Editing rail and style components

It would be much easier to give you exact guidance if we could see the SketchUp file. Could you share it? If you don’t want to share it publicly, you could send it in a private message to me by clicking on my Name.

It sounds like you may not have made the original items (rail or stile) “components” ? select the whole rail or stile and “right click” to “make component” then when it is copied any edits to it will alter all other components of it. This is different than making a copy of something. The copy will reproduce the exact item but any further edits to it will only affect that one item and not other copies of it.

It turned out to be a fairly common new user error. The rail was made into a component but then it was opened and the geometry copied within it so it was effectively two lumps of loose geometry inside one component container. All sorted and on to bigger and better things now.

1 Like

Dave, you are my new hero, thanks for all the help today!

1 Like

Aw, shucks. T’warnt nuthin’. :slight_smile:

I’m happy I could help.

Once again Dave, thanks for the help the other day. I’ve spent the last couple days just building random things and learning more about SketchUp. I started back in on the project today and I was feeling pretty good about everything. Well I’ve hit a bump in the road and I’m not sure what to do. Its a total newb problem, but I was hoping for a little help. The bed is going to be a trundle bed, so it has 2 “headboards” and a backboard. I built the sides, put everything in components and then thought I could make all the individual components of the “headboard” a component so I would not have to move them all individually. That worked out fine until I needed to open up one of the posts to erase some lines I drew for alignment. Now the whole thing is acting as a component and I can’t open up the individual parts. Did I screw it up or can I salvage this still? Enclosed is what I have so farCaleb’s Trundle Bed.skp (92.7 KB)

Hi Chris,

You’re quite welcome.

No. I don’t see that it is screwed up or unsalvageable. Take a look at Outliner and consider the structure of the file. Your headboard assembly is “Component #10”. Think of it as a container, a box of chocolates. The post with the lines you want to get rid of are “Component #1”. That’s an individually wrapped chocolate from the box. so to get to the geometry or chocolate itself, you have to open the box (Component #10) and then open the wrapper, “Component #1”, to access the geometry. So double click on the headboard with Select and then double click on the post to open that component for editing. Then you can erase the unwanted edges.

Although you don’t absolutely have to do so, it is a good idea to give each component a useful name as you make them. That makes them easier to identify in Outliner as well as in the cut list when you make that. You can go through your model an edit the definition names by selecting the components and renaming them in Entity Info.

Worked like a charm. And that was a perfect description of the chocolate box. Thanks for the help again.

1 Like

Sorry, one other small thing. The center stile in that panel is a different color on my computer. I don’t know why or if I did something wrong. Its a separate component that the ones on either side of it since I had to put grooves along both edges, but I would think that it would stay the same color as everything else

Sorry. I meant to mention that. The faces are reversed on the center stile. Open that component for editing and triple click to select all of the geometry. Then right click on one of the faces and choose Reverse Faces.

Not sure about the process you used to draw it to wind up with it reversed but it’s fixable.

You da man Dave. Thanks once again. Im not sure if its a Mac thing, but reverse geometry was not an option, only reverse faces. I selected that and it seemed to work, at least it turned it white!

Sorry. Reverse Faces.

this reminds me of the presentation of @MikeTadros at the 3D Basecamp:

Everything in Outliner just says “Group”

4 Likes

Thanks Dave. Yes I am around today. I was out this morning at the gym, but Im ready to get my skutchup on!

Drop me a PM if you want to connect again.

:clap::clap::clap:

1 Like

Sorry for not getting back with you Dave. Im leaving tonight for Buenos Aires and had to get some bills and property tax stuff done. I am available and would love to talk if your available. I picked up a new laptop yesterday so I don’t have that program you sent before loaded up.

You say that like it’s no big deal. :smiley:

PM sent.

So I think I have the bed complete. I’ve been playing around with scenes and layers trying to figure out how to do dimensions and what is the best way to approach it. At first I was just building a scene and adding layers to that scene with different dimensions. But I started thinking about your advice of “build it like your going to build it in the shop” so I abandoned my initial approach (I went missed approach!). I would like to lay it out almost step by step as if I were putting together some junk from Ikea. So I am back to watching video 6 in your basic series and see what I can do. Here is what I have so farCalebs bed3.skp (155.8 KB)

1 Like

Though not always the material of choice, the precision of their furniture always impresses me…

BTW. Did you know that most, if not all of their furniture is modeled in SketchUp?

2 Likes