Dave R. + others have seen an earlier iteration of this model. I wasn’t able to respond timely like, and plowed through with the advice and hints offered. (Many thanks, I learned a lot there)
l was sure I had developed a clean model (with the intention to export to LO). Uh, not so much,
There may be an axis problem, sections planes didn’t respond to a whole model axis correction.
There is a visibility problem. I spent virtual hours mapping and editing the grouped component (tag= screws) to line up along the joists (tag=4x6). They were all there and lined up and saved ( I really hope). I can’t find them now!
Any ideas? If I can find them I can send to LO HELPReckon I’m doing something wrong with SKP. Every model I build ends in near useless f*ckery. Advice welcome.
I ckecked the model, it seems fine to me…
it looks more like a “woops I messed up my save” situation, could be you saved the most recent version in the wrong location, or deleted it by accident, or forgot you didn’t save recently and clicked “yes, delete all change” while closing. So your last modification didn’t get registered in this particular file.
the screws are not on a tag named “screws” but, if I’m not mistaken, still on a tag named “GRK”
you have an empty tag folder, “Spld by Minka,”
One Joist is on the tag “joists”, all the others are on the “untagged” tag.
this is why to me this file feels like a “almost finished, better save now” file. not a bugged one.
I took 2 minutes, renamed the tag “-- SCREWS” ((-- so you see it stand out), selected the joist and simply put them in the correct tag.
is it doing the trick ?
Working the right: There are four deck planks as a group called Difference. There’s loose geometry in that group so the boards aren’t groups or components. If you are expecting to run some sort of report for a cutlist or something, that large group will report but the “boards” inside won’t be shown. There are numerous groups in the model that are missing faces which makes them not solids. The two I show in the center here evidently once were solid because they are called Difference which indicates you’ve used the native solid tools on them. It seems you started out with the deck boards as components but things changed in your workflow. The green color is for the tag called “By others”. Note there are three deck boards with that color. In this case some of the geometry including the top faces were given the By others tag. And some of the geometry in that group is untagged.And of course the three planks are just loose geometry inside a group container which doesn’t contain an instance name at all.
Here I’ve fixed the incorrect tag usage and you can see those faces of the boards are tan like the rest. There’s quite a lot of tagged geometry. As before, all edges and faces should be created and remain untagged.
There seems to be some inconsistencies in the way you are modeling that make your workflow more difficult. The secret to keeping things easy is consistency. This applies to everything, not just SketchUp. If you were building this decking in reality you would use a consistent and efficient process for cutting the planking and placing the screws. To make your modeling efficient you need to find similar methods.
FWIW, I ran a cut list of just the deck deck boards. As you can see, the usefulness of the information is dubious. You can see numerous lines where the width is not the 3-1/2 in. it should be. There’s one which shows a width less than 3-1/2 in. which would be expected at one end of the deck or the other but the ones that are wider are the problem. deck cutlist.pdf (27.6 KB)
It is possible to keep you model in control but you have to be consistent about how you are doing the modeling and you just need to stay on top of it.
Thank you both for your input. Sage advice on consistency and everything Dave, plenty to think about there!
I’ve attached a similar model in which I’ve attempted to incorporate that principle. It’s certainly more workable than the previous. If you have any further structure advice, I’m all ears. The goals of the model are shop drawings in LO and a cut/quantity list. (Haven’t made scenes yet for this one). I haven’t yet focused at all on what’s needed for a cut list, I really have no idea.
The more immediate issue with this one is that the trim tool (native and a batch trim extension) appears to be removing faces, yet the outliner tells me the entities (deck tag) are solids. Can’t heal the faces either. V confused. It worked fine on the previous model. Any insight on that issue? Entity for trimming is in the ‘working’ tag. Screws are floating high up out of the way on the blue axis. Couldn’t seem to make a solid out of the plinth after follow me, found a workaround by making the ‘deck mask’ group. Anywho. Here’s the model. smallplinth1_ 2 copy.skp (502.2 KB)
Incorrect tag usage. The faces and some associated edges have ended up with the “working” tag. Not sure if that’s your doing or this “batch trim” extension. It’s not one I use.
After fixing the incorrect tag usage the faces are displayed.
