Is there a way to stop inferencing on a group basis

I have a large mesh that I’m using to position some splines against. I have multiple groups that I’m positioning these splines against. The group with the large mesh (many tiny edges and vertices) is what sketchup mostly wants to snap to. I don’t want that. I want it to snap to other geometry in other groups that I have created, but I want to the mesh visible for positioning.

Is there a way to do this?

Is the mesh necessary in SU or could it just show in Layout?

There is not a way to turn inferencing off, globally or for specific objects. You can toggle inferencing off only while using the line tool (pencil). So perhaps you could put lines everywhere you need them the hide the mesh while you place splines on the line beginnings? Another common method is to open the tracing file in a separate file and export it as a 2d image, then reimport the image and trace over the image which has no inferencing.

Unfortunately this is a complex organic shape. The mesh is very messy, over 1m triangles, but overall relatively accurate, and is the result of a photogrammetry study of a real physical object that I’m trying to get an accurate model of. The splines were traced from 2d pictures of physical templates and then scaled. There is really no way to export the many slices of the hull form that I would need to create the 2d for tracing and positioning as endlessfix suggests. The mesh is not needed for anything other than reference and positioning. I was hoping that the RealityCapture photogrammetry software would produce a smoother more fair mesh, but I could not get that to happen. So I’m using splines, created from physical templates made from foam board carefully shaped to the real object, and then attempting to create the surface using curviloft. Attention Sketchup team: a new feature that allows inferencing to be turned on/off at the group level would be a great addition!!!

here is an up close image. I want to position the yellow splines without snapping to the gray mesh grid, but would like snapping to the black reference lines

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