, the display precision is set to be somewhat more precise or “fine-grained” than the intended dimension multiples). With a suitable display precision in effect, a tilde means that the modeled geometry is inaccurate to your intent.
Pay great attention to dimensions as you create geometry (using the Tape Measure tool, for example), so that you can correct any inaccuracies as soon as possible. Anything can of course be changed later, but typically it quickly becomes more complicated and tedious to make corrections if an error has been propagated to other areas of the model.
If you are still using the tags from file I sent you then they are correctly only assigned to groups and components. Tags are a fine way to control visibility and there is no unpredictable “drifting” in tags, or any other aspect of SketchUp. The program only does what you tell it to do.
Are you doing all your geometry creation by typing the dimensions on the keyboard? Dragging out shapes is not a reliable method for creating precise geometry. Here I am typing in 33" to make your shelves exact.
First, I don’t understand exactly what you’re doing:(I’m on Windows)
You’re selecting the Grouping SHALLOW SHELVES_2, and choosing to View/Component Edit/Hide rest of model
Then how do you get the Yellow/Green edges/handles? and what are you doing with them? Are you just shoving them in and snapping them out? re-inputting the dimensions?..
Also I don’t understand why you say drag-snapping is not reliable for precision:
Isn’t one of the advantages of using a program like SketchUp to create CAD is that when you establish a few fundamental places (e.g., a wall and a floor) and a few fundamental objects (e.g., already existing cabinets and whatever, that are not going to be moved or changed), that you should be able to go from there, establishing basic items (e.g., the vertical members of a shelf cabinet) and snapping to those as a way of creating all the subsequent entities. SketchUp Fundamentals is very clear about the fact that no matter how you place a point that it is (by the program) accurately placed in a precise position. Forgive me for misinterpreting you, but isn’t having to redefine the length of shelves that were created by snapping, contradicting this basic tenant?
There is nothing wrong with using the inference engine to create parts and it is precise!
What you don’t want however is to create parts with measurements that you cannot recreate in the workshop.
I use mm as I am in Europa, and I want all my measurements to be whole mm as it is impossible to make things to the hundredth of a mm!
This aspect of the tools and interface is identical between Mac and Windows, yours will work the same.
Yes, I double click on the group to open it for editing. I have “hide rest of model” already toggled on where I leave it most of the time so every time I open any group or component the rest of the model disappears, If I want to see the rest for context I have that function assigned to a single keyboard shortcut so I can turn the rest of the model on and off with a keystroke.
With the group open I now have access to the shelves themselves which are components, but I want to resize the geometry inside the component so I double click again on one shelf to open it for editing. With the component open I have access to the raw geometry, then I triple click on the geometry to select it all.
With all the shelf geometry selected I choose the scale tool which shows the selected geometry surrounded by green handles that can be used to scale the selection uniformly by grabbing a corner or in a specific axis by grabbing a center handle. I grab the appropriate handle to scale the shelves along their long axis and make a random move inward. I click to start, then move and click to finish. At this point the shelves are a random unknown length, it is not important, the next thing I do after clicking to finish the move is let go of the mouse and type 33" instructing SketchUp that the last move done should have a total dimension of 33". The change is made, as long as I don’t invoke another tool I could keep inputting new dimensions and they would continue to be applied to the last move made, but 33" is what I want so I close the component and the group by clicking outside in the rest of the model space. The scale tool is in the basic toolset and accepts scale factors like .5 for half as big or 1.33, it also accepts absolute dimensions like 33".
There are actually many ways to have adjusted these shelves, thats one of the strengths of SketchUp. In this case since the whole group is just the shelves and there is no other geometry to be distorted you could just scale the entire group in one direction to 33". But I went through all the steps of opening the groups and components because it’s important to understand how to edit base geometry in nested instances.
I should be more careful to differentiate between dragging and using inference (snapping). Inferencing is precise. Inferencing existing geometry is great as long as the thing you are inferencing is correct. If there are errors in your model then inferencing those incorrect dimensions will yield more incorrect dimensions, so it pays to double check yourself. But in general using the Inference engine to align new geometry to existing geometry is the correct workflow. What is not correct is dragging: starting a new rectangle and dragging the shape across the screen while watching the dimensions change in the VCB (dimensions field in the bottom right) Some people new to SketchUp try to move the mouse around in free space, without inferencing anything, until the dimension numbers match their desired size. This is imprecise and incorrect, you can’t drag a shape to a precise dimension no matter how careful you are there will be errors. Start the shape and then let go of the mouse and type.
Absolute scaling as an alternative to relative scaling.
Learning how to use the Scale tool is a revelation! And I think I know how to correct everything so that there will be no more tildes!
There is one situation I run up against constantly that I’m sure there’s a solution for (that, of course, I haven’t found)
I create a box 3’x3’x3’ I use the scale (or extrude) to make it 3’,3’,20". So far, so good. Now I want to change the 20" dimension to 4’. Normally, I must enter 2’2". (Please,) is there a way I can input 4’ (the complete distance) rather than the difference. (I’ve tried to figure out a way to decrease the size to 0 and then extrude from there, to no avail.)
Wait! Jiggering the scale tool handles (don’t know how I did it yet) I can do exactly what I want–put in an absolute size! Yes!! It works! It seems that the scale tool is the absolute alternative (pun!) to the push-pull tool! But there’s an anomaly. It’ll take 2’ as a measurement but not 24". The scale tool seems only to accept distances expressed in feet!
When you click on the red handle then go to type <23 SHIFT inch-key>, the uniform scale toggle comes into effect with the SHIFT key and messes up the absolute scale. So the best practice is to FINISH the scale roughly by clicking your second click in the drawing. THEN type <23 SHIFT inch-key>
Sometimes it does work either way, just to fool you.
Wow. What is the uniform scale toggle, and might it come into play when I do other things?
Also, is it correct to say that the Scale tool can always be substituted for the Push/Pull (Why don’t they call it Extrude!) when what’s desired is an absolute extrude distance?
Uniform scaling, scales around the objects center equally, rather than from the side you start the scale from, the toggle is shift which acts strangely if you try to type " during an operation. This is why in my example I complete the scale operation to a random size then enter 33".
No. The scale tool only appears like an extrusion on your shelves because your geometry is simple and consists of square planer surfaces aligned with the axis. So the “scaling” of the top and bottom surface cannot be seen as it starts as a plane and ends as a larger plane. If your geometry had any particular shape you wished to preserve it would be distorted by the scale operation. Each tool is useful for different situations.
