Why am I seeing these dimensions?

[nate2]

In this video you’ll see that when I use the line tool to check a dimension, I am seeing different dimensions at different spots. Can you help me understand what is happening? I’m not able to fix these things when they happen - I try to move parts to exact numbers from each other, but they are still always minuscule amounts off a whole number.

Test for Sketchup forum.skp (39.0 KB)

[bmike]

Share the model. My guess is it’s not flat… but until we see the model most of us will only be able to guess.

[nate2]

@bmike

Share the model. My guess is it’s not flat… but until we see the model most of us will only be able to guess.

I did share the model.

[Royce]

Test for Sketchup forum.1.skp (61.2 KB)

Tiny faces and edges may be solved by using the “Dave Method” or treating mm as meters and scaling back later if need be. In the screenshot, I used a guide line to show the way for the line tool and it worked as you see. Hope this helps.

[nate2]

@Royce

Tiny faces and edges may be solved by using the “Dave Method” or treating mm as meters and scaling back later if need be. In the screenshot, I used a guide line to show the way for the line tool and it worked as you see. Hope this helps.

Hi Royce, thank you for your response. When you say “tiny faces and edges may be solved” - what do you mean is the problem?

[d13tz]

The arch is not completely flat in the Y direction.

Turning off length snapping might help avoid issues like this when drawing.

[Royce]

@Dave can elaborate better than I. The issue is called the “tiny face” issue. SketchUp was designed for architectural work, and small edges and faces causes problems. The work around is to make a component, make a copy of the component, scale it up using the scale tool (either 100x’s, 1000x’s, or more), complete the work you need at that scale, once complete get out of the “edit” mode, check to see if it is solid, If the componet is solid, select the component shown by the bounding blue line and then delete it. Use zoom extents to return to the original component and it should be complete and solid. @d13tz is right about length snapping. It’s best to turn it off.

[nate2]

Thank you, and I think you explained it perfectly.

[DaveR]

Thanks @Royce.

A few observations:

As @d13tz mentioned, turning on Length Snapping would help. Experienced users turn that off in their default template(s) so they don’t have to remember it every time they start a new model.

You have a very large number of segments in the curves at the top of the arch.

That can cause the tiny faces issue Royce described. You probably don’t need that many segments in the first place. Depending on what it is that you’re modeling you can probably manage with 24 or 48 segments just fine. A multiple of 12 is a good choice for most modeling as it is easily divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. With SketchUp’s use of straight edge segments to represent arcs, these divisions would fall on the vertices between edge segments.

I would suggest you leave the model axes displayed and keep your models near the origin. In your case you have the group located at a great distance from the origin relative to the object’s size. Modeling that way can lead to graphical issues.

[Royce]

Happy anniversary Dave! I noticed the icon that today is your anniversary for joining the forum.

[DaveR]

Thank you Royce. I hadn’t noticed.