What's your beginners tip?

Gaieus · 13 Aug 2010, 10:08

Yes indeed, I also forget to save sometimes and once it did happen to me that I splatted and lost some hours of work - exactly the worst timing as it was a tight deadline.

That's why I also wrote it would be risky to advise this...

Design1 · 14 Aug 2010, 15:09

Model somthing that is accesable to you, your house, letterbox, a piece of furniture etc model and delete/build until you get it right. Emulating the real world will force you to uncover new aspects of SU you may not otherwise stumble upon.

DreadedOne509 · 20 Aug 2010, 16:07

As a beginner myself (more aptly called a newb) I can say with confidence that the first
thing someone should do is RTFM (read the 'manual'). It's long, boring, etc etc et al ad nauseum but more than worth it.

Just the toolbar and tools sections are worth the time and effort. There are so many context and tool altering keyboard
key combination's for the various tools that it'll really be worth your while.

jgb · 17 Feb 2011, 21:52

It's a mistake I made by the bushel when I started using SU.

I made multiple copies of grouped geometry instead of making them components.
My rule now is if ANYTHING is more than 1 occurrence, it is a component.

So when I did convert one of the group copies to an identical component (select, explode, make comp) I was faced with the task of replacing the same groups with that same component, in the exact same position. When I moved the comp into the groups position, it would snap into position and I was not able to select only the group to delete it.

I tried several things with variable success, until I stumbled on this simple solution.

Before you move the comp onto the group, edit the group and add a single line from any point to outside its existing bounding box, then close it.
Move the comp into place. It will still snap in place.

Now simply click on the extended group line and you can easily select and delete only the group.

There is also a TT tool that replaces identical groups with an identical comp, but it does the whole drawing, which is not what you may want, and if even the slightest difference is present, or the group is nested, it will not replace the group.

Speaker · 18 Mar 2011, 21:18

If you want to completely get rid of Sketchups face shading while keeping the colour, then turn on the shadows and set the light slider to 0 and the dark slider to 80. I found this useful for making the RBG value of the faces to match the one in the material editor.

JosefaHoge · 19 Mar 2011, 19:08

Hey

thanks for your beginning tips. They are really helpful for me to develop my interest and expertise and most importantly understanding the tool.

jgb · 20 Mar 2011, 19:11

Regarding non-coplanar problems. If the attempt to face keeps failing, even after you have drawn and redrawn all the lines multiple times, here are a few ways to help find the culprit. Not always successful, but usually eliminates the co-linear line problem.

If your triangular, rectangular or multi-line entity fails to face, you need to revert it to triangles. Draw lines from vertex to vertex, being careful to let SU tell you that you are using endpoints only, before you click. Zooming in helps, but if you encounter the clipping plane getting in close, then turn OFF perspective. (Camera; Perspective) Then you can get in real close.

Another problem with drawing lines is where you are trying to draw a line (from A to B) that is not quite on-axis, and SU will tell you it is "constrained by line at point". Simply ESC and draw the line from B to A. Usually works. This is probably the biggest culprit creating co-linear lines.

Now let's say you do have a suspected co-linear line. You delete both of them, and redraw a single line, but the face still won't form. The culprit here is the tiny line segment formed at the vertex after the 2 co-linear lines were drawn. It can be nearly invisible unless you zoom in real close, and that takes time. So rather than go looking at all 3 corners for it, try this.

Turn ON the Entity Info dialog box. You also need to turn on hidden lines. With the object viewed such that there are no other endpoints behind the suspect vertex, use the left to right select in a very small box just covering the vertex, and not any whole lines. If Entity Info says no selection, the problem is elsewhere. If the Entity Info says there is a very tiny line (or more than 1 line) then there is the problem. Just delete all of them. Do all 3 vertexes. This may deface other adjacent faces, but now you can delete a line and redraw it endpoint to endpoint to reform the faces.

Note that this will NOT find a vertex gap, but deleting and redrawing lines at endpoints cleared of tiny fragments will cure the gaps.

Another culprit is trying to face on a curve or arc line. Since there is no real endpoint within the length of the line, placing other lines to form a face may not be right on, and this can create a tiny fragment or gap to throw off the face. Just explode the curve/arc and that will help finding the true endpoints on the curve.

When you have the whole object faced with triangles, you can start deleting the internal lines making all those triangles to get back to your multi-line face. If a face disappears doing this, then that triangle was not co-planar with the rest of the face, and you have to redraw that section in a co-planar manor. Or, just UNDO the deleted line, and make it soft and smooth (Entity Info box again).

