I think we are. If your method works for you, good for you. But the vast majority of experienced SketchUp modellers, several of whom have responded in this thread, don’t recommend it.
Make of that what you will.
I’ve used SketchUp since version 3, but before that I had been using typical 2D layer tools for 10 years or more, and so did early on put geometry on separate layers, as part of my thinking. Only later did I find out that they weren’t really separate.
The 2D tools do have the same problem to overcome, and using layers is one way to solve it. But, there is a different solution, that could exist in SketchUp. There is a thing called Object Drawing mode. With that, whatever it is you draw becomes its own isolated object. Here’s a screen recording of Adobe Animate making a couple of shapes, that do interfere with each other, then them being drawn in object mode.
Near the end of the recording I effectively added another object to an existing one, and at that point Animate forced me to make them be a group. Which seemed reasonable. There is also a Break Apart option, which I didn’t show, that is the same as Explode. You could draw the six isolated faces of box and then select them, and explode, to get them to no longer be objects.
That approach on its own would make push pull a hard thing to do, because effectively every face is a separate group. So, another approach would be to draw the next so many faces in a way that dictates that they are all at the same level, and yet isolated from the rest of the model. In SketchUp 2020.1 there is a new feature that lets you right-click anywhere and start a new group. You could start a group (or component), draw a lot of faces that are allowed to interfere with each other, close the group, and you have something that can be moved around without messing up other geometry. All without using layers/tags at all. You could tag that new object in some way if you wanted to control its visibility along with similarly tagged groups or components.
@colin, your example of (2D) object drawing is nothing but what SketchUp is capable of: create group or component and create (but 3D) object in editing context.
Also at the end of the video there are several examples of “to front” and “to back” that have nothing to do with SketchUp where objects are located in 3D modeling space, not flat on a drawing board. To front and to back require use of the ‘Move’ tool and a value for the distance. Hard to compare them both.
I did think that I should have edited my video to cut those bits out. They were mainly a way to illustrate that to objects are isolated from each other, unlike the start of the video, where moving one item out of the way destroys the geometry of the other part.
Partly the first part was also to set up for a description of the new 2020.1 feature. It doesn’t help a 2017 user, but it does show that some thought is being put into different ways of working.
I think I can live with taking greater advantage of groups to assist me in the earlier stages of drawing things that will eventually become components. That does allow me to selectively isolate some geometry from other geometry that I do not wish to merge with what is in the group. It is slightly more awkward than I would like it to be compared to my original suggestion but at least I don’t have to come up with component names for some group of things that might or might not be temporary before I am ready to do so.
I am perfectly happy to consider tags only as a way of controlling the visibility of objects. I also am very well acquainted with the difference between object hierarchy in a design tool and attributes of objects - which I consider tags to be. What I said earlier about being able to draw shapes on a tag seems to have been misinterpreted. I simply meant that a tag attribute can be automatically assigned to a given shape as it is being drawn if a given tag has been identified as the current in use tag. That also happens to work for creating components by the way. It is not necessary to select a component and assign it a specific tag after the fact if the desired tag is the current in use tag. A tag assigned to a component has nothing to do with where that component lives in the hierarchy of the design. Since tags do not have anything to do in SketchUp with design hierarchy like groups and especially components do, why should there be any issue or problem with using different tags on primitive objects? I think it has already been mentioned that some of you use different tags on dimensions. Why don’t you put all of your dimensions in a component instead? If you don’t your suggestion that my approach is wrong might just be a bit hypocritical. I also find it interesting that some have suggested that system behavior could be upset by using tags other than Layer0 on primitive objects. That does not make much sense to me if in fact tags only impact what is visible or not visible.
It has also been mentioned that some of you have interacted with SketchUp models from other people that you have found to be messed up. I contend that this could be the case for any drawing if the user has not been careful with how they draw things. I have interacted with drawings where the drawing intent was to create a pretty picture. Components were indeed used to divide the design up into different categories for facilitating different views of the pretty picture. What I needed from the drawing was different however. I needed to be able to view the design by materials so that I could figure out how to draw manufacturing drawings. Nothing about the way the drawing was prepared allowed me to do that very easily. I don’t really believe that a drawing of the type I produce would be at all hard to work with. I create scenes with descriptive names that isolate various things in the design for the sake of the pretty picture. I have a list of tags whose names pretty obviously identify objects either by function or by material. Another user should be able to zero in on pretty much any view of the design they wish by careful selection of the scenes and or tags they wish to view. Somehow it seems like my drawing style produces a drawing that is at least as well organized as most any SketchUp drawing. My choice to use tags on primitive objects for tagging material types actually makes it a lot easier to keep track of materials and for me to create the scenes I want.
Again I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on this topic but I do wish that some of you would give my technique a try and take more advantage of the use of tags. Just because someone says that it is not supposed to work that way doesn’t seem to prevent if from working just fine for me. Maybe it could for you too?
I’d be interested to see a small sample model using your method.
Just checking that you understand that Components can be given the default name and you can go back and change them at any time, meaning you don’t have to decide on a name when created and Groups can be named and those names can be the same. Meaning you can have multiple groups called wood.
I will see what I can do to pull together a sample. I am not sure how to go about uploading it though.
I haven’t taken much advantage of groups so far but think they could be of help for some of the things I am doing. I tend to prefer to assign meaningful names from the get go when I create components. It helps me keep things organized. I guess that is one reason I am somewhat reluctant to create them sooner than necessary.
One thing that I was thinking about too was that for some parts of my drawings I find it convenient to leave shapes as shapes so that a given component might sometimes have nothing but shapes, dimensions and text inside of it. In those cases the various primitive objects typically have different tags so that I can still control their visibility.
This bags for sharing one of your well organized models, I would think.
So do you think SketchUp will ever fix the issue of the merging objects? This has been plaguing me to no end.
I read the arguments and I agree with you. Creating distinct layers for grouped / tagged objects should be elementary.
Creating groups and components is elementary and it prevents geometry from merging. This is the way SketchUp is designed to work. There’s nothing to fix in this regard.
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