No where have I found any reference to nested items inferring a “visibility hierarchy”… at least not in any of the usual resources (forum, web help or youtube) so I’m putting this out there…
From what I’ve gathered… nested groups/components are merely a way to “organize” your file… but I’ve got a situation where I have a Sink Component nested within a Counter Top Component and if I “Un-Nest” the Sink using the Outliner, the sink is no longer visible… it’s still there… but the Counter Top is now covering it up. I can see it with X-ray view.
More puzzling still, is that even if I drag the Sink Component back into the Counter Top Component… the Sink remains obstructed by the countertop. In order to regain visibility of the sink, I have to revert to my saved file. None of the Components are Hidden, Locked, etc. and everybody is on the same layer. Clearly not a feature
You can see the top edge of the sink… and I can select it… but still can’t get the Sink Component out of the Counter Top Component without it being obstructed.
Have you tried selecting the circle on to countertop and deleting it? It looks like the geometry of the sink merged with the countertop and “healed” the countertop. You may be able to simply remove it.
I would recommend sharing the file to get the best possible assistance.
The nested ‘Sink’ component is a ‘Glue to’ plus ‘Cut Opening’ component, glued to the face in the countertop component. It cuts this face. Taking it out of the countertop component, it can no longer cut that face. Bringing it back in it has lost that property.
A ‘Glue to’ component can be glued to a face in the same level as itself, and to a face inside a component (the countertop). It can’t however cut a face in another level.
I just checked:
The outliner not only breaks the cutting property when bringing in a ‘Glue to’ component (glued to a face in another level) into that parent component. It also breaks the gluing property.
Cut to clipboard > entering the parent component > Paste in place keeps these properties.
I have tried that… and it only deletes the circle… the “hole” in the counter top doesn’t reappear.
What I did try was exploding everything so I can get to the counter top surface and circle elements independently… then delete the surface inside the circle… but it seems once I do any editing to the counter top at all… it self heals… I’m probably not quite doing the “cut-out” procedure properly.
Interesting Wo3Dan… that would support what is happening… is the “Glue To” property an automatic feature of components “married” to faces… or is that an obscure preference?
Even more to the point… is there a “proper” way to create openings like this? I want the Sink as a separate element so I can apply textures to it independently
Thx, DaveR… it would be that simple if I were adding texture to the components within SU… but I’m importing the final Vanity into another design program and the other program isn’t that smart…
Then maybe you need to not use the hole-cutting behavior and cut a real hole in the counter. Then there is no need to nest the sink in the counter component.
I think you’re exactly right… funny thing is… I thought I had done that… but I think in creating/editing the Sink bowl, I lost the hole in the counter top. So the “hole” is now part of the Sink Component… not sure how to go about separating that! (I’m a newbie) there’s a ton of geometry going on with the sink!
When exploding groups or components , all the ‘loose’ geometry would be placed on the layer which group or comp was assigned to, this would cause merging geometry with other layers , and definitely would be the start of a ‘messed up’ layer-management
Indeed, Mike! … which is why I created a unique copy of my Sink component off to the side as insurance. It WAS messed up geometry management on my part… lesson learned. But I got it straightened out in the end… I had to separate the “hole” portion from the “bowl” portion of the sink… and as it turned out SU was fairly forgiving about the process.
