New Member introduction with questions

catwoman

Hello, SketchUp community!

My name is Gisele, but my friends call me Gigi. You may all call me Gigi.

I'm a contract interior designer (with a year of grad. work towards a prof. degree in architecture), pretty proficient in AutoCAD (other than 3D stuff), and am absolutely LOVING SketchUp! I'm quite new to SU, too. Downloaded it about a week ago, I think. I should mentione that haven't been working for four years, now, because I have been in a flare-up of my lupus for that long. But that gives me LOADS of time to play!

Okay, first question concerns the invisible link to the UCP. Where IS it? I looked on the upper right side, like Gaius told me, and I looked on the upper left, as someone told the new guy who wrote in earlier. I hovered over everything I saw just in case it would reveal a UCP link. I am either blind, or it is not there. YIKES! Where can I find this thing? What does it look like? There isn't anything that actually says, "UCP" or User Control Panel, at least anywhere on my screen, that I can see.

Now for my SU question. I've been writing them down as I go. I know these will probably seem exceptionally simplistic to you, but have pity -- I'm totally new to all this.

Why are some faces white and some blue -- and I'm talking about when they are in the same plane? (No shading difference)
Why is it possible to erase some lines in-between three-dimensional objects, and when you erase other lines, an entire face disappears?
Why is it that when I create a face by using the pencil to draw lines, often the face is not the one I drew, but a much larger one, encompassing a much larger area, and sometimes isn't even in the same plane as the one I was drawing?
Same question as above, but it happens with rectangles. And I made sure that all the colored lines followed the directions (axes) I intended to put the face in.
Is there a way to "detach" an object from an adjacent object, so that it can be moved or scaled independently? Seems that every time I bring a line or plane up to the face or edge of another object, it becomes an integral part of it.

I think I just may have figured out the answer to No. 1 today -- not sure. When I zoomed in really closely to the top of the line (in the extruded plane), I saw a slight jag in the plane. All I had to do was Push/Pull one of the front faces to align with the adjacent one, and Bingo! The plane was a single one, and the interrupting line could be erased without removing an entire plane. Is this always the reason, or was it only in this one instance?

I know I'm going to have tons more questions. This may be long, but it's only a start. Well, I already have another one (call it No. 6) -- I was extruding a banister handrail along a line I had created diagonally up on the top of the spindles of a stair, and when I got to the top, I wanted to create a nice, curved piece of banister to meet up with the horizontal banister already waiting for me up there. Now I needed to create an arced line between the two, so that the Follow Me tool would have something to follow. I didn't wasn't able to create that arc in space. Any ideas how to do that?

Hope I didn't overwhelm anyone. I guess you can always leave here, screaming. Nobody is required to respond. But for anyone with the courage, I will bestow my thanks, and knighthood, to boot.

Thanks a bunch in advance,

Gigi

catwoman

My mistake -- I meant I may have already found the answer to No. 2, today. -Gigi

Gaieus

Hi Gigi,

Sorry I made mistake when I wrote to you that the UCP is in the top right - it's actually on the left. See the image I have attached to this post or simply click here.

Now as for your questions:

