Just saw a post about making shapes solid.
Wonder if this could have applications for architecture.
thinking if I extrude my walls (in plan) then covert them to solids, as long as they can be extruded or made back into planes later then I wouldn’t have to worry about inadvertently pick and deleting surfaces or edges when I’m working.
Not sure if the application of solids could work at all… in fact don’t even know how to make a solid but the thought entered my mind so figured I’d ask.
Groups and components are SketchUp’s way of isolating collections of geometry from interaction. A “solid” in SketchUp is a group or component that encloses a volume of model space with no holes between the inside and outside and no unnecessary edges or faces. Think of it as the surface of a real 3D object.
That said, solids enable application of special Boolean interactions with other solids, such as subtract and trim, but are otherwise just groups or components. Solidness has nothing to do with stopping geometry from sticking together or intersecting.
Seems like you haven’t done much watching of the SketchUp fundamentals videos?
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As @slbaumgartner groups and components provide separation between lumps of geometry. Solids have nothing to do with that. Only groups and components can be considered solid. Solid groups and components tend to be cleaner and easier to work with because they don’t contain a bunch of needless geometry.
Truthfully… no I haven’t watched a lot of the fundamentals videos but have watched some.
Hopefully not asking too many questions.
Had a deadline to get through for a project that I wanted to take on in sketchup so just kind of dived in. I’ve “wasted” a lot of time over the years watching and filtering through videos for single issues I’ve run into, ultimately to revert back to asking a question and getting a quick response in a forum (talking cad here primarily). That being said, don’t want to be the guy who doesn’t do his homework or due diligence either. Not trying to be a freeloader perse… Hopefully not coming across that way. I search for my answers just beyond spending an inordinate amount of time digging for it any more. I’d rather spend my time hammering it out in the drawing and figuring it out myself rather than going nuts trying to locate it in a video etc. Sorry, just my thoughts on it all.
I’m using groups and components religiously now and definitely see the benefit… not unlike blocks with cad… but even much more so important in sketchup.
If solids are groups and components only then guess I have some understanding of the benefit. But really don’t follow the idea behind solids in general. So, I’ll save that for another day.
This is the sort of thing that can make people stop responding to your questions.
Going through the fundamentals just makes sense, it give you a basis from which to continue the learning process.
It is very difficult to keep answering questions when you have to go back and explain things that should already be known.
It would be different if the forum was for teaching, but it is volunteer users offering help to solve issues.
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This is a very basic example of one of the things you can do with solids.
The object could then be exported as an .stl and be 3d printed.
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Below are general comments, not intended as an attack specifically at you, but for benefit of all people coming to the forum.
There is no such thing as too many questions, but there is a thing called laziness. We volunteers get tired of doing people’s work for them! We also get tired of answering the same question in a dozen topics when a quick search would reveal the other 11 times.
There are two major aspects of watching the videos that help us to help you.
One is that your questions are then based on at least some level of understanding of how SketchUp works. That is essentially what @box wrote. It’s fine if you study and then come here saying “I tried and I just don’t understand, please help me”, but it creates extra work for us if you haven’t even tried. It’s notable how many basic questions posed here are answered quite clearly in the videos.
The other is that watching the videos and studying teaches you the terminology used in SketchUp. So, you don’t refer to a group as a block or a tool as a command (aside from menu items such as “Save”, SketchUp doesn’t have commands), etc. It’s much harder to help when we struggle to figure out what you are talking about.
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