Hi,
Can someone please tell me why in some cases my wood show as separate pieces and in other sections of my drawing it looks like one piece instead of showing where the pieces join.
This makes it hard to add measurements to my drawing as i can easily miscalculate a piece because the wood thickness is not taken in consideration …
I suspect its either a setting or the way o draw my drawings…
You are going to have to post at least a screenshot. Better would be upload your SketchUp file.
I know this will sound sarcastic… but it looks like that because you did not draw a line at the bottom… but you can…
Looks to me as if you need to learn to use components and groups. Share the .skp file with us so we can help you sort out your model.
Dave, think that’s probably the main cause as I’m not making use of components. I just add pieces directly to one another by drawing them. I’m not saving as components and adding them from the component list.
How can i share the drawing file with you guys if I’m using the free web version ?
Due to the sticky nature of the geometry in SketchUp, this is like building your model with wet clay. For woodworking projects you generally want to make each part that you would make from a piece of wood as a component so they don’t glue themselves together.
You don’t necessarily need to do that to work with components. The only time I save components separately is when I think I would use them again.
Click on the menu button in the top left corner of the SketchUp screen (three horizontal lines) and then click Download. That’ll download the file to your computer. Then drag and drop the file into a reply here.
i actually recorded my screen quick perhaps I’
Yes. Your video proves out what we’ve said. You are building your model like you are using wet clay so it all sticks together. You need to be using components as I said before.
Here’s an example from a model I did awhile back. Each part that would be made in the shop is a component. They can be pulled apart for an exploded view or do make dimensioned views of the individual parts.
If the part from which you are push-pulling the rectangle isn’t already a group or component, the new geometry interacts with the old in exactly the way you show. This is per design, not a bug.
Edit: You need to rethink your process, making each thing that would be a separate piece of wood in reality a component in SketchUp. That’s the SketchUp equivalent of “separate piece”.
Thanks Dave that makes totally sense and tried the component route now and working exactly like I
wanted it to !!
Thanks for the quick assistance and thorough explanation with the video !
Thanks Slbaumgartner your explanation was also helpful !!
You’re quite welcome.
Here’s a video clip showing the general workflow for modeling the trestle table from my example, above. This was done in SketchUp Shop but the process would be the same in SketchUp Free. Note that components get copied when it is appropriate. The posts are instances of the same component, for example.
I should point out that some people would use groups instead of components. This would also isolate individual pieces. However, furniture and cabinets almost always involve parts that are identical or symmetrical with others. These are much easier to manage using components.
that’s the key feature of his advices 
