How to see geometry again after clicking a scene?

Hey all, pretty basic question here…I’m a rhino user and am brand new to sketchup. I edited a bunch of stuff and then hit “Scene 1” to go back to a view…I guess I was treating “scenes” as I treat “named views” in Rhino…all of the geometry I’d built went away when I hit “scene 1”…how do i find that geometry again??

Try Zoom Extents in scene 1.

Or upload your model either here on the forum (drag it into your post if the file is smaller than about 5MB) or upload it to Dropbox or other file sharing service and provide a link here.

I don’t know what “named views” do in Rhino, so I’ll just describe how SketchUp scenes work.

SketchUp scenes can remember various aspects of the current view, including (for version 2020):

  • Camera position
  • Top-level hidden geometry
  • Hidden Objects
  • Visible Tags
  • Active Section Planes
  • Style and Fog
  • Shadow Settings
  • Axes location

When you change to another scene, its remembered values take effect. A very common error is to forget to update a scene after changing any of these and before selecting a different scene. The scene will then go back to the old saved values the next time you select it again.

One possible reason for model contents to seem to vanish as you change scenes is if you moved objects and the camera to set up another scene and the objects are no longer within sight from the camera position saved by the other scene. Object positions are fixed in model coordinates, not relative to the camera. So if the camera positions saved in two scenes are different, they won’t see the same part of the model and might see nothing but empty space if you moved objects. It is also possible to move the camera to where it sees nothing and then save that, but that is less common because it is immediately noticeable in the view.

It is also possible that a different set of tag, object, and visibility settings were remembered on the scene. That can cause objects visible in one scene to disappear when you change to another scene. That is a deliberate part of the purpose of scenes, but it can trip up beginners.

Which properties are remembered when you update a scene is determined by the settings on the scene. You can change these in the properties panel of the Scenes Window. Right click on a scene and choose “Show Details” to open the panel. Verify that the checkboxes for appropriate properties are chosen, arrange the view the way you want, and then click “Update scene” to capture the settings.

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THANK YOU! I had a feeling it was just me not understanding the interface. This is extremely helpful, I had the “Visible Layers” checked in the scene ‘properties to save’… All good now and my geometry is there again! Thanks so much for taking the time to write such a detailed response, I very much appreciate it!

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Thanks John! I think I figured it out, need to learn the basics of sketchup here haha

in that case, a good place to start is at learn.sketchup.com - SketchUp Fundamentals.

Thank you!