Edges on tags

I know, I know… raw geometry doesn’t belong on a tag other then “untagged”.

But

In the model I’m working with currently, I’m having a difficult time finding center points of the object once I’ve pulled it into layout. I want to draw a centerline of the object, but again, I’m not getting the “midpoint of” indicators in LO that would tell me that I am creating the line in the correct position.

As my solution, I am placing an edge along the object centerline in SU and assigning a tag to it with the tag line being set to show as a centerline. This edge is place within a group that contains the object in question along with a couple other modeled, associated objects.

Am I setting myself up for trouble in this scenario? I think not, but I could be overlooking something…

Thanks!

You are potentially setting yourself up. It makes your model more diifficult to manage and prone to errors down the road. When I add things like centerlines or lines frow parts in exploded views those edges get put into component and the componnts get the tags as normal.

if I could only make a group or component out of a single edge…

I added a screenshot to the question (you’re always quick on it, Dave!)

You can do that. Use the keyboard shortcut for creating the component or group.
comp

I wonder why you can’t infer the midpoints in LayOut. That shouldn’t be difficult.

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As usual, Dave, you come through with esoteric Sketchup knowledge that saves my bacon! We will need to preserve your brain for posterity!

In Layout, I’ve been able to get centerline on most everything I’m working on. I just have these 3 or 4 objects that the only tool tip I get is “object edge”. It just won’t tell me if I’m on the middle, as it does for 90% of the objects that I’m working with.

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Salt cured or smoked? :crazy_face:

Makes me curious about the geometry of those objects. Are they exploded into a bunch of very short segments or something?

I don’t think so. They’re models of I beam steel initially created with the 3Skeng plug in. 3Skeng creates them as a group consisting of a solid object, the beam, and a centerline. For these particular beams, I exploded this grouping, deleted the edge part, and was left with the beam as a solid group. I then had to use solid tools trim function to shape the ends into the connection called out in the engineering, creating several cutting solids with which to perform this modification. And I have the result I needed. Entering into one of those groups, just now, one of the offending edges is, indeed, intact - no short segments.

So, I’m at a loss to understand the problem over in LO.

Thanks, Dave, as always!

Oh, and smoked, of course

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Odd. It would be interesting to be able to see those objects.

here’s one image from the model; I’m waiting on a zoom meeting to start, I can send the file if your like once that’s over

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Send it in a PM if you don’t want to make it public.

I’ve been messing about with a general idea you could use here: Make a unit length line (or whatever) to you’re liking and make it a component. When you need one, bring it in, position and orient it in the right direction, and then use scale to stretch the length to fit. When the next situation comes up, repeat the sequence with another instance either coming from “In Model” collection or a locally save collection.

this is a model of the particular beam. it’s just copied / pasted in place from the larger, full model

2.27.23_W36x135 #4.skp (326.3 KB)

Hmmm… I’m able to find the midpoints in LO.
centerline
Do you have Grid Snap enabled?

Not grid, but object snap. And, I am not consistently getting the tool tip showing the mid point - sometimes yes, sometimes no. And I’m not sure if increasing file size (50-75 scenes of individual beams in the full SU model) has any bearing on the performance in Layout. I know that the more I add to any Sketchup model, the less consistent and predictable its behavior becomes.

Another question I am going to post here is in regards to Scenes. I can’t believe there isn’t an organization structure to the Scenes window as has been added to Tags.

I used a handy plug in “View Parts”. I will very quickly generate a scene for each group or component in a model, hiding everything else. I use these scenes, then, in LO. But, I don’t know how it orders them, so the result in the Scene window is far from how I would organize them. I cannot drag and drop the Scenes into a reasonable order nor will more than one at a time work with the up / down arrows to move scenes in the window. So, organizing 50-75 scenes (also a short coming in that there is no count of scenes in the model displayed) is tedious as I move each individual scene into a position of better organization.

I tried Curic’s Scene Manager program and it seemed to be a good solution. But, it doesn’t reorganize the native SU Scenes window and, somehow, after doing all the work of organizing the scenes in the Curic window, I did something that erased the modified order. Not sure what.

Do you know of any solution to this?

Thanks, Dave

I agree. Scenes are essential to a good work flow, and the current system is not adequate to cope with them.

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Awhile back, I was actually taking screenshots from my models and then dropping those into Layout for making notations. I’m not sure that’s not a better method until Trimble puts some $'s into making LO work as it should.

It would be nice to be able to understand why there seems to be such a difference in performance between Mac and Windows. On PC I wouldn’t recommend using screenshots of the model in LayOut.

It would, I agree

here’s a quick video I made of what’s going on; take a look and let me know if this works differently on windows

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Here’s something that I had to diagram. A steel connection.Since it has angles in 3 dimensions, it’s hard to describe in 2D views. I tried just dimensioning the piece in a separate SU file, and save that as a scene, but text sizes in SU don’t come into LO all that well. I find them generally to appear too large in the LO viewport. After screwing around for awhile, trying the get the text size and positioning right, I gave up and just took this snapshot. Done deal.

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