Hi everyone. I wish there was a Newbie Question area so that I don’t have to bother everyone with my basic questions that you all have probably see again and again.
I’ve finished my first floor, for now (can still add details like crown and shoe molding, etc.) and I would like to know how I proceed to the second floor? Do I add it to my existing first floor or do I create a second separate file for the upstairs? I ask because my file is getting pretty large at 132 mb. And also, should I render the exterior of the house separately if I’m going to want to try to place it in a scene? Thanks for your time. Robin
*I just realized I forgot to create the porch steps handrails.
In addition to purging unused, you might look at components you’ve used from the 3D Warehouse to see if they can be simplified. From your interior views, I’m guessing that the appliances could be simplified a great deal. Since they are built in, they don’t need backs, bottoms or sides. Your refrigerator could be reduced to just the doors and if there’s any interior details on the doors, that can be deleted. You may be able to do similar things in the bathroom.
I would be inclined to draw the rest of the house in the same model file. Use Layers to allow you to control the visibility of components and groups in the model and turn off layers for things you don’t need to see. The furniture, cabinetry and appliances aren’t needed while you are adding the second floor so turn their layers off. Reduce what is displayed to only the barest minimum–the walls.
Although it’s cool to see the materials as you’re working on your model, it’s much more efficient to work in Monochrome face style so the textures don’t need to be processed and redrawn every time you orbit. It also makes it easier to keep on top of face orientation and keep them corrected. Leave texturing until near the end of the modeling process.
Yes MichaelSiggers, I have Purged on several occasions. I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes during this first model that I now know to avoid. For instance, since math is not my strong suite, I drew all my cabinets with geometry instead of making component doors. I’m sure that helped to bog down the file, not to mention I can’t easily change colors or styles very easily. And I did not separate my interior walls from my exterior walls. All part of the new-to-sketchup learning curve I’m sure.
Good idea! Thanx for this DaveR.
I’m getting pretty good at this Dave.
I tried to make the first layer a component and then tried to trace an outline around my component to use as the floor of the second story and as soon as I closed the path the entire first floor disappeared! So, of course, I cmd Z to undo. Not sure how to proceed from here. I will search some video tutorials.
Your model is looking very nice, kudos.
From my experience your file size is very large for your design. As @DaveR noted I agree about Whse models. As a practice, I import Whse models into a specific “import model”, clean them up, and then copy and paste into my working model.
My clean up includes Textures. Textures can make up a large chunk of file size. As an example, I had a 40MB model, did a test by deleting all textures from the model, new file size 22MB. As a note, I do use a number of *.jpg textures.
I suggest making a copy of the first floor, save as a component, paste in place, then edit/modify the new component to become the second floor, move the edited component to the appropriate height above the first floor. Now either component may be further edited as needed and it’s much faster to model this way.
Thanks Lindsey. However, I am a newbie at this and you’re talking way over my head in your first paragraph. I don’t even know what a Whse model is! LOL As far as textures, I haven’t advanced to the stage of understanding how to use .jpg textures yet. Unless it’s where you go to the warehouse, select a textile swatch and then apply it to something. In that case, yes, I have done that.
My ultimate desire is to have a model, (like on the show Fixer Upper ~ where I first learned about this program), of my architectural floor plan to show my husband my ideas on this house (which we are in the process of building). It might be a little pie-in-the-sky, but I’m having fun learning it all the same. And I appreciate everyone’s comments and assistance.
Just open a New SU model and import your 3Dwarehouse model into it.
Check it over:
Does it have layers you don’t want? If so, in Layers window, delete the layers and move the contents to Default layer (should always be Layer0)
Does it make sensible use of components? If so, are there parts of the model you don’t want to include? Delete them. If it doesn’t, is it otherwise well drawn?
If you want to edit it, can you?
Does it use textures? Are they sensibly sized, or far too big, bloating file size to no purpose? If so, edit the size down
Is it (as many are) far too detailed, with too many segments in circles, etc? If so, consider redrawing some or all of it (see some ways of doing this in my post Simplifying 3Dwarehouse models for use as entourage
Thanks @john_mcclenahan, but how do you know if they are “sensibly sized” when you don’t know what a proper size should be? As always, thanx for sharing your knowledge! R~
Think about how big (in pixels) they will be when you view them in your model or in print.
If it is (say) a chair you only view as part of a room, and the room full screen is full HD (1920 px wide) you are unlikely to want your chair more than (say) one fifth or less of the screen width. So your texture image needn’t be more than about 400px wide.
And you can usually get away with even less - unless the chair is a principal object in the scene.
I just tried to click the link to this link John and got this message, {“errors”:[“The requested URL or resource could not be found.”],“error_type”:“not_found”}
The link does seem to be broken, you might have more luck with this one…
I just went to the post and copied the link @john_mcclenahan, if its of use I’ ll leave it here in that case…
EDIT- Turns out Johns copying from the address bar, not the post. I just PM him. In case anyone wonders.
Sorry, must have dropped a character or something. Fixed in the post above. Try it again. It works here for me, so I hope it does for you too.
But I see IanT has got there before me - and his shows nicely. Or did, before he withdrew it. Ian, how did you get it to display? Mine, even corrected, doesn’t do that!
Thaks, Ian. Leave it there please!
Odd, when I click on my re-pasted link, it works to take me to the right page, but doesn’t display nicely…
I have a Sketchup model with my preferred textures that I import 3d Warehouse models into. I then change textures on the imported model to my preferred textures and make any desired revisions, before I copy and paste the imported model to my working model.
. Thanks