On the mysteries of gluing and cutting

SketchUp
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1

I’ve been trying to figure out the gluing and cutting of components. So here are my observations, which might be useful to someone – corrections and further info are apprectiated.

  • Only newly created or inserted components are glued to a face – unless you re-glue it manually, e.g. with the Superglue extension. And it seems like sometimes copying a component can allow gluing to a new face – not sure of the specifics.
  • Once a component is glued to a face, it keeps its glued relationship to that face even if moved away, unless unglued in the context menu (or via an extension).
  • You can unglue a component with native tools (context menu) but manual re-gluing is only possible with an extension.
  • A component can only be glued to one face at a time.
  • Cutting has dependencies on gluing and hierarchy – The opening is cut by raw edges in the top level of the component, on the gluing plane. And the component must be glued to a raw ungrouped face, in order to cut the face.
  • The aforementioned “gluing plane” is determined by the axes of the component, appearing as a gray plane during the setting of axes.
  • You can have holes within holes, so to speak, as seen in the following screenshot. The white square is raw geometry – everything else is contained in the cutting component.
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Also, a note about Thomthom’s Superglue extension: To switch modes between glue and solvent, you tap CTRL – holding CTRL doesn’t work.

2

No extensions necessary. Make a new component, a dialogue box pops up asking you to name the new component, stop and read all the options in that box. Gluing options are there, including none and any. For an existing component, find the component in the component browser window and click the edit tab.

3

I meant that an extension is necessary to re-glue the component, once you have placed it. I edited the post accordingly. For example, I have a kitchen sink component which cuts holes in the countertop. If I modify the counters (e.g. restructuring groups), it will often remove the ‘glued’ status, and thus disable cutting – so I do a quick swipe with Superglue and the cut is restored. The alternative with native tools would be to drag a new sink in, or maybe copying the original sink would work. edit- or using the component tray’s replace selected tool.

4

Ah I see, yes. To reglue an existing component already in the model without replacing it there are several extensions that can help.

5

if you delete the object that is being glued onto, and replace it, like in cut and paste in place, then gluing no longer works. If you cut and paste into place the previously glued object too, the gluing is back in place.

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