Component linking

pmolson · 20 Nov 2009, 18:38

Hi all,

I am new to this forumn, but not to sketchup.
I am wondering if there is a way to tell a bunch of individual components within a sketchup model to no
longer be unique.

Heres the situation...I have imported a 3ds model that was originally an Archicad model into sketchup.
It came in pretty nicely and is very much usable as a base for a more refined Sketchup model.
There are about 4000 individual uniquely named components in this model even though many of them are exactly
identical. For intance, a nice 14" dia tuscan looking column component is repeated 20 times, but they are all
unique only in name, so when I edit one the others do not change.

Is there a way to rename & relink these components so I don't have to edit each individualy?

The only thing I can think of is to rename one and do a save as, & then bring it back in & replace each of the
others manualy. Thats a bit time consuming in that there are aproxomately 100 individual copper standing seam
arched roof panel components just in the entry area alone.

Any thoughts out there?

If this is the wrong place to post a question, I apologize.

Thanks

Pmo

Gaieus · 20 Nov 2009, 19:29

Hi PMO and welcome

Select all the instances in the model you want to change
Open your component browser and right click on the component you wanrt all the selected to be replaced with
Select '"Replace" from the context menu.
All the selected components will now be the instances of the one you right clicked. Don't forget to purge your model after this to get rid of the unused ones.

pmolson · 21 Nov 2009, 14:41

Thank you Sir.

pmo

Gaieus · 22 Nov 2009, 09:59

You welcome, sir. It's my pleasure (as well) as I hadn't known the solution until I tried and it seems that soon I will also need it.

Alan Fraser · 22 Nov 2009, 12:26

I have to confess, I didn't know that trick either, Gai. My first instinct would have been to Save the 'master' component out of the browser then reload all the other unique ones with it.

Gaieus · 22 Nov 2009, 12:44

Mine too, Alan, and I even tried that as well but realised if I select instances of different component definitions, there is no reload item available in the context menu. So in case of many different definitions, this would've been much slower again.

I was just lucky it seems - to discover something new (to me) and have a nice "doh/duh" moment.

Chris Fullmer · 22 Nov 2009, 16:42

Jhon Baccus implemented that as a way to replace complex objects with simple ones - ie 3d trees can be replaced with simple lines. Then just go back and switch them back to the complex version later for image exports. I think it was introduced in version 5?

Chris

thomthom · 22 Nov 2009, 17:17

ooo. Didn't know you could replace multiple instances at the same time.

Gaieus · 22 Nov 2009, 17:29

Ha4 Many of us are "doh'ing" on this!
Can you access this via ruby?

thomthom · 22 Nov 2009, 17:52

@gaieus said:

Ha4 Many of us are "doh'ing" on this!
Can you access this via ruby?

I had used the method to replace single instances - not multiple, and certainly not different types.

As for API access - no direct access to a single command. But it's easy enough to iterate the selection and replace all the components you find.

hm. it even preserves rotation and scaling of the components it replaces.

pmolson · 25 Nov 2009, 13:58

Here is a little glitch I am experiencing with this trick.

I selected 10 column components w/ unique names and used the process to replace them with
the selected component within my component browser. The existing unique components imediatly
vanished from the model. It turns out that they did not disapear, but relocated themselves to
a point about 2000 feet away on the red axis. They were also stacked on top of each other.

So I says to myself...humph...Must be an axis isssue. I looked at the original unique components
with show component axis turned on and there was none. No axis I mean.

I then opened each component and gave them an axis at the same spot on the column base and tried
the process again.

It worked. Unfortionately, this dilutes the usability of the component linking trick in that one
has to handle each component individualy to define an axis.

I am guessing that this lack of axis is a result of exporting a .3ds model from Archicad into sketchup.

Any thoughts on how to assign an axis to a bunch of unique components?

This is still a handy trick even if it does not work out in this instance.

Thanks again.

pmo

thomthom · 25 Nov 2009, 14:06

@pmolson said:

So I says to myself...humph...Must be an axis isssue. I looked at the original unique components
with show component axis turned on and there was none. No axis I mean.

I'm guessing it was just very far away.
Where they based of AutoCAD drawings by any chance?

Gaieus · 25 Nov 2009, 14:20

My guess would also be that the component axes were somewhere very far. Maybe every component has its axis origin in the world axis or something - depending how they were made. There is no way a component doesn't have axes (even groups have - we just cannot access them).

