I want to make a hole in a wall to make a doorway

How do you do that thing where you draw a rectangle inside another rectangle and push/pull it so that it cuts out a hole (like a doorway or window)? I keep having trouble with it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Please can someone show/ explain it to me? Can you do it on a rectangle that already has a depth or not?

See these video tutorials…



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I have looked at those tutorials, but I still can’t do it.

It just makes a box, sticking out the back but there is no hole. The new box isn’t hollow at all. Just a box attached to the back of the wall.

Yes you can. you just push it back to the back of the wall.
Maybe you can explain better what the problem is, when does it work? when not.
I can’t show you anything clearer than the training videos…

Edit: if it sticks out the back you have pushed to far, start pushing and then click on any of the back edges of the wall.

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Attach the model file to your reply so we can see what you’re doing.

Like so…
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USS (start) --1.skp (678.5 KB)

Thanks. This is driving me mad. I have made a simple rectangle and tried to do it in isolation but I still can’t get it. I want the hole made in the group: ‘Toilet Wall’. Where the guidelines are. The inner guides are for the doorway and the outer ones for the frame.

Please have a look, see what I’m doing wrong here.

Thanks.

You cannot push pull a hole in a face without depth. instead select the face you want to be a hole and delete it.

The one I am trying to push/ pull into a hole has depth.

The root of the problem is the geometry is off-axis.
Erase the Group an draw it again.

A 1mm thick wall seems a bit odd.

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Get rid of those guidelines :wink:

See this reworked copy of the model.
USS_Rework.skp (46.0 KB)

Turning off the Drawing Axes is very poor practice.
The cacophony of Styles and materials don’t help.

The tutorial tells you to use guidelines.

Thank you, Geo. It looks like that happened because I had to rotate and move the wall to fit the other walls. I don’t know why, but that wall came in the wrong place when I drew the rectangle.

What do you mean by ‘the cacophony of styles and materials’? I haven’t applied any styles or materials to the drawing.

Why is it odd to have a wall thickness of 1mm? The walls are only there as a guide. The walls, stairs and everything thing else will be deleted once I’ve drawn the object I want under the stairs.

Until now there was no way to know you are planning to delete the walls. Generally people don’t go to the trouble of putting in that kind of detail for stuff they are going to delete anyway. Why bother giving the walls any thickness at all if you are just going to delete them? Instead draw them with no thickness. Outline the door opening and delete the face.

Okay, thanks. Well, because someone said the walls had to have thickness before you could push/ pull holes in them. If it was a house plan, then it would need to have correct thickness walls but since this is just the backdrop setting and not the focus of the drawing, wall thickness need not be represented. I only queried that comment in case 1mm thick walls generated some kind of problem for SketchUp.

Well, yes, that’s true if you have to use Push/Pull to make the holes for the doorways. And it would be appropriate IF you were modeling a house. Since you aren’t modeling a house and the wall thickness is immaterial, there’s no need to draw the walls with thickness. Simply draw them as faces. Don’t make your work harder than it needs to be.

It’s not a problem for SketchUp that the wall is only 1 mm thick but you hadn’t told us previously that these walls you’re drawing are really just throw away geometry.

Well, yes to everything you said. Except, (as we’ve established now) they need thickness to be able to use the push/ pull tool. And I do have to use the push/ pull. Both now and later on, in the main model.