Thanks, mono. I agree about always focussing on clean modeling and grouping, and think I’m currently doing that. The model I uploaded was fully exploded and is part of the oldest modeling I did almost two years ago. This section has been in protected groups that have held together fine up until now which was sufficient for my current purposes–which is to finish the design and hand it off to the architect to create building plans. I’ve known for a while that it contained early mistakes of construction. It only broke when I opened it up to change a wall. Yes, I might redraw it now per Box’s suggestions, but I can’t imagine being with out the outliner with the size and complexity of this model, and the need to frequently assess the structure of components and groups in a large project. I would argue that the outliner is an invaluable tool for users at all levels because there are times when everyone needs a map to review how things are organized, toggle individual groups and components, and troubleshoot. I rarely see a thread in these forums–from beginning to advanced–where utilizing outliner isn’t part of solving the problem and advocated for such
Thanks to everyone who helped spot the problem and recommending the disabling of snapping. It is only recently that SU seems to have become less reliable for me by allowing guides and connections that SU indicates are connected when in fact they are not. I may indeed redraw parts of the model as a worthwhile exercise and to repent for past sins, but am still hampered recently by a clipping problem that is hobbling my efforts. Installing new version tonight.
…for me. I’m not suggesting that the code magically changed itself since the last update. But something about my model/settings/computer has changed–whether it’s operator error or computer issues. Part of the intent of my post was to hear about any known issues that may be unrelated to modeling errors.
I was doing some testing about related issues, which generally is that non-coplanar edges are able to make coplanar faces, and I tested back to SketchUp 8. That issue didn’t change since then, and possibly not since version 1.
Make your corners be coplanar, then both the faces and the edges will work.
So, it isn’t recent, all versions of SketchUp have been less reliable about this problem.
Thanks Colin. That is a golden nugget of helpful info right there! To put it another way, just because SU makes a face doesn’t mean your edges are right. Perhaps that’s obvious and well-understood by seasoned users, but it should probably be highlighted as one of the fundamental operating principles to understand when working with SU. So noted!
I was thinking of using Zoro to cut off the top and bottom and making everything flush–taking note of how much was cut off–then using the push/pull tool to drag the ends back out. Is that similar to what you did? Like running the model through a planer!
It seems doing such a “cleanup”–either using Box’s method of deleting the spiderwebbing, or using cleanup 3–would never really correct the underlying problem of edges that are off by minuscule amounts. You might get the faces back, but I would think it’s likely to break again as it did for me.
Rebuilding that section of the model was a good exercise for me. There was something therapeutic about rebuilding a model that had been re-edited a hundred times and knowing it was now clean. Then pasting it back in place, seeing the Z fighting and knowing it was positioned correctly, then punching out the windows using the original as a template for drawing rectangles and using the push pull tool.
One unresolved issue is the inability to zoom in close enough to see what endlessfix showed in his pic. Regardless of the camera perspective, it clips out. I read a few threads, but haven’t found any solution for me. (Macbook Pro 16" 2019 2.3 Ghz i9)
The 1° FOV works–thank you! (I’m almost always in perspective mode). Not sure what has changed over the past year, though. Perhaps SU updates or my new computer, but it never clipped as much before as it does now. Thankfully, I don’t work in parallel much–the clipping makes that mode almost unusable.
The closest that I can manage with this file is: camera set to parallel projection, then hit zoom extents to reset camera position relative to model, then zoom in directly. 0.0223 mm is pretty small.
Camera set to parallel projection, and then zoom extents, then zoom in? If it’s the same file you should be getting similar results. If you are looking at a different file than the one you posted the results would be potentially different.
OK, that freaked me out a bit because parallel now works fine and allows me to zoom in. Then I remembered I just updated SU to 20.2 a few days ago, and I think clipping in parallel was one of the things they fixed. I should have checked before posting!
I’m not sure there was a specific fix in 20.2 for that, perhaps. The real trick is zoom extents, which can often solve clipping issues. Glad it’s working for you now.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t saying removing them fixed the issue, just that they were there as evidence of the misalignment, I should have continued when I said ‘This can be removed without losing the faces’ with ‘but they will come back unless you fix the geometry.’
I should have been clearer rather than thinking what was in my head was written.
Yeah, I wasn’t clear on that at first, but came to that conclusion through the process. Logically, it didn’t make sense that the face was truly fixed if the edges were still off. Colin’s comment drove the point home for me:
