This bug has actually been around for at least 4 years. I reported it in the sketchucation forums in early 2015: it was duplicated but then no further interest: I guess this is a more appropriate forum, so I’m reproducing it below:
I’ve actually noticed this bug for several years: if I create a surface inside a group, then cut a hole in that surface (inside the group) with a (cutting) component, and then put that component onto its own layer, and then finally turn off that layer, the component will disappear, but the hole that it cuts in the surface will remain. To get rid of the hole I have to select the surface inside the group. It’s quite annoying, as I like to use component (on their own layers) to model potential locations for doors and windows, and use layers (via scenes) to switch between them. But as soon as I put the surface inside groups I get these annoying ghost holes left behind by each component that is no longer visible because its layer has been turned off.
Steps to reproduce:
create a surface
create a group containing that surface
click into that group
cut a hole in the surface with a component
assign the component to a new layer
leave the group
turn off the component’s layer
observe an annoying hole where the component used to be.
click into the group again
observe that the hole has disappeared.
Note: this only happens when the surface being cut is within a group (or component) of its own.
No I wouldn’t say it is Mac specific because I get the hole on PC.
As you see here, it is a hole until you edit the group, when it skins over and then cuts again when you edit again.
And the layering appears correct.
Ah, so you are seeing the same thing I do: that is, when you make the component invisible, the hole that it cuts remains (until you open the group containing it). And the converse behaviour as well. It’s very painful when I’ve got lots of cutting components, buried in lots of different groups on different layers, and I’m using lots of different scenes to control the visibility of the components via their layers. So when I switch from scene X to scene Y, I have to spend minutes clicking into all the affected groups in order to make the various holes appear and disappear (ie. fix the model) each time.
This definitely did not happen in older versions of sketchup: I think it started happening sometime during sketchup 7, or perhaps in the initial release of sketchup 8.
That is to say: I appreciate that the layer/component/hole behaviour can always be made consistent by manually clicking into all the affected groups: but to me it seems to be a bug that I have to take that manual action, whenever I hide or reveal a cutting component inside a group: ie. that the model is not automatically correct as soon as I’ve changed the layer’s visibility state, and I have to go around fixing it each time. Especially since it used to work perfectly in earlier versions of sketchup.
I would agree that it should be called a bug, especially if it doesn’t happen on Dave’s machine, therefore showing that neither version is expected behaviour.
I would also agree that this behaviour is buggy.
I noticed that I’m having problems putting a new (fresh) test component flat on a new face. As if your component isn’t a ‘Glue to’ component, although I can clearly see it is.
I made my own simple window component (assigned to ‘test’ layer) and had the same cutting problems as you have, as soon as the cutted face is (at least) one context deep.
To me it seems that SketchUp is only testing the actual state of cutting components in current environment. It should loop through the entire model, i.e. all (nested) levels whenever a some layer state is changed. To then display the correct rendering.
p.s. Actually there appears to be an (incorrect) invisible face, not a hole. For you can still get the inference ‘On Face’.
Once the cutting is restored, there is a hole where you can reach behind the cutted face.
p.s. Also, whenever the test layer is ON again but cutiing doesn’t seem to be restored yet, you can already reach behind the cutted face to other geometry.
It seems that only the render isn’t done correctly. The geometry itself cuts properly, following the layers.
There is support for pro users including direct access but for Make users, this forum is probably the best thing. It gets many more eyes on a problem and there are a number of folks from the SketchUp team who keep on eye on it.
You can use the @relevant team member to get someones attention, but as i wasn’t sure who was responsible for this specific possible bug, i used this opportunity to ask them to give us a way of knowing who to ping on such questions. I’m sure we’ll get there.
Sorry I didn’t mention it here so you knew something was being done, just a bit busy myself.
We have this issue in our bug tracking system - looks like it’s been around for a while. I did a +1 on that issue with a link to this forum post. #25260
