How do you use Components for Framing

Greetings - I am curious about how you recommend approaching a project with components. If you are framing a house with 2x6 walls for instance, and you will be using 2x6 by 10’ lengths in actual construction, do you start with a component of 2x6x10’, even though you will be cutting a lot of lengths shorter than 10’ (for jack studs, headers, etc.)? If you start with a 2x6x10 component you would then have to make a lot of unique components from this 2x6x10. How do you approach this?

You can scale your 2’‘6’’ component, that way, you wouldn’t clutter the component browser.
If SketchUp Pro I would make a Dynamic Component and reduce the scale attributes to one scale (length) like so:

file: 2by6.skp (165.0 KB)

Nice approach. I really need to master dynamic component creation someday. You can limit the maximum length, can’t you? For better report generation, it would be good to have 2x6x8’, 2x6x10’, 2x6x12’, 2x6x16’, etc components (with their maximum length limited appropriately) in order to generate the kind of lumber list you need for the lumber yard.

This works OK for square cut ends, but won’t work on roof rafters with mitered and "bird’s mouth"ed ends. Also, rafter cripples at hips and valleys are all unique typically. There is likely a way to do them as dynamic components, but a little more involved in their creation.

Yeah, that would be a different approach, but in real life, you would only order two lengths : One that fits the general heights of the walls and the other that suits the perimeter. If the project gets bigger, you might wanna check an extension like Estimator

If you like to play around with DC, here is an example of a more complicated one :

with it’s file : Tussenbalkgebint.skp (1.2 MB)
Or check the truss extension:

happy building!

Very helpful. I am not using Pro yet but this gives more reason to seriously consider buying it. Thanks!

Nice! I just realized that this does not require Pro which makes this tip even better!

Maybe a little different approach to consider. I would set out the studs and build the walls without opening for windows and doors. I’d set headers and sills in place along with trimmers and use them for as references for cutting those studs that need it. Then select all the stud components that get cut the same way, make them unique and edit one of them to cut away the waste. It’s quick and easy.

I’ve never understood the complaint about the In Model Components collection being “cluttered.”

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I guess it’ll comes down to what you are doing and who is it for? Are you preparing ConDocs or a quick estimate? Concept-Design or approval-to-built?
With ‘making unique’, will one bother to name it? (or let software add # number ?) You can, but in a large project, you would end up with lengths that (accidentally) are the same. If you had made the 2’‘6’’ unique and name them according to length (e.g. 2’‘6’'_10), You would be prompted that the name must be unique, so you can now: make a new name, or look for the already made copy in the component browser or where-did-I-used-that-in-the-model) By that time, I could have drawn a new Component or group…Either way, IMO, this will clutter the components list or outliner or Model Info>Statistics info panel:

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