@Box is trying to be helpful.
Your title suggests you haven’t got the hang of the basics of the program yet (it is widely held to be the easiest 3d modelling software to learn and use).
You have however mentioned that you have watched at least two videos, so credit for that.
Try reading the Help pages too, and turn on the Instructor window. Then maybe edit your title to something less derogatory and emotional.
Fair point about the title which I’ve now changed, but I’ve already seen @Box being sarky with other people. A bully is a bully, end of.
We can all improve on people skills, but you already come across as a decent person. Thanks to both of you, I now have enough to be getting on with so I’ll go and see what happens next.
Thanks for all the good advice, both of you.
I’ve re-read his comments and I think you are overreacting to what are mostly straightforward questions about whether you have already tried to ‘do your homework’ first.
Try toning down your reaction, and look for the helpful intent behind what he says - it’s always there.
That is perfect, thank you.
First, @Lostboy30A, don’t take this as a personal affront, this is just my taking the opportunity to write my opinion. @john_mcclenahan has already dealt with the issue, and you’ve already done your part. I’m just coming in late to add my humble opinion, for yours and other readers consideration, if you have the time. I have been following this forum off and on for just over a year-and-a-half. According to my profile, I have read almost 8,000 posts (I realize that’s every post I scrolled through, but still), and yes, I have come across posts that I thought could have been written in a more friendly tone, but if I spend just a few moments in honest thought, things look quite a bit different.
Follow me for a bit here: what are you good at, or what program is easy for you? What if you were on a forum dedicated to MS-Paint, and newbies came along every day and asked how they could use the paint bucket to colour the background of their doodle, or change font size, or some simple task like that? And then you tell them the simplest way and they go off on a rant about how Microsoft needs to totally re-design Paint, “because I said so.” (Not referring to you, @Lostboy30A but others have done this) Or what if you found out the person you’re helping is using a pirated operating system? These are the types of situations people like the Sages are dealing with every day; these folks are called Sages for a reason – they know SketchUp backwards, many of them are programmers and developers, and they’re on this forum every day, helping us with our little “Technical Problems” that usually turn out to be “User Problems.” Do you blame them for getting peeved every once in a while?
And sometimes they’re probably not even peeved, just misunderstood. I had an uncle who knew almost everything and he liked to teach his sons and nephews how to work, but I don’t think I ever heard him give a tip that wasn’t in a gruff, unforgiving voice. That was just his personality – it sounded like he was upset at you, but you knew in your heart that he was right and that he was trying to help you out. Now I have never personally met a single user of the SketchUp forum, so I’m not trying to classify their personalities. For all I know, @DaveR is a squirrel with a fedora and @DanRathbun has painted every wall in his house bright green for his selfie-backgrounds. What does @Box ’s profile picture even mean? Is that a prosthetic head? Who knows? What I do know is that these gentlemen, and others, have come to the rescue for us distraught, confused question-askers time and time again, and I forgive them if they come across harshly on occasion.
A little while ago I took the time to average out the profile status of the twenty Sages; all their likes together added up to 11,539, an average of 575 per Sage.
Just check out some of their profiles; @Box, has almost 2,000 likes, and 3,500 posts he’s written – and he’s not even on the SketchUp team!
That, my friends, is incredible, and I’m taking this opportunity to give a round of applause to the patience of the twenty (or so) SketchUp Sages. 
Thanks for that insight, Mobel. With this in mind, I hope that @Box will forgive me, who in this sweltering heat has looked at quite a lot of the tutorial stuff for quite some accumulated hours now having tried and failed persistently and was going slightly heat stroked when I landed in this oasis.
(It’s not just camels that get the hump.)
He even continued with advice concerning a very specific link to my particular interest. Hurrah for Box!!
If you draw on any layer but Layer 0 at some point your work will disappear never to return. I was doing that and driving myself crazy until the good people on this forum finally convinced me to NOT put anything on any other layer until after it’s fully drawn AND either turned into a group or component. Once I figured all this out, my drawings are stable and manageable.
“Disappeared” stuff was often drawn on a layer that got turned off somehow.
Sketchup is really a very good program. On first contact, it helps to approach it with an open, tolerant mind, especially if you’re unfamiliar with CAD software. Sketchup does do things a certain way. If you follow along, you will learn and become productive fairly quickly. If you fight it and insist on having it do things your way, you will be unhappy, even if your way is better, which perhaps it is.
Unless you’re aiming to model a nail, fluency with layers and components is a must. Trying stuff out on test models that you don’t mind ruining helps with learning. Good luck!
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