Hi I am following Dave Roberts videos from Fine Woodworking “add Components and Joinery”. I made a rectangle, with a 5/8" thickness on all four sides. I made it a component, using the ‘G’ shortcut. I want to mirror it or “copy” it. I pressed the control key, grabbed the top of the rectangle with the move tool, and with the control key held down and moving the rectangle upward, a copy of the 5/8" thick rectangle would not move upward. A rectangle will but the full component will not.
This is a cabinet bottom and a top that I want to ultimately flip along as one since they are the same dimensions as in the Dave Roberts video “add Components and Joinery”. When I use the move tool with the control key held down only the top of the rectangle moves and not the full component. I have worked on this for two hours and cannot get any good result.
I’m not familiar with Dave Roberts or his videos but…
A change a couple of versions back means thaty you don’t hold Ctrl when using the Move tool to copy a component. You simply tap the Ctrl key once after you’ve selected Move.
It would help if you share the .skp file you’ve created so we can see what you’ve got going on. I expect there’s an easy solution. Probably a small detail you’ve missed.
I doubt it. Again, I expect it’s a missed step or perhaps something you’ve done that you shouldn’t have.
Here I’m creating a box, making it a component, then copying the component and flipping it to make a mirrored copy of the first.
It sounds like maybe you are still editing the component and thus you are just moving the rectangle that is inside the component.
See if you can click outside of the component geometry such that you can then select the component and then use the Move/copy tool to copy the entire component.
Hi Thank you all for your help. After reading Box’s comment that I single clicked instead of triple clicked the cabinet bottom I realized that was what I exactly did. What I did was I single clicked the rectangle and then used the G shortcut which then prompted me with the make component box. I don’t recall if I was holding the control key when I pressed the ‘G’ key. Not sure if you have to when using the ‘G’ key? I avoided the triple click in the first place because I found it hard to do 3 rapid clicks and still know how many times I clicked. After reading your comments, today I tried just clicking three times slowly and then right clicked, selected ‘Make Component’ and made the component. I was then able to use the ‘Move’ tool to move up a copy of the component bottom which will be the top of my cabinet. Thanks a lot! Thanks to DanR for the tip on pressing the ‘Ctrl’ key once and not needing to hold the control key down while using the ‘Move’ tool to make the copy.
The sketchup class videos I purchased was developed in 2012 so there are bound to be differences in the way it works today. I have a lot to learn and it is great to have an active community forum to ask questions.
Thanks, Doug
The current version of SketchUp in 2012 was SketchUp 8. There have been a number of changes since then although I think you’d find the fundamentals to be the same.
Dave Richards wrote the video class offered by Fine Woodworking and not Dave Roberts as I incorrectly wrote. At the time of the class it was still google Sketchup.
I guess I’ve used the move tool and the ctrl key a few too many times today.
Thanks for bringing these two errors to my attention.
