The purpose of this thread is to improve our skills at making assemblies in Profile Builder. I say ‘our’ because I myself am out of practice making assemblies and I’m looking for some inspiration to refresh my skills. (BTW, I’m the creator of PB)
So please post images, elevations, and / or sections of assemblies you’d like to create and lets see if I, or another PB user, can create it.
If someone is able to create a requested assembly (or if you’d simply like to share an assembly you’ve created), please post the assembly SKP here so others can download and learn from it.
If it can’t be created, let’s discuss why and figure out what gaps currently exist in Profile Builder that could possibly be addressed in a future version.
What are Assemblies?
Profile Builder assemblies are parametric objects that follow a ‘path’ such as walls, fences, railing, roads, and more. See the 3DWH Collection for examples. Assemblies are comprised of extruded profiles and components placed along a path.
You need to have the Profile Builder extension to create, edit, and build assemblies in your SketchUp models.
From time to time, I spend time with PB and get it to do something cool. Then I walk away for a period of time, and when I come back to it, can’t remember how to use it. Now I need to brush up again to demo it at a seminar later this month. Last thing I did with it was Feeney Design Rail, and was proud to get the sub-assembly part to work, though it produced extraneous mid-panel spacers hiding inside each major post. I never figured out how to make them not happen.
I suffer a similar problem… forgetting how to effectively use my assembly… it would be good if there was a larger description or note area to leave yourself how to instructions… particularly the reason for positioning of the path line as it may not be obvious in the assembly…
Opps ! just got back into PB3 and discovered the little corner tag on the description box that allows you to drag it much bigger… thats a help ! now if there is some basic text formatting commands (eg linespace etc) that would help create a much more readable description…
Using a wider description box I was able to create a bit more informative description
Hopefully others using the assembly will automatically see the wider description box…
subject to Trimble not disabling this extension in SU 2021 releases with their “web services” policy!
@Whaat One thing that is currently frustrating in PB4 is height adjustment. I have a common assembly for walls which ends up with various “random” setbacks for finishes (Profile Members) to suit junctions. At present I have to sample each Assembly before altering the height to maintain the setbacks. It would be great if like the simple profiles dialog we could change a selection of optional settings when updating Assemblies.
If this already possible I would love to know how to do it!
This is a great Idea for a thread! I have the same problem with extensions I dont use often like Vray and well a lot of the extensions. I use Profile builder on most projects and still have that head scratch moment like @RTCool . I wanted to jump in and say great Post!
I will contribute a PB4 assembly that someone might find useful. It creates a flat soffit with framing, It fits in a 24" overhang and has James Hardie Vented Soffit Material.
There are different theories in how we present details in our drawings. Some hold to an old school 2d black and white detail, I my self like 3d and color to better tell the “story”.
I also like to use framing elevations to dimension things like Plate height that are usually noted standard elevations with fully clad walls. This is why I created this PB4 assembly.
Do you want to be able to modify the height of multiple assemblies in your model at once, correct? Interesting idea! I’ve made a note of it as a potential future feature.
