Gluing a component to a face so that you can then push the window through

I am having real problems when attempting to copy and paste a component on to a wall and then push the opening through to create the window. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Please see model.Option 4.skp (416.5 KB)

Many thanks.

The title assumes that you are working with a “Glue To” window component.
I don’t see any such a component in your ‘In Model’ library.
Also, if you would attach such a component glued to a face it can only cut one face, (if you also give it a “Cut Opening” property), not the second inner face.

If you want to go through the entire wall you could use a combination of a “Glue To /+ Cut Opening” component plus a basic rectanglular window face that you push through the double faced wall.

Mindsight Studios has an extension that can do what you want. It has a free trial, I costs $39.00. Mindsight Studios.

This may be a variation on what @Wo3Dan has suggested. But forget the Cut Face option. Glue the window to the wall. Use it as a template to draw a rectangle the same size as the window on the wall. Use Outliner to hide the window. Push the face through to form the opening. Turn the Component visibility back on and sink the window into the wall at whatever depth you want.

Making the Cut Face option work can be tricky and I’m not sure it saves you much time in this kind of (common) situation.

My own workflow for this kind of thing is actually a little different. I start by forming all my openings. Only then do I start populating them with window and door components.

And remember that ‘cut face’ doesn’t actually cut the face and create ‘real’ geometry in the face it cuts. All it does is make that piece of the face invisible when the component is glued to the face itself, in the context of the component containing that face (and not just to the outside of the component containing the face).

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John makes a really good point. The Cut Face option is, in a sense, a fake. So (presumably) if you wanted to work out the area of a wall, one that has Cut Face components would misrepresent the actual area of tiling/brick/siding/whatever as it would include the openings. I haven’t tested this, so I guess it is possible that it is cleverer than I suppose.

Hi folks.

Click in sequence on the scenes tabs of this SU file for a few ideas.

Window in thick wall.skp (77.4 KB)

More or less what I showed above, I guess.

Do a test. There is no face in the component’s loop that cuts the larger face.
Z-fighting will be eliminated due to the cut, with or without an opening.
The actual face area will also be correct when cutting an opening in a larger face. Even with a scaled window component.

p.s. you also don’t get an ‘On Face’ inference inside the void due to the cut if the window component also lacks a face inside the loop that cuts the larger face. Nothing fake about the cut.

There’s… something fake about it…



But on the other hand, faces aren’t “real” or “fake” based on whether they are constrained to real edges, they are just “constrained to real edges” or not, I guess. The “stretched” face was achieved by resizing and raising axis on the component on z. Validity check fixed it afterward by moving the component down so that the origin returned to the “glue plane.”

In your third image I see something of an abnormal behaviour in the larger top face.
This has happened to me too in the past in ceveral ocasions (buggy) but couldn’t reproduce it. Can you?
Could you share such a file?
In any case, it is not normal behaviour when I scale a ‘Glue to’ component perpendicular to the larger face. The gluing plane of the component stays in place with a correct larger face.
I wonder what steps you did to reveal this visual bug.

You can reproduce it by “raising” the axis of a component that has Cut Opening already operational within a face in the model. It doesn’t reproduce with “lowering,” the axis, and I haven’t tested moving the axis on x or y.

face.skp (128.0 KB)

I can’t save a skp after moving the axis in Desktop because saving prompts a validity check which fixes the “invalid” face.

And in Web, face distortion after raising Cut Open component axis does not reproduce.

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I have done a test and I was wrong. It IS cleverer than I thought! The face that has been cut does have its calculated area reduced by the size of the cut hole.

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I am currently constantly working in a web version and so didn’t see the visual bug.
Rotating a “Glue to” component rotates it but also unglues it from the face. Correct actions!

The ‘Change Axes’ operation only slides the red/green plane in its current plane (for me). No way I can raise the local R/G plane to distord the cut face visually.

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Lately I have started preferring to have my walls as solid groups. Yes, I would love to use cutting components, but they interfere with, for instance, section fills. So I glue my windows outside the wall groups, and push-pull the openings separately.

You can make thick glue cutting components that require a bit of extra work to remove the second face, but not much.
Thick cut

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For those who are trying to figure out what happens in @Box’s gif above:

  • the thick component glues to the first face.
  • due to the thickness of the component the other side intersects the second face.
  • then the ‘Intersect Faces with …Model’ operation creates extra geometry (a loop) in this second face. Its inner face is then removed.
  • moving or rotating the window requires a ‘window selection’ around both the component and the raw geometry in the back
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Absolutely correct @Wo3Dan
All basic sketchup, no extensions, double wrapping, exploding etc
the component remains unchanged and can be scaled to fit any thickness or be any shape. And even if there are lots of them it isn’t difficult to remove the multiple faces with a few clicks. Left to right select, shift double click, delete.
Remove faces

I sometimes use a cutting component for both faces and move them together if needed. Box’s video is a cool use of the selection functions in SU to take out just what you need quickly.