I’ve gone through the Layout tutorial but did not see this there. Maybe I missed it because he moves so fast.
I’m getting my model ready for Layout and have a couple of components that have multiple copies. I only need one for LO. Based on what little I know so far, I think I can do it one of two ways.
Click down to the component I need - leg in this case - and edit it, drag-select one leg and move-
copy then make unique.
Instead of move-copy, copy, then exit edit and paste in place.
Or should I have done something with the components earlier Side Table good.skp (801.5 KB)
in anticipation of this?
I think I’ve shown you the way I set up my models before but I would drag out instances of the various components from the Components panel and arrange them for a scene. You can put copies of all the parts in one scene if you want. Reduces the number of scenes and makes the management easier.
Here I’ve set out a couple of copies of the leg above the assembled copy of the model. The one on the right is rotated so the mortises can be seen. This will make it possible to completely dimension the leg in LayOut.
It seems like you’ve gone a little overboard in the nesting of the components and with the number of tags you’ve used. For a little table like this you really shouldn’t need to be managing that many tags.
You probably did, but I’ve read so many topics about the all the problems I’m having my head spins.
The number of tags were so I could prepare for LO, but of course dragging a component in and making a scene is much simpler. Haha - making a scene - that’s what I feel like trying to learn this.
That raises another question. When I drag a component in where should I place it? And will that dragged in component be associated with the similar ones already in the table?
Here is a quick set up of most of the parts. Some of them would be easier to work with if their origins
were positioned on the parts and axes were oriented correctly. I don’t know if you are orienting the axes as they are due to using Open Cutlist or if you are building the parts away from the model and then moving and rotating them into place.
Somewhere so it won’t show in existing scenes showing the model. In my example from above, I just put them above the table since there’s no plan view. If there was going to be a need for a plan view of the model, I would shoft them off to the side so they are out of the way.
That’s working harder than you need to work. It requires that you know more dimensions than you really need to madel the parts (use SketchUp to tell you those dimensions) and it makes it easier to induce errors into your model.
It would be much easier and cleaner to model in place. Set out the legs, for example and then model model the stuff to fit in between. If you got the legs in the right locations, the rest of it just has to fit. Or maybe in the case of this model the drawer case could come first and then you can add the rest of the stuff outside of it.
My word man. It’s like if I change a water pump in my car, it takes me all day, but a mechanic does it in a couple of hours. It will take me hours what you just did in seconds.
The nested components and number of tags were what I thought I need to prepare for LO. I’m starting to see even simpler methods thanks to your generous input.
The drawer case was modeled in place on top of the legs, the top was modeled in place on top of the drawer fase, and the drawer was modeled in place in the drawer case.
That was what I tried at first, but when I would move say, the arch out, I seem to remember parts of it being left attached to the leg? Would I model the arch in place, then move it out to add the tenons to it and the mortises to the legs, then move it back into place on the leg?
It sounds like you were opening the component for editing and moving the geometry. You’ve got so much nesting in your model that you have to make sure you are opening the right components but not opening too far. I think it’s better to limit the amount of nesting. If it were my model, the only nested component would be the drawer itself and that only to make it easier to move the drawer out to show it open as in my example above.
I wouldn’t move it out to add the tenons. I would make the arch a component (the legs would already be components, of course) and then in Model Info>Components turn on Hide Rest of Model so when the arch gets opened for editing, the legs are not displayed and you have free access to the ends of the arch component.
FWIW, I only model tenons. The mating mortises are cut using Trim from Eneroth Solid Tools.
