Hiding groups and layers

I use sketch-up mostly to design and plan kitchen projects. To support my layout presentations and plans I usually create a multitude of scenes. When creating a new group for a specific scene the new group becomes automatically visible in each of all the other scenes just a any new layer becomes automatically visible in each scene. I then manually hide the new new layer or hide the new group and up-date the scenes where the new groups are not wanted.

As I often add groups or explode larger groups into smaller groups for the purpose of displaying different elevations, perspectives or details for shop drawings this has become a tedious and time consuming process. Is there a better and more efficient way?

There are several extensions out there that will create layers that can be automatically hidden in existing scenes. Auto-Invisible Layer is one. It’s available in the Extension Warehouse.

It’s also better and more efficient to plan farther ahead when possible so you don’t need to struggle with the added layers.

Hi Dave,

I shall try the auto-Invisible Layer. Thank you for the advise.

What do I do if I have to break out a group of a larger group for more detail. For example if I need to show more detail of a single cabinet in a separate set of shop drawings. Any new group will appear in any of my existing scenes.

Are you modeling every cabinet in the kitchen model so that every part you’d make in the shop is a group?

Instead of using groups, use components. Since you know that you’ll need to show some details for a single cabinet, you can copy the cabinet to a new file and make the various views there. That works fine but would create some additional work if you need to modify that cabinet because you’ll need to make the changes in two files. Or you can make a copy of the cabinet in the same model and put it on its own layer. For detail views such as exploded views or closeups of parts of the cabinet, turn off all the kitchen layers so you only have the one cabinet displayed. Then you can work with that cabinet as if it’s the only thing in the model. If you use components instead of groups editing the components in one copy of the cabinet will result in the other copies being edited, too.

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I understand completely hat will be very helpful.

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