white faces are front faces while blue faces are reverse (or back) faces. SU is not a solid modeler but a surface modeler and while in the physical world everything has some thickness, in SU, the faces don't. Therefore we "imitate" solids by drawing boxes (for instance) where the outside faces of the box should always be white (front face) and the beack faces enclose the "hollow solid" (if I can put it that way). You should always and consistently keep your faces oriented correctly. If there is a blue face, right click and go to "rever4se face". You can also right click on a white face and go to "orient faces" which is supposed to reverse all blue faces - this doesn't always work however (depending on the complexity of your model and such).
Now what defines how SU creates the faces (white or blue) is a kind of mysterious question sometimes. For sure it tries to "guess" what you are trying to draw and if you draw things consistently, it makes it easier for SU to "heklp".
faces in SU are created between coplanar edges that create a closed loop. If you draw a rectangle and then draw its diagonal, the diagonal will only dividse the rectangle and can be erased without destroying the face.
There are non-coplanar loops however, that can be "healed" by drawing additional lines (say to triangulate them - triangles are always coplanar by their nature). SU does this triangulation automatically in certain cases. Now if you delete this line, the remaining edges may not become coplanar therefore the face(s) will disappear.
This is because you are trying to create things in a (virtual) 3D world on a (physically) 2D interface; your screen. Often you think you are drawing in one direction but you end up drawing in another direction - you just don't realise it.
You should get used to the inference engine in SU that will "hint" you what direction you are drawing. When you see a thin, dotted, colour line (and a tool tip saying "on red axis" for instance), then you know which direction you are drawing in. If you press the Shift key now, you can lock your line in that particular direction easily.
Same question - kind of the same answer, with this addition: when drawing rectangles, circles, polygons (and even arcs), the plane SU will guess you are trying to draw is the one that occupies the biggest area of your SU window.
To make it more clear: if you are in (mostly) top view, the rectangles will be drawn on the red/green plane (this is marked with the circle and polygon tools with a blue colour so try to practise with them first). If you are (mostly) in front view, SU will try to draw everything on the red/blue plane (this is marked with a gren colour in case of circles etc).
This whole thing - again - is because we ar creating 3D space on a 2D interface so SU needs to "find out" what we are trying to do. We need to give "tips" to it so that it can help us.
The only way SU sparates geometry (and "detaches" it from other geometry) is turning it into groups or components (select all you want to include > right click and make your choice). If there are more instances of the same set of geometry in a model (say columns of a colonnade), using components is better (don't ask why - that's for the next leson).
Finally, Point 4 above explains some thoughts about drawing arcs as well. You can "help" SU to figure out which direction you are trying to draw that arc in several ways. One would be to draw a short line whose endpoint is where you want the arc to bulge and snap the arc to it (you can delete the line afterwards).
Guide lines and point are also used to create this kind of "construction geometry" (s it also used to be called in earlier versions). You can use the Tape measure and Procractor (not the rotate!) tools to create guidelines and points.
Now I need a cigarette.

remus

In SU there are front faces and back faces. Front faces are good and front faces are white. Back faces are bad and blue. you can switch the face round by right clicking it->reverse face. There are a few ruby's that speed things up but you dont need to worry too much about those for the moment.
SU is a polygon modeller, what this means is that a face in SU is made between a set of coplanar (on the same plane) lines. If you can delete a line form between 2 faces it means that all the lines that make up that face are coplanar (so a face can be made between them), if you delete the line and the faces disappear it means the lines that make up the original 2 faces are not coplanar and so a face can not be made between them (damm its really hard to describe that in a way that might make sense )
If the line you draw closes up 2 'loops' of edges (to create 2 sets of coplanar edges) then 2 faces will be made. If the line you draw only closes one set of edges then only one face will be made.
same as above.
Yes! thee most certainly is. Its called grouping. Basically all you do is select the geometry you want to group, right click it->make group. you can move groups around and scale them, but if you want to edit the internal geometry you need to double click the group. You can also use components (right click->make component,) these are pretty much the same as groups with the additional benefit that if you have 1 component, any instances of that component will always be the same as the starting component.
My advice would be to draw a plane to draw your arc on.

and finally, the UCP is in the top left. If you scroll to the top of this thread, then keep looking up from the left hand edge, you should see it there.

Now wheres my knighthood?

edit: how could you beat me to it gai! disaster!

MALAISE

Hello Gigi

Welcome to the community, you'll enjoy drawing with SU, and we hope you'll find
a lot of answers browsing the forum.

I'd rather leave Gaieus explain because he just pulled the rug under my feet

MALAISE

catwoman

Holy crap, Gaieus, that was one of the best answers I've ever received in any forum! It is not only complete (how often I rip my hair out over people simply not answering the questions I put before them, as if I'm just talking to amuse myself!), but it was concise and to the point, well-written and CLEAR! I totally get it, now.

I do best when learning the concepts behind the rules, and you gave me those. You are a hero! I knight thee "Sir Gaieus of Pécs, Hungary, and the SketchUp World in its Entirety."

Sorry about having misspelled your name earlier. Now I've gotten everything entered and reset in my profile, thanks to you.

I'm sure I will be back for more information. Thank you ever so much!

Gigi

@gaieus said:

Hi Gigi,

Sorry I made mistake when I wrote to you that the UCP is in the top right - it's actually on the left. See the image I have attached to this post or simply click here.

Now as for your questions:

white faces are front faces while blue faces are reverse (or back) faces. SU is not a solid modeler but a surface modeler and while in the physical world everything has some thickness, in SU, the faces don't. Therefore we "imitate" solids by drawing boxes (for instance) where the outside faces of the box should always be white (front face) and the beack faces enclose the "hollow solid" (if I can put it that way). You should always and consistently keep your faces oriented correctly. If there is a blue face, right click and go to "rever4se face". You can also right click on a white face and go to "orient faces" which is supposed to reverse all blue faces - this doesn't always work however (depending on the complexity of your model and such).

