I’ve used SketchUp for years for furniture design but have mostly been away since Trimble took over. I’ve just completed a cabinet basic design including all joinery (no layers or special features/functions) and am trying to establish Scenes for various views and details. I will need about 20 Scenes.
I’m having the problem previously reported here about Updates in a new Scene also changing the other Scenes (3 total). I started with the basic cabinet design (defined as a Component). That final view I want as Scene1. I duplicated the cabinet and oriented each to show all five different faces, made a new Scene of it and updated only to have the original change also (all Detail options are checked). Similar with a mod for a third Scene. Under Scene, Name and Thumbnail all show as I want the Scene to look, but the actual Scenes all Update identically. Apparently (after Searching here) I need to update the Layers somehow, but that doesn’t seem to be as in the “old” Sketchup. I’ve ended up one time loosing my original design file while trying to set the Layers (freakout time), so (after restoring) I’m a bit shy of mucking about.
Question: Assume I have the original design with one view. How do I define a Layer with the multiple views (or other changes) and not loose my original design? Direct answers or a simple pointer to an appropriate guide or tutorial gratefully accepted.
It sounds like you’re trying to use SketchUp the way I do for furniture design and plans. I’d like to see your SketchUp model to see what you’ve got set up. If you don’t want to share the file publicly, perhaps you could send it via a private message.
Hey! I’m setup basically as Tim Killen defined in his “SketchUp Guide for Woodworkers” with my own mods for 2017. I was following his instruction for making a package of drawings. If you Bath Cabinet 2.skp (376.8 KB)
In that file, you’ll see the Scenes as they now exist – the thumbprints are now all the same except Scene3 where I began trying to delete pieces from Scene2 but it is not yet updated because I already had to re-add that view.
If I understand correctly, you had a view of one cabinet in Scene 1, you added multiple copies and made that scene 2.
Those added copies didn’t exist when you made or updated scene 1. It doesn’t ‘know’ what to do with them and you haven’t explicitly told it to hide them, so they will be visible.
One way would be to put the extra copies on another layer called, say, “Multiple”. Go to Scene 1, make the “Multiple” layer not visible and update Scene 1. After this point, if you make more copies and put them in the “Multiple” layer, they will never appear in Scene 1 as it has been set to hide that layer.
You shouldn’t really have lost any of your model messing around with scenes. Maybe you just accidentally deleted instead of hiding something. Keep plenty backups and versions of your files with different names or version numbers so you can’t lose too much work.
I took a look at your file, and I see three distinct scenes each with five copies of your cabinet, each copy rotated to cause a different side to face toward the negative green axis. There are no layers in the model other than the base Layer0. So, all of the copies will be visible in all scenes. I presume that is the issue you are struggling with?
You have two choices of how to make only one copy show in each scene. One is to add a new Layer for each scene, select the copy you want in that scene and in the Model Info dialog assign that layer to it. Now in the appropriate scene, change all but that layer and Layer0 to be non-visible - the other copies will vanish. Orient the camera the way you want. Then update the scene. Change to the next scene and make all layers except the one for that scene and Layer0 non-visible, set the camera, and then update that scene. Repeat for all scenes.
The other way is to hide all except the desired copy instead of using layers. That way is inferior because SketchUp does not manage hidden entities very well and it is easy to get confused.
I see that @McGordon wrote essentially the same thing while I was typing.
Thanks guys. I’ll try that Layers method. Sounds like what I was trying
to do in Layers, but got myself confused and wanted to ask for help before
getting knots in my brain.
Fortunately, I’m all about backup copies, so recovery didn’t take long -
just added knots to my stomach. I eventually stumbled on the “lost” design
in an original backup – and while searching also found a minder-binder
error in my design. So the big problem was frustration.
AhHa! After seeing your suggestions, I realized that Layers is the key I was missing. I had used Layers some years ago though now I’m not sure if it was in SketchUp or some other software. My problem was explained in the first Warning in the Layers topic – Layers control visibility, not Scenes. Layers should be set up with components, not the Scenes.
With this understanding and these helpful comments, I think I’m on the right track.