Using Groups and Components in modeling

This is not necessary. To edit a component you just double click on it. Same with groups. When you’re done you can hit escape or click out of it.

To make a copy of a component, simply move it, and before you stop the movement tap the key to duplicate it. These are absolute basics of sketchup and I’m not sure you are really grasping them quite yet.

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You should check out the SketchUp fundamentals training. It will really help you out.

https://learn.sketchup.com/track/sketchup-fundamentals-part-1

I got it, maybe.

  • You select the component shelf (one click)
  • Move the selection to where you want the copy (or anywhere from the selection) to be.
  • Hit Cntl. The original suddenly reappears.
  • Then position/click, or if it is already in place just click.(to place the copy)
    Got it down to three steps!

Yes. You are moving an object, which is already a two click process (one click at starting point, one click at destination). The only difference is you tap the copy key between clicks. It is not complicated.

This goes for most operations in sketchup. One click starts, and before you click again to end you can either tap a modifier key and/or type a dimension. This can be for rotating, moving, pushing pulling, and even basic drawing.

Groups and components simply turn your loose geometry into usable “objects” that you can assemble just like you would a real object.

You’ve got no idea how many times I call into being a YouTube (SketchUp Fundamentals, Sketchup for Woodworkers, How to use XXX in SketchUp, SketchUp Square One…, SketchUp-7_user_guide_en.pdf, etc.) before disturbing the forum…

You can hit the Cntl key at any time in the process, even before your first click with the move tool, or several times while moving. Cntl just toggles the tool from move to move /copy and back again.

Really, if you would just start the fundamentals course 1 and follow it through it would take a few hours at most and you would be up and running so much quicker than trying to guess how every tool works.

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Well, right now, the game I’m playing is:

  • Group, or component (if to be copied, etc.) an element as many times as it needs to act right. Feel free to component (verb) a group of components (or groups?) as many times as necessary.
  • If you want to deal with all the elements click on it as many times as it takes to select them, and try an extrude. If it goes caterwompy, spacebar (pointer), and try one more click.
  • Yes, bounding rectangles do appear now and again, but it’s not certain if they isolate the elements they surround, or just pick that one element to be the scapegoat for whatever you’re planning to do with the rest of the grouping.
  • You may want to make an exception and try to work on just one of the elements of the “group”, but exercise caution and hope, “Make unique” has a mind of its own, and more often than not, will not appear in the contextual (Rt mouse click) menu. (Skeptics may, at this point, begin to believe “Make unique” never was in a contextual menu!)
  • Use “Explode” with caution (it’s almost always in the contextual menu in ‘try me at your peril’ grey)

Know that there’s no way you can copy, paste, and figure out (deconstruct) what you’ve constructed in order to understand what you were facing. Know that there is probably no tutorial willing to go into this mystery.

Regardless I’ll do the turorial you suggested, again, tonight.

What? Have you even attempted the fundamentals training? Everything you’re discussing has been solved and described to you in great detail. But you insist there are issues. Please learn the basics.

You don’t need to group groups and components multiple times! A double click is ALL that you need to open a component. Bounding boxes are 100% predictable. Cmon.

It does not. It works exactly as intended when used correctly. If you want to make one component separate from its linked components, you make it unique. So it’s a new component definition.

Make unique shows up if you’ve selected a component and right click on it. It does not show up if you haven’t done that. That context is required in the contextual menu. If it appears to not work for you it’s because you aren’t doing things right.

Only if there are more than one instance in the model, you can’t make a singular component unique if there is nothing for it to be unique from.

Make unique will never appear with any number of ‘groups’.

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Thanks for correcting me while I’m trying to help, Box. Context is everything.

I wasn’t ‘correcting’ you, I was adding more info that was relevant to the context and could explain why sometimes even right clicking on a component won’t give you ‘make unique’.

Thank you!

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You really seem to be misunderstanding some of the very basics.

With raw geometry a single click will select a single face or edge depending on what you click on, so
A single click on a face will select just that face.
A double click will select the face and its surrounding edges.
A triple click will select the face, its edges and all other connected raw geometry.

With groups/components
A single click will select the group.
A double click will open the group for editing.
A triple click will open the group and select all the contents.

Once the group is open for editing the blue bounding box will change to dotted lines
A single click on a face will select just that face.
A double click will select the face and its surrounding edges.
A triple click will select the face, its edges and all other connected geometry within the context of the group.

A group/component can be move copied rather than copy and paste.
You use the move tool and ctrl and you can array them by x or /

This gif shows these actions.

