Im teaching my self how to create dynamic components.
I make furniture, mostly cabinets, all vary in size as each job dictates. To simplify the process to provide visuals for customer approval and the machining process on a cnc, ive drawn a few basic cabinet designs that i can specify the HxWxD and automatically resize. So far so good.
Ive also got a sketchup extension, ABF, that will add hinges, drawer runners, shelf holes, construction fittings etc , convert this into dxf files to export to Vcarve to cnc the panels. this 2 works great with cabinets made with individually “grouped” parts.
The problem im having is that ABF wont work on a dymanic component only groups. Ive found a way to “explode” the component and then group each one individually, but this is laborious as each cabinet has at least 6 parts and may be 6, or more cabinets on one drawing.
So, my question is, is there another way to convert the dynamic components back to grouped parts ?
There are some plugins that De-DC-ify, if I recall correctly. @eneroth3 has one in Extension Warehouse, and FlexTools has a tool to do that, not that you would buy that plugin just for that one feature.
the De-DC-ify will remove the DC attributes but they are still components. you could use Eneroth’s “component to group” tool: SketchUp Extension Warehouse
as Mike noted.
however, the convert component to group is not recursive - so you need to go into the top level group (and presuming each of the internal components are simple collection of grouped objects), Crtl-A to select them and again right-click select “component to group”. if they contain sub-components, repeat.
still much faster and easier than exploding and regrouping
You can work with a component parent and group sub parts, however you must always bring in a new component, not copy and change. However you can use Eneroth’s “deep make unique” straight after the copy to make all the groups unique.
Note copied groups will not be unique and changes will effect others unless forced to become unique, you can see any evidence of such via entity info after selection in outliner