First time posting. Introduced sketchup to our workflow early last year and it’s brought our tradeshow booth building company to a whole new level. Recently we’ve upgraded from 2015 to 2016 and we’re encountering a minor issue, hoping it can easily be fixed.
I’ve managed to reproduce this error multiple times but I can’t quite tell what’s going on. So here’s the gist of it. Opening an existing 2015 file in 2016 file. It contains nested components (assemblies with sub-assemblies, all properly modeled in components, not groups.) At the part level, if I copy a component everything looks fine, but as soon as I enter it, sketchup renames my original component (ie. component definition = part#1, sketchup renames it to part#2) and then both components are not the same anymore, therefore not linked. So any changes now applied to the copied component (still called part#1) or the original one (now renamed by sketchup to part#2) isn’t reflected.
It’s a very bizarre problem, and it doesn’t always come up (sometimes copying a component works just fine.) I can’t put my finger on why sketchup is renaming components on his own. Also, the renaming only happens when I enter the component.
Wondering if anyone can reproduce this error, has any information on what is going on, or has encountered this in migrating from 2015 to 2016. Thanks for your help.
EDIT: I should have mentioned, I’ve reproduced this error on multiple computers (different installations and licenses, but all on windows 7 pro 64bit) and with different models… so as far as I can tell, this is not specific to a single user, installation of sketchup or corrupted model.
I agree with John that this sounds like action by an extension, not internal to SketchUp itself. In particular, it sounds like something is invoking “make unique” in situations when it wasn’t appropriate.
In the 2016 release, Trimble made some changes in how Observers work (Observers are a Ruby API technique to monitor your model for actions and react to those actions). The changes were intended to address long-standing stability problems with Observers, but maybe they had the opposite effect on one you have installed.
Here is a test file I made. The original model (in the back with only 1 green piece…) was built in 2015. The TEST component assembly is to illustrate how some components copy properly and some dont (see how the RED piece isn’t RED in the original because i edited it in the TEST and it didn’t translate properly… but the green one did. I didn’t make unique on any pieces inside the assembly)
The file is all setup for anyone to TEST it as follows. Double click any of the RED pieces, and notice how sketchup renames the other one +1. Now do the same with the GREEN piece. It should remain properly linked as all components of the same name.
Just posted the test file I am working from to narrow down on this issue. Maybe it can help pinpoint it to extensions we’re using? If it comes from an extension, should I just stop using it, or do you think the changes to Observers in 2016 will have fixed it in the future?
Pretty sure that part (the RED one in the test file) was initially mirrored using TIG’s mirror selection tool.
I’m digging into your model now. There is a lot of extraneous stuff there that can be purged (no doubt leftovers from the original file you extracted this example from). But that doesn’t affect your problem, it’s just bloat.
You appear to have found a bug in the Entity Info window in SU 2016! The root of the behavior you are seeing is that the entities labeled “DOUBLE-CLICK ME” are copies of a Group, not instances of a Component, despite what Entity Info says (“Solid Component”). I suspected this because nothing of this name shows up in the Component window. I confirmed it by probing the model’s structure via the Ruby Console. The sequential renaming is the normal and correct behavior for a Group with copies when you open any copy for edit.
So the mystery is why Entity Info is labeling these entities incorrectly. As I said, I think you have surfaced a bug!
Edit: further info: There is definitely a bug somewhere, but it isn’t clear it is in Entity Info. On more probing, I find that the copies of “DOUBLE_CLICK ME” all report themselves to be ComponentInstances, not Groups - which is why Entity Info shows what it does. But the associated ComponentDefinition reports itself to be a Group, which is why you get the rename on edit behavior. So the mystery is how the model got into this cross-wired condition, which should not have been possible.
Edit#2: I wonder…could this happen if @TIG’s mirror selection tool is applied to a Group with copies? I don’t have it installed, so will have to go get it to investigate this…
If I had created a component from the get-go, instead of making a group into a component, would this problem still be coming up? I’ll be very interested in seeing what you dig up from this issue.
The extraneous stuff comes from a much bigger model where I extracted just this sub assembly from. Is there something I should have done before linking the file to get rid of all this bloat?
Open Model Info->Statistics and click the purge unused button. Or get and run any of the available purge extensions. They just remove unused Components, Materials, Layers that bloat a model.
Do you have the latest release of @TIG’s Mirror (6.0) installed? I downloaded it and have been unable to cause the cross-wiring your model shows. Either Mirror isn’t at fault, the error was fixed in an update of Mirror, a very specific setup is needed to provoke the problem, or the bug isn’t related to Mirror.
Yes we have the latest one installed, but the issue could have been caused before (the original model was built in november if I remember correctly.)
In any case, this is a situation that apparently isn’t common enough for me to be concerned with right now. I’ll get everyone on our team updated that this might come up using some of the models we built in the past. We’ll just have to bite the bullet and redraw those pieces. Since we mostly design all our stuff in house, and we almost never reuse the old stuff (ikr…) using all the updated tools should fix the issue.
It’ll be a rare occasion for us to transition models built in SU2015 to SU2016, and almost every single time our CNC programming is already done for those pieces anyways (so component manipulation will be minimal on existing assemblies.) It won’t be an issue to use the existing assemblies that we re-use just for reference in our technical drawings.
Thanks for looking into this. I’ll re-post updates if the issue arises again with anything completely native to SU2016.
The “DOUBLE_CLICK ME” - is a Component - according to Entity Info - but it doesn’t appear in the Component Browser - even when expanded.
If you Purge the unused dross, then run this in Ruby Console it says it’s a Group [‘true’] - but in Entity Info it’s a Component !
Sketchup.active_model.definitions.each{|d| p d.name; p d.group? }
I suspect it’s part of a broken DC - as a sub-Group - hence the incrementing of its name #1 etc, which I see… IF I edit that ‘Group’ - because an edited Group is always made immediately unique !
But Model Info > Statistics > Fix… does nothing… it still thinks it’s a Component, when it’s clearly a Group…
I don’t think this is due to any Plugins - seems to be a corrupted group/component…
It’s just weird…
I couldn’t find any smoking gun to suggest how this came about. Obviously some prior action tripped a rare bug, but there’s no longer any clue what it might have been. Other than deleting and recreating the broken entities, I also don’t see any way to repair it.