I have a continuous issue where I am drawing plans in a 2D space and when I copy/paste, duplicate and make new faces they don’t close properly. I have to draw and redraw until SketchUp just randomly closes my new face and allows me to color it appropriately. I use a mixture of flatten to plane plugin and the Make Face tool which only randomly works. I have to continuously draw plans across thousands of acres, so I this is really starting to waste my time. See attached example. I copied a portion of the drawing via copy/paste and many of the faces remain unclosed.
First off turn off length snapping. Then spend some time at The Learning Center. Then go to The SketchUp YouTube Channel. On the YouTube, site pay attention to the Square One series. Both are sponsored by the SketchUp Crew and well worth the time spent there.
One thought: make sure that snap to length is turned off in your preferences. It can cause edges to fail to reach a point you thought they would end at. I see that @RLGL made the same suggestion while I was typing.
Thank you! I uploaded the file into a response to another person in this thread if you need it. I will check out those channels and the learning center, but my main issues is specifically this problem with duplicating 2D items in the workspace and not getting face recognition.
Yes, the issue is shown in the square drawing to the right that is isolated (roughly 1000’ x 800’). That drawing copy and pasted from the larger drawing on the left side (closer to the axis origin). When I copy and paste, several of the faces are not being recognized and/or closing. I need to be able to color the streets, parking spaces, grass areas and parking spots, if that makes sense. I attached a snapshot for reference.
Thanks for the response Paul, my issue with using Layout is that eventually these 2D drawings work into the 3D renders and also get exported to CAD for civil work and landscape architecture. I have a pretty good workflow that, if I completely change, that could cause me more work versus saving time.
Also, it appears that the snap to length adjustment worked in this instance! I will need to test it on some of my more complex drawings but this is helpful!
I can’t see why length snapping isn’t somehow relegated to some special use category, and having done without it, I don’t really know what use it could be. Instead it appears to be ON in templates as shipped, so everyone has to suffer until they learn to switch it off.
Agreed. It would have been more useful as grid snapping, which is what most people seem to expect it will do. But either way it creates a lot of GIGO: an exact length from an imprecise start point yields an imprecise end point.
That is an insane amount of raw geometry over a large area. I wouldn’t expect that to behave. It is also a rather slow workflow, especially as you mention you plan to make it 3d in the future. You should be using Groups and Components to both contain your geometry and make it easier/faster to work with and duplicate.
Sketchup is a 3d environment and as such it has the ability to create edges in 3 dimensions, there is also a degree of flexibility/tolerance built into the system. You have some very thin complex shapes that extend over 2000 feet. Sketchup ‘allows’ these faces to form by allowing a certain amount of flex, but then you have all the individual divisions and so you get edges that fail. I’m amazed you’ve got as much to work as you have.
You can argue that it should work because it is flat and so on and so forth, but the reality of sketchup is that this type of raw geometry ‘drawing’ is problematic. And the length snapping certainly won’t be helping.
I’m also curious about your ‘Tree’ component, it has a geometry shadow, and they appear to suggest that you design is for a planet with multiple suns.
I can’t disagree. It seemed that the trees were overlapping some of those strange profile line edges. I’m not sure how the OP did that, as I can copy’n’paste without ending up with those profile-looking lines.
Back to the drawing board. I noticed that when all bounding edges are selected and moved up, there seems to be some invisible stray geometry (but not necessarily where the trees are).
Yeah, the thin complex shapes relate to very details land data (wetlands, surveys, topography etc). The tree is designed to be able to demonstrate shadowing given a different time of day.
Believe it or not this is a relatively small drawing. We have some that span much larger areas, so although it falls outside of SketchUps focus, it manages to work pretty decently. shrugs
