New Member introduction with questions
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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.
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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
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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
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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. -
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
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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.
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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 -
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
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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#p61223Unfortunately we have never been able to precisely identify the cause.
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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
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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
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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
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@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.
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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
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