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I went through the Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced Series.
Very informative, and yes, humbling.

Intermediate: SketchUp Training Series: Layers - YouTube using a Layer Manager didn’t seem to apply to SketchUp I am using so I tried to accomplish the same with the Outliner. SketchUp Skill Builder: Creating section animations with Scenes - YouTube also employed the Layer menu.

Layers and the Outliner
SketchUp Skill Builder: Outliner Window - YouTube I ran across this later but it did seem to put a positive word in for layers using the Outliner. Am I interpreting this wrong?

In the One of the tutorials was titled SketchUp Training Series: Layers - YouTube . It provided a dialog box titled Layers and listing LayerName, Visible, and Color. In the video she isolates layers (so that they will not affect each other, by making parts of the house into either components or groups). (Since I couldn’t find anything called layers on my interface I’m using the Outliner to do the same thing. Bad Idea?)

I have been given the 3rd degree about Layers and how they should be tags, etc. but…

Using Outliner as de facto Layer Manager:

  • Safety net: If it’s not a component or group it won’t appear in the outliner.
  • Model clarity: Clearly labeling each component of the Outliner clarifys the “layers”
  • Moving components or groups into others makes them part of the component or group they are a member of, thereby making it easier to make visible/invisible ‘entity-groupings’
    o One can also go wild with sub-groupings. (somewhat akin to what I’ve done when something doesn’t act )
  • If I make an element or element group invisible, that takes care of any worry that other visible entities might affect it (but this is probably a superfluous observation because non-affectation is happening because all allowed entities are either groups or components.)
  • If you want to have an element(s) in a drawing that are neither groups nor components, they won’t appear in the outliner. Is there ever any reason for entities (besides, I suppose, selective, explanatory guidelines) that are not components or groups?

SketchUp Training Series: Scenes - YouTube seemed to only be on the Mac version. Is this true?
SketchUp Training Series: Paint Bucket - YouTube The materials browser (again displayed on a Mac) did not seem to reflect the M-Browser on my PC. Open or Create a collection brought up a SketchUp > SketchUp 2021 > SketchUp > Materials (empty) folder. Do I need to redirect it, or download an existing collection?

Back to using Groups and Components…Fooling, in the Outliner with the visibility of a Grouping of Containers and Groups (the way things are now)

,
I find I can cause a cross hatching to appear when, while visibility is off, and I click on the Group Black Rectangle
What’s the crosshatching for?
What is it saying?
Is it useful for something special?

That video really didn’t have to do with Layers, except that you can see the entity’s Layer in the Entity Info pane when the entity is highlighted in Outliner, same as if you have selected the entity directly in SketchUp by clicking in the model.

Layers ARE Tags. They changed the name, but it is the same. The older videos still call them Layers of course.

Layers (managed with the “Layers” Window)–NOW CALLED “Tags”-- and the Outliner serve different uses. Layers / Tags are very important for hiding parts of the model. You assign a Tag to your wall component so that you can hide it to see or model things beyond the wall (for example).

Hiding entiites does NOT stop them interacting with other elements --like you say Groups and Components stop entities from interacting.

As you model, it’s a good idea to put things (edges , faces, arc ,and circles) in a group or component. Sometimes people make a component as soon as possible before continuing modeling. Once they are groups or components you can assign them a Tag if you like. Leave edges and faces “Untagged”.

I think you can do a LOT on your type of project with just Components / Groups – YES you don’t need to go wild with sub-components in components. Whatever makes sense. Look at the car in the above mentioned video. There’s a component for the car, inside the car component, there’s a component for the body, one for the wheels (4 of the same component) etc. Just logical organization, only when you need it. You don’t need it to be a Russian doll!
And you can have a couple tags, but no need to have too many. Just try it out for now, Give the wall components a Tag called “Walls” etc.

The materials browsers on both Mac and Windows serve the same purpose. They just work a little differently because the operating systems have different ways of handling colors and so on. Most things you see on a Mac video are going to have a corollary in your Windows version.

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You’re finding training on YouTube. But you’re skipping the basic fundamentals. Did you even try learn.sketchup.com to start the fundamentals training? You need to start at the very beginning. Learning about Pro features can wait for later.

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Tags are Layers, the name was changed a while ago. You are watching a training video from 2011, with 10 year old info. Instead of stumbling through random You tube videos, start the fundamentals course and follow the learning steps in order.

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So you’re not talking about the SketchUp Training Series on the SketchUp YouTube channel image 10/ Beginner; 10/ Intermediate; 10/ Advanced?
Which series are you referring to?