I made a model and I want to do layers. What I think is my problem is that when I created the walls, I should have made that a group before making the roof. In the stuff I read on line about layers they don’t discuss the sequence of doing layers while building a model, but devote the most time discussing what they are. Further, they seem to think I can select areas to be a layer but since the parts are “glued” together, I really don’t see that working very well.
It’s not much work to delete the roof, and turn the walls into a group and redo the roof. Is that my best option?
If you can select the roof to delete it you can select it to group it. Then make the wall group.You should be able to select the walls or roof separately. and make a group of those elements. Often it helps to use a side view (try the standard views) and you want to use parallel projection, though not always necessary to be able to select the part you want. I would right left select the walls,–I know you might not get the top face but you can easily recreate that or copy it from the left over faces and “paste in place” in the wall group.
I usually start by making groups and components, and layers follow sooner or later after. Sometime I am using a template that already has layers I want.
Well, that almost worked. Half the roof remained stuck to the walls, so I deleted the roof, and am about to redraw it.
Something I don’t how to prevent.
Is there a way to turn the ceiling off so it stays off while I fill in the headers? When I draw the walls on a 2d plane, I leave the doors open. Then I pull up the walls, and fill in the headers.
Every time I would fill in a header above the doors, and the ceiling would fill in. I would select it, delete it, then go to another door to do the header, and once again it would refill the ceiling. Once again I would select the ceiling and delete it, so I could work on the next door.
This is a fundamental part of SketchUp. In order to prevent new geometry from sticking to existing geometry, the existing geometry needs to be grouped. At this point it sounds like your model is a bit of a mess. You could select all of the ungrouped geometry and put it in a group. Then use it as a reference for drawing the new geometry making sure you create appropriate groups as you go.
The walls look fine to keep working with. EDIT I noticed one thing. The wall group is glued to the plane below. You might find that disconcerting. You can use the “unglue” contextual command with the wall group selected.
I don’t know why the roof stuck to the walls-unless there were edges or groups somehow extending down the walls. If you look at the video, I did not touch any roof parts and therefore only wall surfaces and edges were selected. Admittedly I had to “lose” top of wall faces, to be picked up later by that method. Of course the best method is to start using groups as you start to draw.
In your model you should reverse the wall faces so only front faces face out /are visible. The style you are using does not show high contrast of back faces to front faces and that makes it hard to tell when faces are the wrong way. Try a style where back faces showing is obvious. And I dare say it’s hard to discern many things in the model when all is bright and white. Where you want that look, save that style for final output scenes. I use a “working” scene to take me back to a simple style that is clearer, faster, and easy to model with.
You’ll also want to group each cabinet and tub etc. Assign them to an FF&E layer. It’s nice to be able to just see the walls by themselves, and the best way is to group other items and assign them to separate layers from the wall layer.
I chose the style so it would print as black lines, and show the textures on the footing, where I plan new walls. These are for the plan checkers who don’t like lots of colors etc. Simple monochrome line drawings.
I don’t know how to reverse the wall faces. I just drew the walls 2d then pulled them all up in one go. They came out however they are.
Since the cabinets etc. are minimally representational of what might go there I didn’t spend a lot of time on them. Who knows what the owner will purchase? It’s going to be a rental.
While it would be nice to do a nifty drawing like the house above, I am being paid a minimal amount to get the plans through the county and approved for construction. Hence, minimal plans.
Understood. Just ideas that may make things easier. Certainly grouping your cabinets will make them easier (not attaching to the walls) and you can move them, delete them, or reuse if you want, without hurting the walls.
Yeah I do the same thing --mostly black and white and simple lines for construction drawings. In presentation to the client I may use styles and scenes that show colors and textures. It’s just a different setting for the same model.
Well, now I have a new problem. I imported my files into Layout, did labels etc. and saved it as a PDF. Some of the drawings are very light, almost to being illegible.
How do I darken them up?
The other thing, is for some reason, when I start importing stuff into Layout, the cover page ends up being blank, instead of having content. I am at a loss why this happens - in the past I don’t save that page when I create the PDF, which strikes me as a stupid solution. When I try to copy the whole page to the first it goes haywire. Any ideas?
