When I modify one object in a component none of the other objects change

SketchUp
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I thought the point of Components is that if you modify one object the other objects will automatically be modified also.
I have 12 identical wood beams that I made into a component. I am trying to use the push/pull tool on one and have the change propagate to all the other beams. If I single click the component a box will form around the whole component, but I cannot use push/pull. Same happens if I double click. But if I triple click then the single object with be selected and I can use push/pull. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks much.

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Can you share the file so we can look at it?

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What you were expecting to happen is an interesting idea. That is, that a set of things told to be a component need not also be a group, and then at the top level you could push/pull an item, and the same item in other copies of the component would also change.

But it doesn’t work that way, when you make a component it also groups the objects together, so that at the top level you can select the whole thing as one item, to make copies of it. If you only double-click into it once, you should be able to push/pull faces, and any other copies of the component will also update at the same time.

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The idea is to make one beam into a component and then create the others as copies of that. Then, when you edit one of them, the others follow suit.

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To clarify: have you one component with twelve beams in it, or a component with one beam in it, with 11 other instances of the same component in the model?

What do you see in the Component browser for your model?

And what do you see in the Outliner?

Take and post screenshot images if you aren’t sure how to interpret what you see.

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Thanks very much for the replies.

I think I need to understand what the actual purpose of a componant is.

Here are the steps I took:

  1. I made a wood beam
  2. I made that beam into a group.
  3. I made 11 additional beams by copying that one, so now all 12 beams are in there own group.
  4. I ctrl selected each beam and made all of them into one component.

The reason I made the single beam (and all subsequent ones) into a group was to protect it from merging with other object.

The reason I made all of them into a component was so if I needed to modify any one the others would automatically be modified as they are all identical and would never need to be different from the others.

My understanding was that making several same items into a component allows them to be edited and by changing one and not having to go through and change each one.

What is the purpose of using components? I guess I should google that.

Anssi, is it too lake for me to fix this. Could I “explode” the component and groups and make each beam into its own component?.

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Your process is not correct but it’s not too late to fix it.

Your understanding needs a correction. You should have made a single beam into a component (not a group) and then copied that component to make the other beams in your model. Then, editing one of those beam components would result in the other copies getting edited, too.

Don’t explode anything yet. Check your PMs.

1 Like
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Thanks for the videos, they were very helpful.

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Is there any way to fix this? If I explode the groups and make the individual beams components will that work?

Also, one thing the videos did not explain is, when is it necessary (or useful) to make all of the like components into a larger group or component?.

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No. All that will do is make 11 more individual components, all distinct from each other. Though it could be a useful intermediate step - see below.

Make one individual beam into a component (R-click, Make Component). You don’t need to explode the group first.

Then EITHER:
Delete the other individual group beams.

Copy the new component to replace the groups where they were located.
OR, if you made the other beams into different components:
Select all but the original ‘beam’ component.

Go to the Component Browser, R-click on the ‘Beam’ component, and choose ‘Replace selected’.

Depending on how hard it is to manually locate the other beams and move a copy of the Beam component to replace them, the second option might be quicker.

It is never necessary.

It might be useful, depending wnat you want to do with the set of beams. For example, if you had a multi-floor building, and all or several of the floors are identically structured, it might be useful to make a component out of the set of beams, and copy the whole thing to another floor or floors.

Then if you change the arrangement of beams on one floor, all the other floors will change to match.

And if you change any one beam, all the other beams in all the other floors will change.

That’s the power of components.

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