Hi,
I seem to have locked a layer I’m working on in Sketchup Make. All the help seems to show you can lock layers but the screenshots are all from the pro version. I can’t see any ‘lock’ symbols on this (or any layer) in the list. Is this a technical glitch or have I locked it somehow? See screenshot below… TIA
Your screenshot is from SketchUp Free or Shop (web), not from SketchUp Make.
If by ‘locked a layer’ (tag) you mean that you can’t delete it, just make active tag Untagged again and then you can delete that tag.
As mihai.s wrote, that’s not SketchUp Make, it’s SketchUp for Web, and there’s no way to lock a Tag. You’ve made the tag called OAK TRIM active which you should not have done. The pencil icon should be left set to Untagged at all times.
FWIW, if you are using this in your carpentry business you need to be using SketchUp Shop or SketchUp Pro.
OK thanks for that. So is there a way to undo this?
Set the pencil icon back to Untagged where it belongs.
You’ll probably need to go through your model selecting all the geometry and setting it back to Untagged. That will require making all the tags visible, though.
OK thanks thats sorted thank very much for your help. Can I ask what the pencil icon is used for/whats its function?
In about 99.9% of SketchUp modeling it seems to be mostly there to confuse new users. For the vast majority of users it should remain set to Untagged. All edges and faces are created and left as Untagged and only objects (groups, components, dimensions and text) should get tags assigned to them.
If you follow that procedure, there’s never a reason to change the active tag.
Top man thanks.
You’re welcome.
Note that when you edit a group or component you will be working with the untagged geometry so even if you add a tag to the group or component, you still want Untagged to be active.
And be aware that if you later explode a group or component object that you have tagged, its internal geometry will inherit the object’s tag too. While it is still selected after the Explode, reset its tag to Untagged (or in older versions of SU, Layer0).
I still wonder why it was decided to do it that way. It makes much more sense to do it the AutoCAD (and probably other programs) way where exploding a block puts Layer 0 and objects on other layers back on the same layers they were when the block was created. Based on the number of questions I see around here, the SU way creates many problems that would be avoided with that other approach.
The explode/tag thing isn’t even all that consistent. For example, take a group tagged “body” that consists of 4 groups with a “leg” tag and one group with a “head” tag. All of the geometry in each of the groups is “untagged”. If you explode the “body” group you get 4 “leg” tagged groups and 1 “head” tagged group. Explode any of those groups and the raw geometry contained in them suddenly isn’t “untagged” anymore. I can’t think of a benefit to that happening. Oh well, IIWII…
Layers is really a 2D concept and doesn’t work so well in 3D. Over the years we would see questions about how to put the contents of one layer in front of another like you do in 2D applications. That doesn’t make any sense in a 3D space, however. If you want a 3D object to appear in front of another 3D object you move it to between the camera and the other object. The term layer implies to many that they provide separation between entities
My feeling is that the choice (more than 20 years ago) of the word Layer was unfortunate. Although some users don’t like the word tag which replaced layer, I think it makes more sense for the what they do. Nothing was ever put on a layer in SketchUp and nothing is put on a tag now. they are a property given to an object (component, group, etc.) and if anything, you put a tag on an object. They are used primarily to categorize objects for visibility control in scenes.
I agree with you that when an object is exploded to raw geometry, it would be nice if the geometry remained untagged. It can be very useful however to have untagged objects take the tag from the parent when a nested component or group gets exploded.
I just wish it was consistent. It would make it easier to explain. As with my example above, an exploded tagged group gives you the components/groups that were in it with their correct original tags but fools around with any bare geometry. Reminds me of an English spelling rule, “I before E except after C, with some exceptions…” Weird.
I agree with you, neighbor. It’s a weighty issue. 
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