I have had a very rough cpl weekend trying to relearn everything and get efficient again but you guy have definitely helped renew my faith in humanity and I appreciate all of the advice, truly…
Ya, that was my bad…It is just extremely frustrating and I have watched hours of videos and been googling it and all kinds of stuff and nobody really breaks it down like I was hoping they would but I do really appreciate the responses…
Will the scenes automatically save which groups are active, as well?
What are you calling an “active” group? Scenes can save visibility states of geometry, either through tags visibility (preferred) or by hiding geometry.
The groups that appear in the outliner
The best course for your scenes is to control object visibility with tags, not by manually hiding objects.
Did you go through the tutorials I posted?
I haven’t- sorry- I will right now. Thanks again
so I have watched all three of these in their entirety and did learn a few extremely useful things but they unfortunately did not really explain how to solve my issue. On the layout design package, he seems to switch back and forth from scenes with section planes and tags that get added and removed automatically but when I try to do it, changing section planes affects previously saved scenes…I have uploaded my model and layout so hopefully someone can help me out… (please don’t judge me too harshly, they are far from done… :P)Transfer - Dropbox
boy do I feel dumb after finding out about tags 
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One thing i noticed is you can reduce your file size down to 11mb by running purge. Could not figure out what is making your file size so large until I turned on hidden objects. you have a lot of stuff hidden from view. When I do floor model I just try to limit the base model to the walls, doors, windows, roof, etc. I don’t add the terrain in the base model and then insert it later if needed. Trying to figure out the layout of you model is confusion. Your tag usage could use some work. there is a floor? that is not connected to your model? see screenshot.
I know this will sound terrible to you but I would consider starting over and just draw the basement. group the entities and then make the floor a component. Then add the next floor and so on. I like to group entities such as walls, floor, ceilings, windows, doors per floor and create tags for them instead of the whole floor. you can copy and past from your model to a new model. I noticed on your main floor that the front exterior wall is not flat as evidenced by the lines from the corners of the windows. not surprised you are having issues with Layout. Maybe check out the Condoc tools by Michael Brightman or Nick Sonders site just to get the basic of drawing and organizing a model. Good luck
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Front wall issues
homestead(REMODEL) copy.skp (2.5 MB)
I deleted the terrain for now, deleted all casework, toilets, bahttubs etc. File size is down to 2.5mb not sure how you are drawing the floor plans but start with the floor ( remember floors have depth) make the floor a group. Then draw the wall lines on the floor and then push the walls up to the desired wall height. Make the walls a group. Open the group and add teh windows and door openings in the walls. Move up to the next floor and repeat process.
I don’t think Scenes relocate section planes. If you want a section plane in one position in a Scene and a section in another for another Scene, then you need a section plane positioned properly for each of those scenes. I go an extra step and put these planes on their own tag, toggling the tag as required for the particular scene. At least, this is how I make sense of it.
Not sure about PC, but one thing that confused me was that on Mac there are two ways of saving/ updating a scene’s settings. Right click on the top tab and you get the simplified Update. Right click on the scene in the Scenes Window and you get the Update (with options). You need this one to save a scene without changing the camera position, (which is the way I always set a new section plane - i.e rotate view in 3d, placed the plane, make it active, turn off section planes, right click the update scene in the Scenes Window, turn off Camera Position and click Update
Ta Da. (for me)
4 suggestions: 1. Try the Supersection extension. 2. use the Auto Invisible Layer extension. 3. always save the model in a “working” scene (which saves only tags) before updating Layout. 4. never draw something in Layout if it can be done in SketchUp
it takes some time to understand the relationship between scenes and styles, but once you do I think you will find it to be really powerful. If I wanted to learn, say, Revit now it would probably take me years. Its important to also recognise that section planes behave like objects, so if you move it in one scene, that particular section plane will be moved also in all other scenes that uses that particular section planes.
Check what properties gets saved to the scene, and experiment with it when without time pressure …
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I added the supersection extension and it seems quite promising. And, been using Auto Invisible layer for quite a long time now. Thanks!
I’m not familiar with this one and not finding it anywhere. Have a link?
I don’t know if this is the latest, @daiku was asking some folks to test a new version:
https://extensions.sketchup.com/extension/c86274c4-28c4-479a-ab90-48f135487891/super-section
The new version of Super Section has not been uploaded yet, but feel free to give it a try: CB_SuperSection_2.0.1.rbz - Google Drive
It will create a scene and a tag, to make it easy to pull into layout. It will also create a “scrim” behind the section cut, to obscure the rest of the model. The scrim can be flipped to make it opaque or transparent, or simply deleted if you don’t want it. This is still in beta test, so feedback is appreciated.
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