Merge components into a group

Hei!

I am Jordi, from Spain/norway, and new in the community!

I use Sketchup to design my furniture in a little bit better way than a paper, a pencil, and some lines that just can be understood by me if I have a good day…

I followed the getting started videos and now I am trying to draw a floating bed structure. I have used two or three components to complete the base structure, and now I wanted to merge all in a group, because this is ready and I want to design tho other half of the bed which will come over this, but I wanted to have them separetedly in order to be able to move them as two different entities.

Is it possible to merge different components into a group? How?

Thank you very much in advance. Greetings from Southern Norway!

Select all three components, rightclick on a component, make group.

If you really do mean merge two (or more) Components into a Group, here’s one way:

Select one component and Ctrl-Copy it. Open the other Component and Ctrl_paste the copied Component inside it. Then Explode that Component. Now you have one component comprised of the two you started with. If you want to turn into a Group, you can then explode the new combined Component, re-select it and Group it. Although you may do better just to leave it as a new Component.

When done, you may want to delete the original Ctrl-Copied Component you no longer need.

As you haven’t uploaded the file or even an image of it, it is difficult to tell if you are using Groups and Components wisely. Anything that gets repeated, such as an element or a frame of elements (say) should be made into Components. That way, if you change one, they all change to suit. Some very experienced people here don’t even bother with Groups and make everything into Components even when they don’t repeat. The only real advantage of a Group is that you don’t have to name it.

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Make a (any) selection of entities (groups, components, basic geometry, or whatever), right click on the selection and use ’ Make Group’ from the context menu that appears.

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Welcome to the forum, short answer straight away in my opinion especially for furniture design where copies of the same parts often happen would be to make those suggested components into a component and not a group. This is known better as nesting.

I myself had the same idea as you what seems a long time ago. I wanted to make several components stay together as an assembly, so in the haste of the moment I made them a group and then carried on in that fashion making groups for a long time. I never really stopped to think I were simply working too hard and creating problems as I did so. You see if you copy this group containing components and then decide to add something to it or move components around within it, the changes won’t be reflected in the copied one and you’ll then have to make the whole group copy again and move it back into position, it becomes very tiresome and massively prone to errors. On the other hand when you use a component to nest the other components together, any moves/additions you make to one of these instances will be reflected in the others automatically, it makes for a much easier experience. I just didn’t see the benefit at the time.
It’s a long running debate the whole component/group thing but I only use components now after sound advice from forum members here. I quickly saw the benefit of only using components and switched my game up immediately. The only benefit of using a group in my opinion is they are created quicker and don’t get hung up in the “in model” components when deleted.
Groups have no connection between copied instances so if you change one instance the changes will not be reflected in copied instances of that group. Sometimes you may want this behaviour using components of course, you can right click the top level “nest” component you make to hold the assembly and choose “make unique” from the context menu to detach its connection from the other copied instances. The components within that are nested still have the connection throughout the model of course.

There are many other benefits to using components over groups including setting up the model for any shop drawings you should require, enabling constant changes without the hassle of trying to figure out if you changed all the groups in the process.

Sorry to detract from your simple question but I saw your post and alarm bells starting going off in my head when I saw it, so I thought I’d give my thoughts on it in the hope it might help you. I’ve tried to explain clearly as I can but if it’s all a bit of a muddle for you, you could upload a sample SKP file to get some better information.

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After grouping your components (with the right click menu), you can use the outliner (window → outliner) to read & arrange the component/group hierarchy. It’s helps you visualize components in groups.

This way is faster than mine but ends up with nested items. If you want the contents of the new group to be raw geometry, you would have to go into the new Group, Select All, and Explode. Still probably faster than my way…

@simoncbevans, I just wanted to keep things simple and thought the OP was about bringing more than one component together in a new group’s environment. Hence my general approach.
Also, with new users I’m hesitant in suggesting to explode groups and/or components. The raw geometry may inherite the container’s layer and material. The new user needs to know about this behavior.

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Fair point.

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hEY!! Thank you for your wise comments, and sorry for so late answer. I have moved to a house, and I have had a huge kaos til now. Now I have my computer again assembeld so I can continue with my design. Thank ypou for teaching me how to do it. I will follow yopur suggestions. If everyone says that it’s better to work with components, probably this is the best way. I tell you what I foudn in the end,

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Thank you guys for your support. I apologize for answering so late, but I have moved to a new house and I have lived a little kaos the last few weeks. Now, with my computer assembled again, just need to find some time, sit dow and begin to design again.

Thanks a lot!

Greatings from South Norway.

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