I have been working with Solids that I have created on different layers.
I wanted to take a pair of faces off a solid on (call it) LayerA and use it on LayerB. What is the correct way to do this?
e.g. Can I click Edit Group and click once on the face ==> Control/C ==> go to the layer I want ==> “Paste in Place” ?
The reason why I ask is because although I managed to copy the face and even paste the face, all sorts of weird things started to happen. For example it would be visible when I pasted it but as soon as I clicked on it with the line tool it disappeared. Or on another attempt it appeared as a face with lines around 3 sides but when I tried to draw on the 4th side, nothing happened.
Eventually I copied the entire sold and deleted every face except the face I needed. Having been created in this way it behaved much as expected.
Many thanks
PS I am slightly unclear about how layers work because some parts of a solid seemed to get left behind on the original Layer. Is there any way to make sure all the component parts of a solid arrive in the Layer I want it to?
Short answer: All primitives (edges, faces, arcs, curves) need to remain with their layer property assigned as “Layer0”.
Only group, component instances, cpoints and clines should have their layer property assigned as some other layer.
If you read the links above, you should hopefully understand that SketchUp “layers” are really “shared visibility masks”. They do not act as a context to separate geometry from other contexts. (That is what group and components do.) Ie, SketchUp layers are not collections that “own” objects.
Objects are not placed onto layers. An object’s layer assignment is a property that points at a layer, and tells SketchUp to display the object according to the layer object’s various properties.
Conclusion: As discussed elsewhere, SketchUp “layers” are really misnamed, and this misnaming confuses many users, especially those coming from traditional CAD applications, who expect (and still desire) geometric layer separation.
Layers in “industry-standard” AutoCad and SketchUp are virtually identical (only that SketchUp cannot associate line types or widths with layers). AutoCad layers have no geometrical “separation” at all because AutoCad has no geometrical “interaction” either. In AutoCad you can draw a zillion lines that are on top of each other or cross each other and they stay separate whether they are on the same or different layers. And AutoCad is a fully 3D application and still calls its layers “layers”.
True, but, Do users really care about this form of reverse logic ?
No, they only care that they want layers to not interact geometrically.
Disagree. In CAD, objects are placed ON layers. They are collections of objects.
Other differences are Locking, Freezing, Include in Plot, and perhaps more.
I haven’t used AutoCAD in at least 5 years, maybe more. So you can beat on the nitty details for sure.
But from my point of view, the only thing in common (now) is a visibility switch.
