I also have found Groups can behave badly. Now I always use components in DCs that are going to have formulas. Groups will probably be not be a problem if they will not have any dynamic attributes attached.
Thanks Jim, I suspect you are correct, -something about mixing groups with components.
I tried just converting all the groups to components and still have the same problem.
I guess I will have to try exploding them back to lines and redoing the formulas. I guess I will avoid using groups in the future.
Hi Chris,
Can you start again with the axis as per the standard template, with the casing and door along the red axis, the depth or wall thickness back along the green and the height up. Do nāt worry about the gluing/cutting plane until later.
I have attached a model I am working on, howbeit in metric, which may help to form your ideas for the base model of the door frame
It still needs tweaking which I will try to do over the weekend
passage door set.skp (250.4 KB)
Thanks pcmoor,
Yes, I can redo the whole thing.
I was not aware that the glueing plane could be set after the fact.
It looks to me that it has to be the top level component -no?
Your door has some features that I wanted to put on my door -hinges and the arc.
I had considered the possibility of using 3 pieces for the jamb and stop to save some geometry and complexity.
I wish that DCās where a bit more powerful. I am considering using Ruby but that seems to be a fairly huge time investment to learn.
Yes, ruby will eventually be the way to go,
However DCs are the ideal vehicle to retain information, some user controlled attributes and of course interactive movement
So understanding and testing DCs is not a waste of time. However I can foresee that a ruby script will give better control over searching, swapping and updating. However I am willing to wait for next release before committing myself to this path.
There are a few introductory ruby / sketchup light reading / working documentation which I believe are free
http://rhin.crai.archi.fr/rld/pdf/Automatic_SketchUp.pdf
[quote=āChrisStewart, post:24, topic:10707, full:trueā]
I was not aware that the glueing plane could be set after the fact.
It looks to me that it has to be the top level component -no?
/quote]
The plane can be set afterwards using the component browser, right click the item and choose properties
Cutting if required is likely need for multiple faces, a technique I can share laterā¦Again an area that maybe updated with the new release, I hope along with report makingā¦hereās hoping
That is interesting, looks like a good book -thanks.
When i click on properties in the component browser I just get a window that says properties with a tab called details.
I did find another tab called edit at the top of the browser but all the options are greyed out
I see that it works in your passage door set file but not in mine -I suspected that I had corrupted that file some how and that is what is causing most of my problems. I guess I will need to start over from scratch.
So you are waiting because you are expecting major improvements to dynamic components in the next release?
It would not take much more to make them really useful -the ability to pull objects out of a library and size and position them as needed instead having to have them all nested within the component would be great.
Sorry, thought properties was the trick, relied on my memory without checking. So select the item in the browser, then open the next tab āEditā.
the properties menu works whilst on the home folder and takes one to same edit tabā¦but thatās a bit redundant since clicking āeditā is what is required anyway.
I have no knowledge to whether a upgrade on components will be done in the next release, just a hint in regards some BIM posts. But it does suit my schedule to give a bit of time in case they doā¦then I hope with mutual help from this forum we can quickly build a fix
In the meantime I am looking at the ruby without any pressure just to familiarise myself for this possibility.
Currently I use CAD and selfbuilt VBA routines to create layouts and lists for my clients in 2D, but I do see the merit of 3D, and Sketchup being easily accessible and relatively easy to use, means it maybe worth the investment
Iām far more comfortable with ruby than DCās, but find [this link][1] very useful resourceā¦
john
[1]: http://www.composant-dynamique.com/#!sketchup-dynamic-components/czoq
Thanks John, learned something about materials there.
I suppose that depends on what sort of work one does. Everything I do is 3d.
My goal would be to make doors simple but I see no way of doing that very well without using Ruby.
I have to suspect that most people who design buildings are using SU to supplement their primary CAD rather than as a complete design solution. I also noticed that the number two most downloaded component on 3DW is a door.
Iāve run into a problem using components it seems that once created there is no way to make one actually unique
-in effect a component can not be re-purposed because even if you change the name or select āmake uniqueā if you then edit that component all the other ones like it will be edited the same.
Is this correct or am I doing something wrong?
Surely there is some way to re-use components without having to make them all over again.
youāve probably got nested components (components within components) - making a nested component unique will make it unique, but if itās in an enveloping component, then every instance of the enveloped component will have that unique component within in. (does that make sense?)
You got a Door, Knob, Bolt and Frame. All components. And the you group them all and make that into a component (letās call it Full_Door). You copied Full_Door everywhere.
Now if you make any changes, such as moving the knob higher, all the other Full_Doorās knobs will move too.
So you make one Full_Door unique, now you can freely move the knob and the other Full_Door components wonāt follow.
HOWEVER:
If you enter the Knob Component and make changes, all the other knobs will still change as well since that component isnāt unique yet.
One solution: enter Full_Door, select all and make them all unique.
Thanks for the help Gadget2020,
That answered the question ~I think.
I would need to explode a component so that there are no sub-components and then make each sub-component unique and then re-assemble the component.
So I can not wholly re-purpose a component which is made of sub-components. (Like this complex door)
-At least In one easy step
Still that helps
-I was trying to re-use a parametric door frame composed of 5 sub-components.
Most of the logic is contained in each of the sub-components with a reference to parent!
So even if I have to explode the frame the parent is fairly easy to remake and none of the subs need to be rewritten.
I had thought that simply re-naming the component and saving it would make it unique but i guess there is some sort of hidden link.
Thanks for the help Quantj,
That is an interesting idea,
I tried selecting all components in a nested group but āMake Uniqueā was not an available option. Is there some sort of procedure that I am not following correctly?
I guess you make a good point -sometimes it is handy that all same components act as one
Itās in the Right+Click options: (and even if thereās groups or ungrouped geometry, the option should still appear)
Oh I see what you mean now -thanks,
That works for non-nested components in groups but what I have is components within components down to 4 levels of nesting.
It may be that I need to learn a better way of making reusable components.
If I used āMake Groupā instead of āMake Componentā then I would be able to do what you say.
I am not really clear on the pros and cons of components vs groups, I started off using groups but seemed to run into problems (but those may have been more on me being a novice than problems with groups.
I think I had it the other way around- components made of groups but this new way would be groups made of components.
I will experiment with that -thanks.
Yea if you have several layers of nesting, itāll get complicated.
As for deciding when to use components vs groups, I decided based on if I plan on having many copies. of them, and if theyāll change. For your example, If you have a door bolt that will never change, it can be a group within the door component. But for a door panel that may be swapped out for a glass panel, Iād make those components since I may change their styles.
But yea, experiment around, takes a bit of playing around before you get a comfortable, or sure of how you want to organize your components.
Oh yeah that is right. I canāt use groups at the higher level because they canāt be saved.
I suppose if I went back to making components out of groups I could also make a component with sub-groups unique.
That would allow me to completely recycle a multi-nested assembly.
Well, my early version door set had some sort of problem where I was trying to substitute the door unit with a different style door and it would not redraw correctly -someone said they thought me using groups to make components might be problematic so I changed to all components.
Do you know of any particular problem of using groups to make components?
Anyway I see that it is much harder to change the geometry of a component than I imagined.
-I thought I could make new parts and then substitute them into the already made frame but it aināt that easy. 
Thanks for the help though -definitely is helping me learn.