Once you have PP’d a surface, you are supposed to be able to select another surface, double click on it and it then moves the same amount as your initial move. And indeed it often does. However, just as often it doesn’t. Sometimes it does but it moves it in the opposite direction (nothing to do with front and back faces). Sometimes it moves it a random amount. For me, it doesn’t seem to work predictably.
Where it works best is when you have a series of similar surfaces within a larger surface. But of course, it might actually then be quicker to select them all and use the Move tool instead.
Recently I tried making the rising steps of a staircase using PP. Obviously, all risers will be equal. So you PP the first one to give a rise of, say 200mm. Double click the next one and it (usually) rises to meet the first. Double click on it again and it will (sometimes) rise the same amount again. But this is where it might do what you expect or something seemingly quite random. Is there a reliable workflow I have failed to grasp?
I share your pain. I’m always envious when I watch someone like DaveR or Aaron and it never seems to happen to them, yet for me it must be at least 25% of the time. As @DaveR would say, it must have something to do with how you are holding your tongue.
Double-click usually works for me to perform repeat push-pull operations. When it “fails”, I think the reason is that I did not do a “pure-enough” double-click action with the mouse. I moved the mouse between clicks (or allowed a slight bit of extra time to elapse between clicks) by more than the tolerance for a double-click, which triggers the normal Push-Pull action (and which only alters the face by a small amount due to the small mouse movement between clicks).
I do see the effect of pushing or pulling in the unwanted (opposite) direction sometimes. I used SketchUp Pro 2016 for about three years, where I saw this a fair amount. For the past year or so I switched to 2018 and I haven’t seen the wrong-direction behavior as much - however, I have not accumulated as much history with 2018 to make a fair comparison.
As for the wrong direction, it can be as simple as which side of the face you click on. It’s helpful to work with Face Style set to Monochrome so you can see the face orientation.
There are a few cases I haven’t gotten my head around and haven’t been able to duplicate intentionally, either. I’m usually busy enough at the time I just fix it an move on.
I have a button on my mouse mapped to a double click action (and another for triple click as you use both so often in SU). So in my case at least, it’s unlikely to be operator error.
This is of course what we all do, as we have to. It’s kind of amazing to me that something as notionally “logical” as a computer program can apparently have a wilful nature, rather like a bolshie teenager!
I think it’s more a case of something not being the same relative to the faces or the direction. I’m sure it’s not really the software having a “willful nature.”
I’ve been modeling today and trying to intentionally make it happen and I can’t. Maybe not holding my tongue right.
Here’s me trying to reproduce the effect. Usually it works fine but not always. When it went wrong, it seemed like it might be because I slightly moved the mouse whilst pressing the double-click button. But when I deliberately try to reproduce that “defect”, I can’t. I remain flummoxed (not for the first time!).
Maybe, but I have a roller ball mouse, so moving the mouse itself has no effect and I tend not to have my finger on the ball when doing this kind of thing.