Now what defines how SU creates the faces (white or blue) is a kind of mysterious question sometimes. For sure it tries to "guess" what you are trying to draw and if you draw things consistently, it makes it easier for SU to "heklp".

faces in SU are created between coplanar edges that create a closed loop. If you draw a rectangle and then draw its diagonal, the diagonal will only dividse the rectangle and can be erased without destroying the face.
There are non-coplanar loops however, that can be "healed" by drawing additional lines (say to triangulate them - triangles are always coplanar by their nature). SU does this triangulation automatically in certain cases. Now if you delete this line, the remaining edges may not become coplanar therefore the face(s) will disappear.

This is because you are trying to create things in a (virtual) 3D world on a (physically) 2D interface; your screen. Often you think you are drawing in one direction but you end up drawing in another direction - you just don't realise it.
You should get used to the inference engine in SU that will "hint" you what direction you are drawing. When you see a thin, dotted, colour line (and a tool tip saying "on red axis" for instance), then you know which direction you are drawing in. If you press the Shift key now, you can lock your line in that particular direction easily.

Same question - kind of the same answer, with this addition: when drawing rectangles, circles, polygons (and even arcs), the plane SU will guess you are trying to draw is the one that occupies the biggest area of your SU window.
To make it more clear: if you are in (mostly) top view, the rectangles will be drawn on the red/green plane (this is marked with the circle and polygon tools with a blue colour so try to practise with them first). If you are (mostly) in front view, SU will try to draw everything on the red/blue plane (this is marked with a gren colour in case of circles etc).
This whole thing - again - is because we ar creating 3D space on a 2D interface so SU needs to "find out" what we are trying to do. We need to give "tips" to it so that it can help us.

The only way SU sparates geometry (and "detaches" it from other geometry) is turning it into groups or components (select all you want to include > right click and make your choice). If there are more instances of the same set of geometry in a model (say columns of a colonnade), using components is better (don't ask why - that's for the next leson).

Finally, Point 4 above explains some thoughts about drawing arcs as well. You can "help" SU to figure out which direction you are trying to draw that arc in several ways. One would be to draw a short line whose endpoint is where you want the arc to bulge and snap the arc to it (you can delete the line afterwards).
Guide lines and point are also used to create this kind of "construction geometry" (s it also used to be called in earlier versions). You can use the Tape measure and Procractor (not the rotate!) tools to create guidelines and points.
Now I need a cigarette.

catwoman

Dear Remus, I will respond to your wise counsel, as well, but first I must run to a doctor's appointment, or I will be late. So, until later!

Gigi

Gaieus

@unknownuser said:

Sorry about having misspelled your name earlier...

I didn't even notice

catwoman

Ah, Remus, I fell fast asleep after my doc appt., and slept for many hours. Amazing what a little trip out of the house can take out of ya!

I want to thank you, too, for your amazingly explicit responses! I love the "good face" / "bad face" concept -- laughed myself silly. I'll always think of them that way, now.

As for your answer to No. 2, do not fret. I understood perfectly what you meant. The only question it brings up is, how the heck does it happen when the two faces are NOT coplanar -- if everything you've done to make them coplanar seems to have been for naught?

For example, I was trying to make a bit of molding to hold the glass pane of a window. My walls were certainly parallel, since I was able to push trough my window opening without a hitch. Then I pulled out a 2-1/2" wide, 1" deep external trim molding all around them, no problem. Was able to erase all the little lines, so evidently, everything was still coplanar. Then I dragged 2-1/2" guidelines from the edge of that molding, all around the inside of the window opening, and then another guideline 2" from the first one. I make long, 2" wide rectangles along the sill, the sides, and the top, and extrude them one inch. This is to be my glass molding. But now, when I go to erase the last little line connecting those molding 'boxes,' a face disappears. I have done everything right, carefully, and yet it happens. So what's going on? What makes the faces not be coplanar when you do everything to make them so?

And for No. 3 & 4 -- How can I discover what the "other" closed loop is? The one I don't want to be closing?

The additional question do not constitute a lack on your part to have answered my questions. You did so, exceptionally. Therefore, in gratitude for your valiant services without regard to personal safety, I knight thee "Sir Remus of the entire U.K. (because you didn't disclose your village -- so you luck out!), and the SketchUp world as a whole." Wear your armor (or "armour" -- haha!) well, and with pride.

