Ok, so I’m not totally new to using SketchUp - it’s been about a year for me. But, it’s still fresh enough that I feel compelled to share the revelations I’ve had as I’ve been modeling my own custom home.
I’m looking for any type of feedback if you’ve got about 15 min (or less) to watch my first video about learning about geometry in SketchUp.
I’m not new to making videos, but, I am new to making videos specifically about SketchUp.
Thanks for your critique!
Matt
A couple of things.
H is the default shortcut for Pan, as in, the Hand tool.
Preferences on Windows is found under the Window menu.
Groups are not ‘unnamed’ they should be named or you end up with a bunch of things all called group.
You should be careful exploding things, groups that have been tagged will pass their Tag onto the raw geometry, which we don’t want as all raw geometry should remain untagged.
It can be better to copy the raw geometry from one into the other, or use Outershell which is available in all versions of sketchup.
Exploding shouldn’t be considered as a way of editing, which many people mistakenly think.
The weird rendering your mention is called Z-Fighting, useful to know the term for searching for it.
There’s a new skill builder about the tag problem mentioned by Box:
Wow, so cool that you responded. Your comment totally triggered my memory of how I initially fought with and learned layers (now tags). I shot my own video about my understanding of tags and hopefully it will help others out too - if… I ever get exposure on YouTube. I know it’s hard to get videos seen these days - unless you’ve been in that niche for many years.
P.S. Gave you some props in the video. Thanks for the reply!
Thanks for the video. I love watching the stuff from Aaron. It’s one of the ways I’ve been able to model my own home!
Your video actually highlights why the name was changed from Layers to Tags. You even said it yourself, graphic programs use layers. But Sketchup is a 3d environment and you cannot tell a layer to move in front of another layer, you have to physically move it. So layers in SU are/were not like layers in photoshop.
Tags are a way of manipulating the visibility of parts of your model. They don’t separate geometry, they don’t organise geometry, you assign a Tag to a group so you can turn it on and off. You don’t put it on a Tag, it doesn’t move, you assign it a Tag for the purpose of visibility.
Your confusion in the video when trying to understand why ‘it worked’ when it shouldn’t have was because, although you created the Garage on Floor2 you reassigned the garage group to Floor 1 before exploding it, which meant the raw geometry took on floor 1, the same as the other block. Whereas if you had exploded it while it was still floor 2 it would have taken on floor 2.
Outliner is really the way to organise your model, not tags. You can physically move things around in outliner and they will nest or unnest etc …