Sketchup troubles

Man, I’m trying! Seems like I just can’t grasp the way this program works. I don’t want to give up so here’s a few of my issues.

Having so much trouble drawing walls. There just didn’t seem to be any way to draw a simple wall other than drawing a rectangle then deleting three of the walls. Real pain. Then I found a post showing using the top view then drawing a rectangle where you wanted the wall, then the push/pull to create the wall. That looked like it would work but then the fact that it’s pasted to any objects close to it meant everything was screwed up when you tried to move the wall. I have to believe that something so fundamental to the program as drawing walls can’t be this hard.

So many issues with using things from the 3D warehouse. I wanted six panel doors and thought this would be so easy, but no.The various door drawings don’t show an opening size so I have to guess. For example, I cut out the wall 32 X 80 which is not really the daylight opening for a 32 X 80 door but it’s a guess. I bring the door in and try to locate the corner in the opening, but the door is either giant sized or there’s gaps, which means I then need to try to move the walls to close up the gap, but that is easier said than done. If by some miracle I get the door in the opening correctly it then doesn’t take up the wall width, which I’m using the standard 4 1/2" for. The door might take up half the frame width and I don’t know how to resize the door. I’ve tried exploding the component but then there’s a gazillion parts to it.

The other problem with the warehouse is where do the components go that you’ve downloaded? If for some reason I need to delete the component, for example, to try to resize the opening, it’s gone. I’ve pulled down the component menu but it lists all kinds of things I didn’t download.

I created a large second story with walls 8’ high, then created a bathroom, again with walls 8’ high. I was then using the offset and push/pull to create a first floor but the walls of my second story bathroom are showing when I look under the floor. I can’t do the offset and have no clue why the walls are a different height and showing through the floor.

As always appreciate any help you can offer.

Sounds like you need to start from the beginning with some basics. Maybe a live demo could help.

As @Daver mentioned, it may make sense to review the basics, and maybe look into how to group objects to prevent them from interacting.

As for 3DWarehouse downloads, it really depends on what model you download. Some are going to be drawn to a specific scale and will fit perfectly into a standard rough opening, while others may have been draw to just look good enough and not be to scale, at all. It is really to the discrepancy of the author.

As for the components showing up in your component list, whenever you load a file into your model, all components that make up that file alre loaded into your model. If you download a door, you may get a components for the trim, one for the door, one for the hinged, and one for the knob… All components will stay in your model until you remove them.

Basics of SketchUp: Getting Started with SketchUp - Part 1 - YouTube
Using groups: SketchUp: Grouping things together - YouTube