Need help to draw a "shower tile cubby?"

SketchUp
1

Im working on SU Pro 2015, no plug ins and Windows 7.

Can anyone help?
I made a mess of my model by experimenting in the model.
The experiment included bringing in dynamic tile, putting on a wall and then exploding it. Cant for the life of me delete the dynamic tile without messing up other stuff, so…I am about to save another file over top of it as the new model and try again.

I would like to be able to bring in tile that is approx 2" x 6" - put on surround of tub - then draw in the outline of cubbies and use Push/Pull tool to push back the area of the recess.
I plan to just apply a texture and draw cubby on top of that - though it won’t snap to it or anything.

Any ideas / help?
Thank you in advance,
Jayne W

PS any help on reading I can do on file management for SU in Windows also would be helpful.

2

Best idea now is probably to upload your file, so someone can look at it.

3

Thank you, Aaron.
I am new to SU and comp drafting, so not sure how to do that - but I will attempt it today.
Jayne

4

When you post, just click the Upload icon above where you type and you can choose your .skp file.

5

Thank you. Will try now.

6

It is too large to upload - 25KB vs 10KB allowed. Try to zip it first?
Jayne

7

After following instructions, I zipped it from 25,000KB to 9,400KB but still too large to send.

8

jayne,

First, 25 Mb sounds really excessively large for a “shower tile cubby,” whatever that is (and I will return to that).

I suspect you’ve been bringing in a bunch of images as you experiment, and they’ve been accumulating in your model file, causing it to grow and grow and grow. SU retains and stores all images you’ve brought in, even if you’re no longer actively using them, unless you explicitly purge them. So try going to Window > Model Info > Statistics and hitting the Purge Unused button. It wouldn’t hurt to also hit the Fix Problems button while you’re at it. Then save the file and re-check on its size.

Jayne, in a forum like this, careful, unambiguous communication is of critical importance, since the information you communicate is all we have to go on in trying to help you solve your problem. So you must endeavor to leave nothing to the readers’ imagination. Please be very explicit about what you’re doing, what you’re trying to accomplish, and what the problem is. Time we spend trying to figure out the question could be better spent on finding the solution.

For starters, I don’t even know what a “shower tile cubby” is. Please describe it, or better yet, give us a link to a picture of one. Now, also, what is “dynamic tile”? Is that a dynamic component of a floor/wall tile you found in the 3D Warehouse? If so, why not give us a link to it?

Finally, and sorry if I seem to be complaining a lot, I find that the hardest kind of question to answer is one that consists of a sort of rambling narrative and ends by asking, “Any ideas?”

Uh, what was the question?

Please, ask a specific question and provide enough background information to head off any obvious need for clarification. If you do that, you’ll almost always get a useful answer.

-Gully

9

if the tile has a material, you can alway try…
click on the material >> the right click select all with same material >> right click select bounding edges >> right click make group >> triple click the group >> select anything that looks like your tile and delete it >> explode the group…

but it would be easier for us with a skp to look at…

john

10

Thank you for your candor, Gully, I will try to do in the future.

Does this explain “cubby?”
Thank you for direction on reducing size of model I was trying to upload. It is an entire bathroom. I is now down to just 24KB as a model, 4,500KB as an SKB file. OK to upload an SKB file?
Jayne

11

Here is the file in which I was not able to delete the
“dynamic tile” which I downloaded from the warehouse.
Jayne

Czuba Model (2) - Copy.zip (1.9 MB)

12

Oh, you mean that kind of shower tile cubby.

I suspected it was some sort of storage arrangement, but it was impossible to discuss anything in concrete terms without some common point of reference.

Frankly, I’m still not sure what you’re having trouble with, or even what you’re trying to do. If your request is to make a model that looks like a photograph and to tell you how I did it, that I can do, but I’m not sure that’s what you’re asking. I originally suspected this had to do with the artful application of marble texturing to a shower setting; now I’m not so sure.

Please, ask a direct question.

As far as the Czuba model–what is dynamic about it? What is dynamic tile? It is not a Dynamic Component and contains no texture. What is it for?

