Scaling Groups without changing material thickness

SketchUp
1

I am a newbie working on my first project and I’ve come to a roadblock.

The project is very simple, I’m designing plywood shipping crates. The idea is to make a design template in SketchUp and then when I need to make a custom size, just open the template, scale it until the dimensions are correct and then build.

The materials are very standard off-the-shelf lumber. 1/2" plywood; 2x4s pine and 1x5 pine.

Here’s the issue, if I put all the components together to make sides, door, top and bottom it’s just fine.

But if I need to make the crate a little taller, longer and or wider, when I try to scale it the 2X4s, for example, become 2x12s, or the plywood becomes 6 inches thick.

I edited each object making sure that individually they won’t scale except on the appropriate access, but when I group and scale the group it forgets that and distorts the objects.

What am I missing?

2

Scale would generally not be the right tool for the job. Open the components and use Push/Pull or Move to adjust the dimensions.

3

I’ll give that a try, thanks for the quick response!

4

No joy. Push/Pull doesn’t seem to work on objects (or groups) where some scale axes are disabled, and move just moves the object or group.

No difference if the group is open or not.

5

You have to open the components/groups for editing to use Push/Pull.

Sounds like you need to spend some time going through the fundamentals at learn.sketchup.com

6

for such dynamic components would be your best solution. upload the model and I will convert it for you

7

Here’s the model. Basically it’s just one panel. If you could also explain what the conversion is too, that would be great!

app.sketchup.com/app?3dwid=fdbbfad2-2e87-4d3a-9159-08942db28e7b

Thanks

8

Search for FredoScale. It’s an extension. For us - we wouldn’t want to live a day without it any longer. Not free any longer but worth every cent!

1 Like
9

You could try using the app ‘SketchUV’
And then save UVs of your group.
After scaling the group, you can then load those UVs back.

10

The timber is already dynamic howbeit in Spanish, the sizes are not locked, I guess you require English with American units, Made 3 components with locked dimensions, 3/8 plywood, 1x5 treated pine (1 x4 3/4) , 2x4 (1 3/4 x 3 3/4) treated pine.
I reduce the material sizes using
Material Resizer | SketchUp Extension Warehouse

built the side from the three components, made unique where required, added the formulas for size and position. Each given an instance name, then use generic parent!
The DC is saved as a component and brought back to the purged file to activate the instance connection, so change the instance will reflect in the dialogs, but need to update the parent name in the options as well to show in the report.
There quite a large amount of techniques involved here, will try to make a video
panel (3).skp (422.9 KB)