How are others using the naming of scenes and section cuts? It seems to be backwards in the popup and not natural. I first place a section cut and then get a popup asking for Name or Symbol(3 characters only). I use the Name area for a shorthand description like Kit Island North and then use a symbol KIN (btw Trimble, 4 characters would be better). Then I create a scene associated with that cut using the Name and Desc. The Name appears on the tab and have found I don’t won’t to scroll through 40 tabs and use my Symbol code from the Cut of KIN. Then I put the description as the longer name which is the opposite. I think cuts should use similar terminology like Symbol and that should appear on the tab area. What appears on the model region or tab should be called the same thing and appear in the same order in the taskbar as well. Is anyone using SU this way?
Tab area? Do you mean the section cut should appear as a scene tab? What if you have more than one active section cut displayed in the scene? Which one is the scene tab going to be named after? What if there is no section cut? Then what does it get called? As it is now, it’s very flexible and consistent. You can name the scene whatever you want whether or not there’s a section cut displayed.
I assume you mean you don’t want to scroll through the scene tabs across the top of the model space? You could just select the desired scene in the Scenes panel. If you double click on the scene name in the panel, you’ll jump to that scene.
As Dave points out above, section cuts are associated with geometric contexts (entities collections) like the top level model, groups and components. Each context can contain multiple section cuts, but only 1 (or none) from each context’s set can be active at a time.
Scene are not directly associated with any particular section cut. A scene can save the state for each context’s active section cut, thereby displaying multiple active sections cuts.
You are, but this does not mean everyone else is, nor should we be forced to use SketchUp as you do.
I agree with Dave. SketchUp is flexible the way it is which allows you to create scenes that you associate with a particular section cut via your own naming convention.
I don’t think I made myself clear guys. My issue is the naming of the TERMS that section cuts and scene tabs use. Not how you use the scene and section cut.
Section cut: “Name” -verbiage DOES NOT appear on the triangle tabs of the section plan in the MODEL The “Symbol” verbiage DOES appear on the triangle tabs.
Scenes: “Name” verbiage DOES appear on the Scene Tab. “Description” verbiage DOES NOT appear on model.
My point is that the verbiage under the “Name” boxes needs to be consistent in how it it used in the model area. Trimble could easily change the term “Name” under the Scene part from Name to “Symbol” so that in both instances the “Symbol” is what is applied to the model area. Also, when you view the Scenes as a list it or hover over the Scenes as thumbnail, it uses the Name verbiage which reproves my point that under Scenes those boxes should be renamed from Name to Symbol and from Description to Name. Then it would work like the Section Plane terms. I don’t care what the terms are called, just that they are called the same term and are used the same way around the model.
I don’t mean the section cut should appear as a scene tab. It’s the use of the verbiage after the “Name” that goes up on the Scene Tab while the Section cut “Name” verbiage does not on the triangle tabs of the section cut. See my reply above.
It is not supposed to.
(However as of SU2018, Sections are displayed by both “Name : Symbol” in the Outliner tree inspector panel.)
They are not “tabs”. There is no such thing as “section tabs”.
They are arrows, sometimes also “section callouts”, that indicate the direction of view and each has an associated symbol which is later used beneath the sectional view (ie, “Section A-A”) in the paperspace 2D rendering of the section, (with SketchUp usually displayed as a LayOut viewport.)
Everything here is correct.
This is fine. Name is how scenes are identified by users and extension developers alike.
Never has. It is for user use, or data used by extension developers.
The Scene tabs are not “in the model area”. They are in their own tab control window which is collapsed when you switch their display off (via the View menu.)
Once again, these features are not actually linked.
Back in the day (before LayOut,) SketchUp “Scenes” were called “Pages” and were usually used for camera animation (but also for modeling in different ways or for preset print views.) But this was confusing when LayOut was invented as a 2D paperspace document (which had real pages) for SketchUp models. The LayOut documents needed to be able to have viewports into the SketchUp modelspace, so the SketchUp “Pages” were renamed “Scenes” in the GUI and also used as LayOut viewports. (This is very similar to CAD applications.)
The most important thing here about scenes is that they save a multitude of model view and style settings (only one small part of which is the active state of all section planes of visible entities collections.)
Section Planes and Cuts evolved slowly over the many years, and only recently (with the SketchUp 2018 release) became identifiable with both name and symbol and were also listed in the Outliner tree where they are owned (by model or group / component.)
Prior to this there was no way to select hidden section planes and make them visible again so they could be manipulated, edited, set as the active section for a certain geometric context, etc.
I was one of the several people who formally logged requests to identify Section Planes via a name property, and have them listed in the Outliner tree. (_See Section marking - #2 by DanRathbun)
No they cannot “easily” do this.
Scenes (Pages) predated section planes, and are uniquely identified (like many model objects) by both users and extension code developers as a name property.
Developers need to be able to search the pages collection by name for a particular scene. (Ie, when names of objects change in the GUI they do not normally change in the APIs otherwise a bunch of extensions would be broken “out in the wild”.)
The same is true for SectionPlane objects. They are identified and differentiated by their name property, not by a symbol property (which is more likely to change.)
Also, each time a GUI caption / name etc changes this creates a crazy amount of work that needs to be done to update documentation. It makes a multitude of public help / user guide documents, screen shots and tutorial videos instantly obsolete and incorrect.
Basically, your premise is incorrect. Both the Scene tabs and thumbnail hover tooltips display a “display name”, which is the name property that is surrounded by parenthesis when the scene is excluded from animation.
Again, scene tabs are not in the modeling area, they are above it in their own tab control window. When switched on (visible) they displace the modeling area window downward (giving it less height.)
And, scene page objects do not have a symbol property (and do not need one IMO.)
And again, Scene pages and Section Planes are different kinds of objects, and are not directly linked. (Scene pages can be used for many different things that have nothing to do with section planes.)
Section Planes are unique in that they are the only SketchUp object yet to have a visible symbol property.
However, there are a multitude of other SketchUp and LayOut objects that have a name property.
At least 18 objects have name properties that are how they are uniquely identified from one another in their parent collections.
Then it is best to leave things as they are, as I said above, the name property is how all individual objects are uniquely identified among all their siblings in the model’s various object collections.
In closing, your suggestion does nothing to enhance the usability of the SketchUp interface and would diverge from the long established nomenclature that is used for all other SketchUp objects.
We need to be realistic in that your suggestion is just not going to happen the way you wish. (It does not make good sense for the users nor developers. And would just cost Trimble revenue better spent fixing bugs or implementing features many user want.)
ADD: Realize that SketchUp has more than 20 year history and userbase. Changing this now is not in the best interest of the application and it’s users.
Perhaps you’d be less confused if the caption on the section create dialog was “Identify Section Plane” rather than “Name Section Plane” ?
Well, it sounds like all we really need to do is ask you because you speak for Trimble and your way is the “correct” way. As more of us transition to Chief Architect because they actually listen to their users, which I am one of.
When I create a section:
- I place the section cut.
- In the dialog box for name I use AA or BB, etc. (00 for ground floor, 01 for first floor, etc.) and the same for symbol.
- I then create a scene for each section cut and give that scene a name only, i.e. Section AA, Section 00, etc.
Straightforward for me…