Just playing around in Sketchup and catching up on the community and I thought “Hmm, I wonder how the Sages review other people’s models?” (I know, I know. I need to get a life)
Sometimes I’ll see someone post a question with their model attached and in less than 5 min someone has responded with their analysis of the model.
For those of you (@DaveR and @slbaumgartner to mention a couple that consistently give detailed feedback) that do this, do you have some tips/tricks for the rest of us?
As I muddle through building my models I tend to forget that I did something or to get back to something I meant to. It would be nice if there was a methodology for reviewing/analyzing models.
I’ve learned about Purging Unused, reducing the number of faces on non-flat surfaces, and avoiding nesting. Each of those was an “Oh, wow. I didn’t know that” moment for me. Helping me do a better job of designing models.
Hard to put an answer into words. There are things I do like switching to Monochrome face style and setting Profiles to 1 to help see some geometry related issues. I look at Model Info>Units to see what the user has chosen. I look at Outliner to see if the model structure makes sense. I turn on Hidden Geometry and look at that. Sometimes a lot of it is just done by “feel”. Having looked at thousands of models over the years you just start to get an idea of the things other people do.
I start by doing much the same as @DaveR has described, mainly by “gut feel” just as he said. One technique he didn’t mention is using the text tool (or the tape measure in recent versions) to check the coordinates of points to see whether they are aligned as they should be. That and hard-to-see tiny edges are often why a face won’t form or a pushpull doesn’t cut a face.
I also have a collection of Ruby snippets I have accumulated over the years that probe a model to see whether errors I have seen before are present, such as very large objects, objects very far from the origin, damaged camera parameters, and others.
In this particular case, you were VERY succinct - in the post title! It was enough to get me to skip a detailed look at the initial post and skip to the answers you received!
Save a scene of the model as it is presented to you. To return to when needed.
(The times a model disappeared after ‘Zoom Extents’ are numerous)
Then proceed with reviewing the model with the tips mentioned above.
Don’t forget that a model can have section planes, even hidden ones and/or with different tags. Section planes that aren’t currently visible due to whatever reason (hidden / plane and cut turned off / tag turned off).
It’s a style setting under the Edit tab for edges. As @slbaumgartner indicated, it has some tolerance for off axis edges. It can be useful but isn’t a perfect tool for idientifying off-axis edges.
I’m a bit slow this morning. What am I looking at? I see that the Color property is set to “By axis”, but I’m not following what it does and how it helps. Would you mind elaborating?
It confirms by color what edges are parallel to the x,y,z axis…
It is a visual check that things are perpendicular to each other… but note that it sometimes also could have inaccuracies… Trimble is unprofessional in this regard… it should either be right or wrong… not mostly right and sometimes wrong