As a long time SketchUp teacher, I was very exited to hear about the usability improvements (apart from all my older teaching materials becoming outdated again… ).
Tested my usual workflow and was pleased to see that simple architectural forms can be made with a lot less clicks.
One problem I noticed was that I still keep getting holes on the bottom of the geometry, when extruding the faces from a plan. Now they are more difficult to catch as all other faces are being extruded with front faces out. So, now the only good method of modeling seems to be to always leave Copy + Push Pull on?
I have always wondered, is there are any ways of drawing the plan itself to avoid these kind of problems when extruding faces?
Group all the geometry and clean it up with SolidSovler
Now the extra step is to make sure all the holes are closed on the bottom of geometry.
Doesn’t take much time for me, but, form experience, not something a beginner will notice easily.
Well, you can do it like that but the more usual way is to make a blank wall, draw rectangles on one face representing the openings and then P/P them through. Way less cleaning up to do plus once you push the first opening through, you can simply double click on the next to do the same. And you wouldn’t get the problem of missing faces.
Here is a demo of my workflow. I think it is them most efficient way to create the walls.
Problem with other methods - drawing on walls, is that if the wall is not perfectly straight, or the window opening sides are at an angle.
For a more advanced method, where modifiability is important, I would draw all walls as grouped boxes, windows and doors as components. And then use Outer Shell command to unify them in the end.
Interesting. Right there in the last two posts are two extensions I didn’t know about (and will now check out). It might be interesting to start a thread about what extensions those who use SU for architectural work find most useful. Could be an eye opener.
The new “butter side up” behavior did solve several issues, but can still have the holes on the bottom case. You can use the create new starting face mode as a way around that.
I got tired of this so I built dynamic windows that have a hidden solid cutting block for the rough opening. Once I get a model past the concept stage I copy all my windows / doors up 1000 units, make them unique, select like components, use the dynamic component dialog to turn on the RO cutting block (that adjusts dynamically with the size of the window), explode the components, grab all the cutting blocks - solid tools outer shell, move back down 1000 units and Trim and Keep out of the walls.
I still have to make a dynamic interior door component. And eventually make some generic components that I can use for custom stuff that I tend to do by hand now - using my jambs and sills as guides to push pull rectangles into box shaped solids that I can trim out of solid walls and roofs…
Just had my first new training group on SketchUp 2021.1 and let me tell you - it was a real mess.
It’s too easy to accidentally activate modifiers when just wanting to pan (Shift) or copying objects when moving them (Ctrl). I used to be certain that the default option for Push Pull was, but not anymore, I had to remind everyone to reset it to normal push pull all the time.
This was a good update overall but persistent modifiers should not be on by default - we need a checkbox in preferences to enable it if the user wants them or not.
@Speaker If you’d be willing, it would be really helpful to walk through scenarios in which you recall students ending up in undesirable states. We did some work to mitigate this – although we didn’t get as far as we hoped on Mac. I’m surprised to hear that your group might have ended up in the wrong Push/Pull state, but it probably depends on what the training looks like. I’ll send you a DM to follow up.
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