Layers in woodworking projects
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Keep in mind that in SketchUp layers are not used to separate entities from each other. They are used to control visibility.
I find layers to be very useful for furniture drawings when the goal is to end up with construction drawings. It's also useful for making views to show interiors of pieces as in the image below. The tops for the tables are on their own layer and I turned that layer off for the image.
Combine layers with scenes to make controlled views showing different elements of the model. In the case of cabinets, you might even draw different door styles with the different layer assignments for each style. Then you can quickly show the client how the cabinets would look with the different doors.
Before you get going with layers I urge you to read The stuff on Layers from the Help files. Here's the link: http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=38572
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@dave r said:
In the case of cabinets, you might even draw different door styles with the different layer assignments for each style. Then you can quickly show the client how the cabinets would look with the different doors...
Or show a scene with closed doors and another one with open ones to display the inside. Surely you can also do this by hiding/unhiding instances in different scenes but layers are safer; an unhide command (during modeling) can ruin what you set up for the scene.
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Indeed. And if you have some reason to display Hidden Geometry (View>Hidden geometry) for editing or whatever, all those components you've hidden show up as a grid sort of pattern which makes editing the neighboring components difficult.
Besides, without layers you couldn't do something like this.
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I saw the video and now I think I'll start looking at my projects from another point of view. Until now I just created scenes using the hide function to show only the parts I wanted to. Now I'll try to focus on this layers tecnique, it seems more functional. Tks!
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One important note on layers however (even if it's a repeated note): layers do not separate geometry (i.e. ungrouped entities will keep "sticking" and interacting to each other) so always group (or make component of) your geometry prior to putting it onto separate layers. Also, keep all "raw" (or "primitive" or "basic" - ie not grouped) geometry on layer 0.
And now let's see those cabinets!
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@gaieus said:
One important note on layers however (even if it's a repeated note): layers do not separate geometry (i.e. ungrouped entities will keep "sticking" and interacting to each other) so always group (or make component of) your geometry prior to putting it onto separate layers. Also, keep all "raw" (or "primitive" or "basic" - ie not grouped) geometry on layer 0.
And now let's see those cabinets!
Yes, I saw it on the video.
This is the cabinet
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And a nice one it is, too.
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Very nice cabinet. Well done and it has nice interesting texture, almost looks like reclaimed pine.
Best,
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This is the texture I used.
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Very nice. Thank you for sharing that.
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It's my pleasure
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@pkast said:
Very nice cabinet. Well done and it has nice interesting texture, almost looks like reclaimed pine.
Best,
This is the link where I found this texture http://www.cgtextures.com/
Anyway check this post to have many other ones
cheers!
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I've seen furniture pieces where each individual part is on its own layer. I don't go anywhere near that far, but when you do complete detailed drawings of all joinery and drawer webs and the like, being able to get stuff out of the picture while you work on it is extremely advantageous. It is also great for showing views of these internal parts. The Kneehole Desk I posted a bit ago is an example of how I generally work with layers.
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Hi Jerry,
You might find it helpful to check out the link in my first post in this thread. Nice looking knee desk.
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Well, that caused another change to the way I am used to working. I've been building components on the final layer on which they will be placed rather than on the 0 layer, then moving them. Might be why I sometimes end up with some extraneous geometry at the intersection of components when I do the first explode/implode of a model.
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Could be.
It's probably why you also have things disappearing when you don't want them to.
These are screen grabs from your desk. Notice what is missing and which layer is turned off.
It's hard to read in these small images but this first one is with the layer called Back turned off.
This is with the Face Frame layer turned off.
I'm not picking at you with this, Jerry. This is the sort of thing that can happen to anyone if they aren't handling layers correctly in SketchUp. Actually, I've seen much worse. Fortunately there's a plugin that will move all geometry back to Layer 0 where it belongs. Very useful for correcting that problem although if your components are put on the wrong layers, you'll still have to fix that manually. I'll see if I can find the link to the plugin.
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Here's the link.
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