Hi everybody.
I have some problems setting the size of this rectangle during its creation because it gets “stick” to different points of the geometry (what’s the word for that by the way?, snap?)
Can someone help to identify what I’m doing wrong?, is there any workaround?
silla_prueba_render.skp (1.5 MB)
Thanks in advance.
Why not just start drawing the rectangle and then type in the dimensions you want?
Depends where you need to place it, when you invoke the rectangle you could use an arrow key to constrain it to a particular axis. If drawing it amongst your existing geometry is hard, just go to a blank area and draw it there, after the first click of dragging out the rectangle start typing the dimensions you want it to be separated by a comma. Group it and move it back to where you want it ?
It’s not really clear what constraints you want. If it’s a particular size, type in the dimensions. If you want to snap to a particular point you may need to constrain the direction. It’s also not obvious why you are using scaling to alter its size rather than, say, creating a rectangle that is obviously too small (or large) and then dragging an edge to the position wanted (select it so that it is highlighted and then move it, possibly constraining the plane).
This is called “inferencing”. The inference engine constantly searches for relative points in your drawing that you might want to reference (corners, midpoints, centers, guides). This is a key component of Sketchup.
You are clearly already locking the plane to the red axis using the arrow keys. The next step being suggested here is to just start your rectangle to a random size, then let go of the mouse and type in some measurements, like “3m,6m”. The rectangle will be formed at that size.
It seems you all think the same and my best choice is to type the measurements.
As @DaveR was the first one suggesting that I check his post as the solution, thank you all.
I hardly ever work with dimensions for things like this because I don’t really know them, I’m looking for a rectangle that looks like the final one (approximately).
Yes, I already do (the .gif shows it).
If I’m going to type the dimensions I don’t need to look for a blank area, that would be even slower.
It doesn’t let you draw it smaller with that perspective.
You can download the .skp file and check the scene.
Sounds like you got it, good. To be clear, if you really don’t care about the size there is nothing wrong with the way you are doing it, drawing a random size and modifying it with scale, it’s just a bit longer. Know that the reason your original rectangle is jumping all over is because it’s “inferencing” the intersection points of the white studio wall behind, the one under the chair. Hiding that or turning that layer off would let you make random rectangles without the inference engine searching for available points on it’s surface, or rotating your camera so that open sky is behind the place you want to draw a rectangle.
Inferencing can be a problem as well as a benefit. While it has been suggest hiding underlying layers, you can also just as easily move your camera view to uninterrupted space to get an easier stab at it.
Hiding a layer or component looks a good idea too, thank you all.
Hiding layers, working within a component (with rest of model hidden) etc. works for me. Sometimes I make a copy of the component (e.g. staircase) take it away from the rest of the model (outside the house) and so it is easier to work on.
Interesting. Why don’t you just edit in place and make use of the “hide everything else” feature?
There are many components involved, and I can work on them in relation to one another. whereas, hide rest of model only allows me to see one of the components (and lower nested components). In this example the stairwell walls are in the way and not as needed so much as the rest, and I don’t have to worry what is hidden in the hierarchy. So I am adjusting the railing in relation to the treads etc. I can see it all. I guess it mostly relates to a set of nested components, but I also leave the copy of the whole stairway outside for an extended time and can see it both in situ and “in the round” whenever I want while working on the model.
Still the best thing I ever did for workflow was set hide rest of model to toggle on a key command. Use it constantly.
Cool, I didn’t know about this feature, , it looks only available through keyboard shortcut, isn’t it?
Hide rest of model is available under view>component edit> , but it’s a very handy keyboard shortcut to have.
You are also drawing the rectangle from its center point rather than the 2 diagonal points on the corners. On Windows tap Ctrl to toggle between the 2 options. (Option on Mac?)
I find it somewhat more difficult to use the centerpoint method.
I’m using center point intentionaly.
Because I want the center there, basicly xD
OK, that method caught me by surprise and it took me a little while to figure it out.
i used the centrepoint method as I think the OP had a specific point that was to be the center of the rectangle. You can still type the dimensions but it will be calculated from centre.
The idea was drawing at that point a v-ray rectangle lighting, I made those lines as reference points, I think it’s not crazy at all to make lines as reference 
I understand that you can type in the dimensions, but the tool just feels a bit unruly using the center point option when you’re amongst other objects.
