Where is the Clip/Snip/Cutting Tool or whatever its called?

SketchUp
1

Hi Im clearly a novice user as you can tell from my topic title!
I am busy working on a model atm and I have a part of the model that I want to cut so that it is no longer part of the model, but how to do it in such a way that it will not influence the part of the model that remains after the cut has been done? When I first started using SU I was sure there was a cutting tool on one of the toolbars (the icon looked very similar to a little scalpal or exacto knife?!!)
I saw in a tutorial how one could use this tool to make cuts of a selected area and then have one part remain and the other part erased. Why cant I find it anymore or am I confused? is this a featue only available in Layout?

2

There is no tool like that in SketchUp but there is one in LayOut. It looks like this:

Depending on how you’ve built your model in SketchUp, you can probably just use the eraser tool tool to erase the edges you want. You can also select the entities you wish to remove and hit the Delete key.

3

In SU, you are working with a surface modeler - you are deforming a bubble to make a shape. When you add shapes, you add another bubble and it sticks to the first shape. (To prevent the bubbles from joining together, you use groups and/or components)
“Edges” form where two surfaces meet, but if you have a face and you remove an edge that it needs, you will pop the skin of the bubble (surface). You can also ‘pop’ a surface out by deleting it and it will leave the edges in place.

There are countless ways to shape your model and cut bits, but if you keep in mind the ‘bubble’ thing, you should be able to work out how to do it. (Pro’s solid operations can help, but there are other ways to achieve the same results… it just takes longer.)

4

Hi yes, thank you for your very succinct description, that is exactly how I was thinking the first time i had this happen to me. The bubble burst! Now if I can use your descriptive way of explaining what my dilemma is I might actually get my point across. Imagine a rectangle of paper which has a slight arc drawn from edge to edge longitudinally I.o.w. across its width. This arc is in fact a wall but if you are looking from top view you see it as an arc. This wall is a retaining wall but I placed it only after I’d already placed the rectangle(patio entity)
What I want to do now is cut off the part of the rectangle that is beyond the the arc(or. The retaining wall) because this is only a partial design for illustrative purposes. I don’t want to have to add the top Terrace as it is not even within the scope of the design, however IMHO I don’t want to show my client this design from a bird’s eye view with this left over sticking out behind the wall. Obviously if there was a top Terrace I would not have bothered asking this question as I could merely hide it under the layer that represents the turf. I’ll add a JPEG later when I’m at my desktop. It may make things a whole lot easier to understand. Thank you for your time and your great answer, much appreciated, cheers

5

You may not want to show it to your client, but please show it to us so we can help.
A picture or model is worth any amount of words.

6

First I would make the curved wall have a thickness rather than just be a face (if it already has a thickness, ignore this);

  • select the curve (only the top/bottom curve)
  • use the offset tool to give it a thickness
  • join the ends with the line tool (should produce a face)
  • use the push/pull to give it some height
  • (group the wall)

Assuming that the patio is a group;

  • edit the group, select all, r-click and “intersect with model”.
  • select the pointy bit that you don’t want to see behind the curved wall and delete it.
  • (alternatively…)
  • create a group from the selection, then cut it.
  • exit the patio group and edit | paste in place
  • select this bit and move it up the wall to be a bit of the top terrace (paint with grass)