Show parts of multiple groups?

say I have a ship thats in several slices, Bow, middle and stern, each is a group in 3 different layers.
I want to create a 4th layer called frame. When I view that layer, it shows only the frame of the ship, including the frame in the 3 slices of the ship. How can I do this? Plugins are fine.

What version of SketchUp are you using? Please complete your profile.

  1. Sorry I will get on that.

OK. So are the frames separate groups/components from the rest of the hull? If so, you would give the frame objects a different layer so you can choose to show or not show them as desired. You could use group/component nesting to simplify the visibility control.

So you might have a bow section group that contains the bow plate group(s) and the bow frame components.

Then you might have layers like this:
Bow section
Bow section plates
Bow section frames

Give the Bow section layer to the nested group, the Bow section plates layer to the bow section plate group(s), and the Bow section frames layer to the bow section frame components.

Note it’s probably best to think of layers (called tags in later versions) as being put on objects (groups and components) instead of groups in or on layers.

If you upgraded to the current version of SketchUp you would have tags instead of layers and there are tag folders which reduce the amount of nesting required which tends to make model management easier.

The frame of the bow is a subgroup of the bow group. And your solution works but the problem is I would lose the ability to put bow frame and bow plates into a single “Bow” group right? If I want to move the bow somewhere I need to grab each individual part of the bow and move them all relative to each other.

No. If the bow frames are a subgroup of the bow assembly, and the plates are another subgroup, the subgroups are each given a layer and the parent group can be given a third layer. You can select the parent group and move the entire bow section wherever you want.

Here’s an example of a nested component (a group would look basically the same). In this case it is a drawer. Each of the parts that make up the drawer are subcomponents inside the Drawer component. I can select the Drawer component and move it as a whole or I could open the Drawer component for editing and access the individual parts if I want.

If I wanted to manage the visibility of the individual parts of the drawer I could give, say, the knob a layer/tag that is different from the rest of the drawer parts. And the Drawer would be given a “Drawer layer/tag” After that turning off the visibility for the knob layer/tag would hide the knob without hiding the drawer. Turning off the “Drawer” layer/tag would hide the drawer and the knob.

By the way, make sure you are keeping Layer 0 as active and ALL edges and faces keep Layer 0 assigned to them. Only groups and components get other layers.

Very good. I was able to get it working. I have more layers than I would prefer now but I guess thats not avoidable.

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