As the title states, I am new to the forums and SketchUp as a professional. I am very excited to be able to utilize all the tools within SketchUp and also this community here. I’ve been working in SketchUp as an amateur for 3 years and professional only recently for a few months but plan to be an expert going forward.
This will be long-winded and if I have done anything wrong please point me to the right direction. I’ve searched throughout the forums for “warehousing” but unfortunately that directs to the 3d warehouse haha. Also "distribution,logistics,large buildings,"etc…
I’m an engineer in supply chain logistics and more importantly the customer facing side of it. This means what I do is mostly conceptual(so it doesn’t have to be exact! ) as I support the selling of our services/warehouses.
I’ve tried to attach the file/3d warehouse upload but I got an error in the warehouse. but this is a distribution center I’ve been working and I am wondering if any of you have any tips when working on models this size.
Pallet Racking - storing of product - Now I have a hidden layer called “PalletRack” that when I unhide it it SLOOOOOWS down my PC. I have kept those as LOW POLY as possible, but it seems that much stuff in one area just isn’t easy to process. If I ever want to move or rearrange this stuff, it takes ages.Any ideas to handle that?
Components/Overall organization - I’ve done some reading on how to keep good processing within SketchUp, and I’ve tried to ungroup everything within an component then simply try and place that component. Is this best practice?
Although you use SketchUp Pro, I’m not seeing the use of any features that require it. But I think you would benefit from making many of your components dynamic. For instance, your full pallet racks could be built up from “pallet bays”, manipulation of the “Copies” when you scale it taller could “snap” to an integer number of pallet bays, with each one having a “Z” location expressed as a multiple of the read-only attribute “copy” added to the base Z location.
There are LOTS of similar things that would make this highly detailed model faster to display.
One technique that isn’t often mentioned is this:
You have an outer component A which you assign to layer X.
You can assign component B (which is a sub-component of A) into a different layer Y.
By doing this, in order for component B to be visible, you have to mark both layers X and Y as visible. This isn’t often mentioned since, if you make ANY mistakes in layer assignment, it can get VERY frustration to show exactly what you want to show!
For laying out warehouses, I’d recommend making the details FAR simpler:
Do your uprights really need the coloring on the bottom when you’re just laying things out?
Do you really need detail of the pallet racks when you’re just laying things out?
Start with simple box shapes for the pallet racks. You’ll know what they are. Nail the layout. Then - and only then - replace them with components with more detail.
You are setting yourself up for problems by having geometrical primitives (edges and faces) assigned to layers other than Layer0. You seem to have internalized that geometry needs to be grouped (as groups or components) to keep geometry from merging. That’s good. But the visibility of grouped geometry is controlled by the visibility (layer assignment) of the group, not the visibility of the geometrical primitives within a group. What you’ve done isn’t harmful - until you accidentally assign primitive geometry to a layer OTHER than the one to which you’ve assigned the grouping.
KISS is the rule here. Primitive geometry belongs on Layer0.
Well, I came here to reply to your follow up questions when I received an email about your reply - before you edited it!
Your original post - and the follow up questions - cause me to do start doing something I’ve been meaning to do: A series of (hopefully short) videos detailing frequently misunderstood concepts in SketchUp. So I’m off on the first one: “Groupings are for isolation, Layers are for visibility!”
These fundamental type techniques are exactly what I was looking for. I thought the video was spot on. Watched a few others on the SketchUp channel like yours.
So i’m definitely intrigued in components now and have seen a basic tutorial and followed it. I understand how you could do what you said earlier in this thread. Would you recommend any other resources about the component modeling, either videos or screen-clip. I see this tutorial here - Constraining attributes of a Dynamic Component | SketchUp Help but that seems too complex even.
Like I said, any component/copy/snap functions videos you know of? I see boot camp’s that are an hour long on youtube but am not sure?
I’m actually working on a Dynamic Component right now! I’m trying to start with 1 “Sketchy” upright (Green bounding box only) and 1 “Sketchy” Beam (Orange bounding box only). I keep starting down an internal organization and running into problems, then trying another path. I’m about to start my 3rd path. It’s a bit of a headache, but once finished, should be a good example of building a complex component from basic parts and Dynamic Components.
AFTER I finish that (who knows when!), then I’ll probably do a DETAIL model of a beam and show how, within the component, you can switch between “sketchy” and “detail”
) as I support the selling of our services/warehouses.