When editing such a weird component, how far (and where) did its bounding box expand? Bounding boxes should contain the component axes as well so if they are really huge, try to right click on a component and Zoom extent to see all its edges. The axis should now definitely be wizhin your viewport but maybe itis overlapping with the world axes.

pmolson · 25 Nov 2009, 15:55

The bounding box fits snuggly around the component.

As a test, I am going to go into the original Archicad model
& explore one of the original objects. Maybe there is a setting
to orient the object on itself vs the model world origin.

If that is the case, in the future I will have my Archicad using
clients set up there objects accordingly.

I will let the forum know what I find out.

p

Chris Fullmer · 25 Nov 2009, 16:00

The bounding box will look like it fits snugly, even when the axis is not anywhere near the geometry.

But once you double click into the component you can see the axis location.

Also, someone did make a plugin that automatically sets the component axis to the bottom center of a selected component. Perhaps that would help automate the axis cleanup process?

Also, do you have a small model that illustrates the problem? It might be interesting to look at.

Chris

mac1 · 25 Nov 2009, 16:54

@pmolson said:

Hi all,

I am new to this forumn, but not to sketchup.
I am wondering if there is a way to tell a bunch of individual components within a sketchup model to no
longer be unique.

Heres the situation...I have imported a 3ds model that was originally an Archicad model into sketchup.
It came in pretty nicely and is very much usable as a base for a more refined Sketchup model.
There are about 4000 individual uniquely named components in this model even though many of them are exactly
identical. For intance, a nice 14" dia tuscan looking column component is repeated 20 times, but they are all
unique only in name, so when I edit one the others do not change.

Is there a way to rename & relink these components so I don't have to edit each individualy?

The only thing I can think of is to rename one and do a save as, & then bring it back in & replace each of the
others manualy. Thats a bit time consuming in that there are aproxomately 100 individual copper standing seam
arched roof panel components just in the entry area alone.

Any thoughts out there?

If this is the wrong place to post a question, I apologize.

Thanks

Pmo

Check this ruby and see if any use to you , by Matthieu NOBLET, make component

Gaieus · 26 Nov 2009, 08:47

Yeah, that's what I also meant; "When editing..." - so not the blue bounding box when you just select it but the dotted one when you are inside its editing context. Also, in Window menu > Model info > Components tab, at the bottom, you can check to "show component axes" so you don't need to enter every component to see where they are.

An example would indeed be cool (maybe just copy a couple as they are and "paste in place" into an empty model)

TIG · 26 Nov 2009, 11:59

If you have several components that are effectively the same geometry but have very different axes then it is difficult to 'unify' them into being instances of one component definition as their replacements might jump around unexpectedly, BUT assuming they are all in the same orientation (like columns on a façade) to give them all the same axes you can do this, in turn to each one [it works best/quickest with shortcut keys set up]... It might also be best to group all of the components requiring 'unification' and have the rest of the model hidden whilst doing this...
Select one Instance.
Explode it.
Immediately use 'Make Component' from the highlighted Entities
Accept the defaults and OK the dialog
Select the next one etc...
Quickly you will now have a set of similar components with similar axes.
Select all of the component instances and then in the Component Browser hover over a definition that is as you want [the first one would be logical] right-click context-menu 'Replace Selected'.
All of the component instances should now share the same definition.
Tidy up by Purging the unused definitions...

This won't work if the components have been rotated in 3D but I think this is not the case here ?

pmolson · 26 Nov 2009, 13:56

Chris & Gaieus,

You were correct. When I open the component "that" bounding box does shoot out to the axis for that component and it looks like all components in the model
are referenced to an origin that was set in Archicad. (about 2000 feet away)

Tig, the components jumping around is exactly what happens when I convert them to one instance. I can see now that my hopes of changing a large # of
individual but identical components into multiple copies of the same components and have them stay where they are positioned is not possible without
touching each component at least once.

There are very few components in this model that have the same orientation... columns follow an arc, roof panels follow an arch, a conical shape, and
a sphere. Seems the architect was not happy unless he was creating something....ummmm....grande!

I thank you all for your help. I think with the ideas and pointers you have given me I will be able to clean this .3ds model up enough to be productive
with the face lift.

I did attempt to create a cut and paste model for you all to look at, but I have crashed 3 times when in copy. In the past I have found this problem
to be a result of bad materials/textures. I am going to export a clean .3ds model from Archicad without textures to see if this helps.

I will post a chunk of the model when I get it cleaned up.

Thanks again.

p

Gaieus · 26 Nov 2009, 14:46

Sorry to hear about the mess but let's see that example and what can be done with it later (though I am afraid you are right that you will need to do a lot of manual work here).