Finally, SU model files have the extension .skp; .skb files are almost the same, except they are what is called “incremental backups.” Every time you save a model file, SU saves whatever is currently in memory under the name of the model with a .skp extension: e.g., modelname.skp. When it does that, it renames the previous version, if there is one, to modelname.skb. It is a backup of the previous version of the file. There are always a modelname.skp and modelname.skb representing the two most recent versions.

There’s no problem sending a .skb except it may not contain what you want to show us (since it’s the previous version).

-Gully

Edit: By the way, modeling something like wall tiles is really not a good idea: all that geometry adds unnecessary size and degrades the performance of a model. Using an image of the tile, and letting the software repeat it all over a face, results in a far more realistic appearance and a leaner, more nimble model.

It makes sense to model a tile only if you are designing the tile itself and are therefore concerned with its geometry, not if you are covering a surface with copies of the tile. -G

13

Gully,

My question is really 2 part:

  1. I screwed up and put this dynamic tile in my model, exploded it, and now how do I get rid of it?
    I brought in the dynamic tile, manipulated it and then exploded it. John_drivenupthewall may have answered that already and am about to try his suggestion.
    Here is a video on the dynamic tile:
    Dynamic Tile for Sketchup - YouTube
    Dynamic tile can be brought into a model if you go to:
    Window>components>3D Warehouse>type in dynamic tile in the dialogue box

  2. How can I add subway tile to my model to depict a shower tile cubby?
    I just want the grout lines - I don’t care about having the look of marble.
    I will need to push a recess into the shower wall that is in the right spot re the tile layout and I don’t want to have to figure out the dimensional location on paper b/c computers compute really well…So, I am looking to
    A) Add a 2x6 subway tile “texture” or “material” to the already raised thickness of a 1/2 thick wall face which is on top of a 6" thick wall.
    B) Move the tile around to get it in the right location (I know how to do this)
    C) Cut out and push back a recess in the wall for shower cubby
    D) Have tile “wrap” this new recess.

14

As I said before, it is generally considered a more effective use of SU’s capabilities to represent things like wall tiles with an image. It looks better and it’s lighter. Aside from the drain on resources and the concommitent hit on performance, when you make a bunch of small, repetitive shapes with geometry, their appearance is often disappointing (or worse) because as you zoom out on a bunch of intricate geometry it all tends to bleed together, looking abnormally dark and indistinct. Image-based textures retain their appearance much better through the range of zooming in and out.

I can’t think of a single reason to model the tiles, with or without a dynamic component.

Can you explain why it’s important to do that?

-Gully

15

John,
Thank you for the suggestion - I see your reasoning here - I did spend an hr or 2 trying to make this work - but not able. For reasons unknown to me - your simple instructions did not work. I was not able to Group. Its ok, I think I have made a rather advanced problem in the model, so I am punting for now.
I am going to fall back on an older model file (before I had the dynamic tile mishap) - and try another avenue for tile texture from there. It seems to be workable to make the desired tile pattern from the menu of brick designations.
Will let you know,
xx Jayne W

16

Hi Gully,
Re “why it is important to do that…” if when you talk about modeling tile - if you mean making tiles that are 2 x 6 x 1/2"- correct, I don’t want to do that. I just want to show the location of the grout lines on a plane / surface / face.
Jayne

17

To give you an idea of what I’m talking about:

Here is a bathtubbish scene:

569×552 78.4 KB

After constructing the walls (with cubbies) and tub, I painted it with this texture:

Which I scaled in SU to be 6" x 2".

It took me literally about three seconds to apply the tile texture.

-Gully

1 Like
18

Wonderful! That is what I am talking about!

I have been trying to do the same over here and am having a couple of issues:

A) The “tile by paint” needs to be 3 x 9. I have tried to make a new tile size but the 2" dimension is locked - no matter what I do.
B) In my model - the Push Pull tool doesn’t want to push beyond the 1/2" layer face that I have made for the tile. Both wall and 1/2" tile are on the same layer.

Can you give me any direction on either A or B?

jayne

19

Another question -
C) Once I have applied a paint texture - how do I remove it?
Erase function will delete the wall, another function will let me try different textures - but how to go back to just a plain face again?

Jayne

20

I was able to get it to push beyond the 1/2" layer - but still don’t know how / why.