Hi,
From time to time I see the “Unglue” feature in the drop down menus. I’ve never used it
Occasionally when I am modeling it seems that this feature would be useful.
Could you help me understand when this feature is active and how to use it?
Thanks.
Eli
It relates to components that have been set to “glue”. When “glued” a component can only be moved parallel to the face that it has been placed on. Ungluing breaks this relationship and allows it to be moved in any direction.
Anssi
Thank you. I understand now. 
A good example of this is the creation of 3D text on another object. The text gets glued to it by default and you have to unglue it to move it away from the object…
If your are like me, NEW to SketchUp, you might be having trouble with some of the help given out.
Dilemma: Difficult if not impossible to move an object on the blue axis.
Explanation: It is possible that your object is STUCK on the surface. For some reason that only sketchup geniuses can explain, an object can be stuck to the surface which limits any vertical movement. It’s confounding. Because the object can move on the red and green axes, it doesn’t SEEM stuck. SO you spend HOURS AND HOURS trying to move it. After much internet searching, you discover the concept called GLUE and you learn that an object can be glued to the surface which limits one thing: Vertical movement. Many sites suggest RIGHT CLICK to find the UNGLUE Command. Well, go ahead and right click. There is no unglue command. SO, here’s what you do:
SOLUTION TO INABILITY TO MOVE ON THE BLUE AXIS:
SELECT object you wish to move.
GOTO the EDIT tab and pull down to the command GROUP (x) in MODEL. (x being the group you are trying to move.) Then a submenu will come up which includes UNGLUE.
Click unglue and now you can move that object on the blue axis.
IT IS ABSOLUTELY INSANE THAT THIS IS SO DIFFICULT.
The option to ‘Unglue’ is only available when you have selected a group or component that is glued to a face. It is context sensitive. If nothing is selected you’ll see a different context menu.
If the group or component that you have selected is not glued to any face, the ‘Unglue’ option is grey.
In earlier versions of SketchUp (I tested version 2015, not 2016 or versions older than 2015) the constrain to blue would stay black with ‘Glued’ components.
Unfortunately this is not the case for SketchUp 2017 and SketchUp 2018. It looks like you could move the ‘Glued’ component along blue but you can’t till you unglue it. See:
It’s super frustrating because moving objects along blue, red, and green should be very simple functions. That it’s taken hours and hours just to figure out how to move an object along the blue axis seems a large flaw in the software. I mean, why does it move so readily along the green and red and not the blue? That seems completely random and illogical. Glued should mean glued meaning no movement. If something can move along red and green, blue should be on option as well.
Logic people!
It is glued to a face, not locked at a position. It can be moved in the plane of that face but not off the plane.
It’s a shame you didn’t take a look at the Help Center. You could have spent a whole lot less time fighting with something you didn’t understand.
This article would be a good read for you Creating a Basic Component | SketchUp Help
Especially:
Choose alignment options
You have alignment options for gluing a component to a plane or aligning a component or its shadows. Here’s how those options work:
To set a gluing plane: Select one of the following options from the Glue To drop-down list: Any, Horizontal, Vertical, Sloped. When you select a gluing plane, the Cut Opening checkbox becomes active, and the Always Face Camera and Shadows Face Sun options become inactive. If you set a gluing plane, you can enable your component to cut an opening in a face by selecting the Cut Opening checkbox.
I did go to the help center. It didn’t help. I feel that the help is always… off. It’s not as bad as autoCAD, but no where nearly as helpful as Adobe Photoshop.
But thank you so much for the tip. I’ll dive into the link right away!
If you group something that is part of another face it will by default be glued. Whereas grouping separated geometry will not automatically glue.
Geometry in sketchup is sticky like glue, until you wrap it up in a group or component.
For example here you see the box that is created on the raw geometry becomes glued to that rectangle, but when I first make the rectangle a group it nolonger sticks to it.
@douglas.short, note that in @Box’s first example you can group the base rectangle (the gluing face) later. You would then have a box glued to the face inside a group. Might come in handy, a separated gluing face that isn’t sticky to anything and that can even be locked on its own, etc.
SketchUp is good at checking if anything odd happens to the gluing face.
You can however create a component glued to a plane that doesn’t coincide with face it is glued to. Is this a bug? Manipulating the gluing face seems to re-align (move and rotate) the glued component to the face.
hope it’s not too late, made you one haha
https://extensions.sketchup.com/extension/0a0be6e5-4dee-42ea-a756-3e1387360542/m-moser-unglue-components
Well bugga me I’ve been hanging out two years for that!
Hope it helps
No kidding! I’m coming unglued!
and in 2022 there is no MODEL under EDIT and the GROUP command doesn’t offer sub-options…
Are you referring to the model you uploaded in the other thread?
Unglue doesn’t play a part in that file.
