I am a newbie to sketchup and have been viewing tutorials and trying it out.
I use layers for different parts of my building, and I can see that my current way of working is not optimal for some reason.
I have made some components, that I have probably made in the wrong layer and now I have moved them to the right layer.
But selecting and deselecting the layers to show different parts of the building then the same component follows different layers. I have read that it is probably a grouping issue, but in Outliner it seems I do not have any groups.
I understand that it is better to make everything in layer 0 and then move them to the layer I want them in, witch I will start to do, I am just not sure it will make a big difference.
When selecting layers by color I can see that they have the color of the original layer and not the one I move them to.
Layers only control the visibility of components and groups. The best practice is to keep all the geometry on Layer 0. Assign your components to groups. Then, if you turn off the visibility of a layer, everything assigned to that layer will seem to disappear. Suppose, for example, you are modeling a building–rafters, sheathing, and shingles for the roof; studs, wallbo
ard, exterior sheathing and siding for the walls. Assign the rafters to one layer, the sheathing to another, and the shingles to a third. Then, if you hide the layers for the shingles and sheathing, you’ll see the rafters exposed.
Dave Richards recently did a dandy blog post on FineWoodworking.com that explained how to use layers to produce cutaway views. You can see it here:
In SketchUp nothing sticks to a layer. It’s the layer that “sticks” to entities, or rather is applied to them similarly to a material. Thinking of layers as places geometry is/on in causes confusion with groups and components, which really are the places the geometry is in.
I think you’ve still slightly misunderstood SketchUp layers. Granted, you’ve moved the components to layers that are of use to you. But that wont cause the major problems. The problem is that the faces and edges within some of those components are on a layer other than 0. You also need to open the problem components for editing, select the geometry within and move that back to layer 0 using Entity Info.
The important thing to avoid all this is to keep layer 0 active at all times and don’t change it to anything else. You then ensure all of the geometry is drawn on layer 0 (you want to keep it there). Create components from the geometry and assign the components to layers using Entity Info to control the visibility of those components.
Your file is a pretty simple fix so see how you get on…
@lhg, further to @ianT’s post, if you take a closer look, for instance, at your wood stud “SidePostD1” the component is assigned to the Layer: “70 Side with door”, so far so good.
Now open (double click) the component “SidePostD1”. Select all of the geometry. Note in the Entity Info Tray that your loose geometry (edges and faces) are assigned to the Layer: “80 Side to Garages”.
So when you toggle on/off your different layers in the Layer Tray. If you toggle “70 Side with door” off the wood stud is hidden (as a component). If alternatively, you toggle “80 Side to Garages” off, the wood stud is hidden (as loose geometry).
The solution and good practice is to change the loose geometry assignment to the Layer: “Layer(0)”.
Now only toggling “70 Side with door” off controls the visibility of “SidePostD1”.
Here is the best part. Since “SidePostD1” is a component, you only have to change the loose geometry assignment once.
As for the layers, you’ve been given some good advice. To fix it quickly, you could use ThomThom’s CleanUp3 from the Extension Warehouse.
I’ve run it and then fixed the materials, too. While I was at it, I changed the axes on the rafter component so the bounding box fits it correctly. This would be helpful if you want to generate a useful materials list.