Thanks, Remus,

Gigi

Gaieus

Hi Gigi,

To make sure you are drawing coplanar edges, the "Colour by axis" setting in the Styles dialogue may be ome help. Open it from the Window menu then go to "My model" (the little house icon) > Edit tab > Edge settings. There, at the bottom, there is a pulldown menu:

Just an ide about one edge deining two faces, here is a rnshot: on the right, I'm just drawing a line (marke with green as it is on the green axis) which will "finish" to close the loops of two different faces as shown on the left:

Sometimes one of these faces is unwanted but there is no way SU can know it beforehand so you may need to kep deleting these unwanted faces.

Chris Fullmer

I'll add a quick thanks for making the UCP the User Control Panel. Now its easier to find, even when I knew where it was..

Chris

Tobobo

I would just like to say Hi

And reasure you that there are no stupid questions on this forum.

I am the king of dumb questions here.

catwoman

Hello, friends,

I just wrote a long post thanking each of you specifically, with examples of how I've put your help into action, etc., and when I went to post it, I was asked to sign in again -- and when the "Review" page opened, the form was blank. I lost everything I wrote.

I've been meaning to ask about this signing in businees, anyway. Often I'm asked to sign in three and four times in a row -- even when at the outset, my username is at the top, giving me reason to believe I'm already signed in. Is there a bug in this program? Even after I sign in two times, I find I'm not really signed in. Am I doing something that kicked me off?

I'm sorry that I'm not repeating all the nice things I said, but my time is limited. I also have another question already, but that should go into a new post.

Thanks for all your help,
Gigi

pbacot

Catwoman,

I've been having that problem with this site. I know how depressing it is to lose your post, and you wonder if you want to do it over. I began to copy a post before submitting if I had written a long one. Then I finally set Firefox to save cookies from SU forums. Are you being logged on automatically? I think that helped me stop getting bounced off.

Peter

Gaieus

Hi Gigi, hi Peter,

I'm sorry to her that you also hav this issue. I have never had it but there are some people also experiencing it, see in this topic:
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=9696&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a#p61223

Unfortunately we have never been able to precisely identify the cause.

Ross Macintosh

Hi Gigi -- that re-sign-in & blanked out form thing happens to me often but not everytime. I've composed hundreds of thoughtful posts only to have them vanish. As a slow typist I just give up, or grab a beer and try again. Eventually (slow learner) I've learned to copy to the clipboard before hitting the submit button. That way if I have to re-log-in I can just paste the posting back in and submit again. It almost always works the second time.

Regards, Ross

catwoman

Yes, Peter, it's very depressing to lose all one has written. I often just don't have the heart to try to reconstruct everything I said, even though it short-changes the people I'm writing to. Thanks for understanding, and your advice.

That's a very interesting discussion string you linked, Gaieus. It's definitely not just a South African problem, since I've been having it so much. However, I took the advice of a few people to clear my temp. internet files and cookies and such, and at least this far (it's only been a couple of minutes), I haven't been kicked out again. And I will also copy this, so that in case I'm in front of another empty form when I try to post, I will be able to paste it back in. Hope I remember to do that, always.

Gigi

catwoman

Hello, Ross -- looks like you posted while I was writing the previous item. And as you can see, I had arrived at that same logical conclusion for a fix that you suggest -- to 'copy' before sending. My fear is that I won't remember to do it, since I'm programmed to hit any kind of "SEND" button immediately after signing my name. Will take some reprogramming.

And, incidentally, I was going to do the same with this post, so I highlighted all, and then accidentally hit Ctrl + V, rather than C, and so I pasted my previous post here, and the first one I'd written vanished for good. So I guess unless one is perfect and never makes mistakes, this isn't a fool-proof method, either.

Thanks for your sympathy, and for chiming in!

Gigi

Gaieus

@unknownuser said:

and then accidentally hit Ctrl + V, rather than C, and so I pasted my previous post here, and the first one I'd written vanished for good.

In this case I just hit Ctrl+Z (Undo) - it works in Firefox at least.

Actuall, there are a couple of place where I have (had) this problem, too, and I'm already used to hit a bunch of hot keys - like in this case Ctrl+A (select all) then Ctrl+C (copy) kind of automatically.

catwoman

Yeah, Gai, I had done a Ctrl-A and then thought I was hitting Ctrl-V instead of the Ctrl-C I meant to hit. Just a dumb accident. I haven't tried doing Ctrl-Z to see if I can back out of it, but if it happens again, I'll sure give it a try! Thanks!

Gigi