And with all that, I still spent 2 1/2 hours yesterday trying to get a triangle to face, and ending up deleting the whole section around it and starting over.

Dave R · 20 Mar 2011, 19:54

@jgb said:

I made multiple copies of grouped geometry instead of making them components.
My rule now is if ANYTHING is more than 1 occurrence, it is a component.

So when I did convert one of the group copies to an identical component (select, explode, make comp) I was faced with the task of replacing the same groups with that same component, in the exact same position. When I moved the comp into the groups position, it would snap into position and I was not able to select only the group to delete it.

I tried several things with variable success, until I stumbled on this simple solution.

Before you move the comp onto the group, edit the group and add a single line from any point to outside its existing bounding box, then close it.
Move the comp into place. It will still snap in place.

Now simply click on the extended group line and you can easily select and delete only the group.

I only make components, not groups. Then I never need to waste time making the conversion from group to component later. If I want to replace one component with another, it's automatic so I don't have to add any extra geometry to be able to get hold of one later. I've never found a case where a group is preferable to a component. Even when there's only one occurrence of something, I make it a component.

jgb · 21 Mar 2011, 13:28

@dave r said:

I only make components, not groups.

No argument with that. I almost always end up converting a group to a comp when finished with its design.
The main reason I keep groups is to cut down on the extensive list of comps (many of which would be sets of comps) I would create during the design. I use the groupings to segregate sections of geometry to avoid unwanted merging, then explode the group once done, but within a comp. I also usually group several comps into 1 coherent set, where I may have a slight difference in the set makeup in various places in the model. Groups and comps both have their advantages and should be used accordingly.

Dave R · 21 Mar 2011, 13:53

"Groups and comps both have their advantages and should be used accordingly."

Yup. Just never have found a need for groups even when nesting components. Depends upon ones workflow and style and it is good the SketchUp is so flexible.

mitcorb · 21 Mar 2011, 16:20

@Dave R:
One of your best beginner's tips only recently mentioned elsewhere, is the use of an upscaled component instance to do intricate modeling which would be very difficult (empty faces, unresponsive inferencing, zoom clipping)with the object at its intended scale. Since scaling an instance does not affect the other instances, this allows great freedom. All editing done on the larger instance is immediately reflected in the smaller. When finished, simply delete the larger instance.
This one really stuck with me. I have pretty much stopped whining about the scale problem.
Salute

Dave R · 21 Mar 2011, 16:37

Thank you very much for that. And of course if you make an extra copy of the component and scale it up before editing, you can discard the large copy when you've finished. No need to worry about scaling it back down and getting it in the right location. Actually there are a number of cases where I will pull out a copy of a component to edit it rather than hiding the neighbors. And example of that can be seen at 5:20 in the video here. And I wouldn't think of just moving a component before editing with the intent of moving it back.

None of this is useful to those who prefer groups to components.

jgb · 21 Mar 2011, 17:35

Dave said "if you make an extra copy of the component and scale it up before editing, you can discard the large copy when you've finished. No need to worry about scaling it back down and getting it in the right location."

For the less experienced SU modelers, you need to scale up the copy of the component OUTSIDE its bounding box BEFORE you edit it. If you edit the comp, THEN scale it up, all copies will scale up as well.

Anything you do to a comp on its bounding box, such as scale, rotate, apply material/color (and a few others) applies only to that particular copy of the comp. Anything you do to a comp IN edit mode applies to all copies.

If you need to make a change to the geometry of only 1 copy, make it UNIQUE first, then edit. However that isolates that copy from any changes to/from other similar comps.

mitcorb · 21 Mar 2011, 17:58

@jgb:
I think this is an important clarification.

PDS869 · 25 Mar 2011, 15:58

Clean up your AutoCAD files BEFORE importing into SketchUp. Dimensions, notes, symbology, extraneous linework.

Crankston Shnord · 14 Apr 2011, 17:57

Don't start with a big project: Do something simple as your first model. In other words, rather than trying to do an Abram's Tank as your first model, try a door or something.

Cheers,

Rich O Brien · 14 Apr 2011, 18:00

@Crankston

What's SetchUp?

Crankston Shnord · 14 Apr 2011, 18:13

Ha, Ha, thanks Rich.

SamuelSketcherupper · 21 Apr 2011, 19:44

A bit of advice on external issues that effects your work...
Get a good chair.
Sleep well.

The Google Sketchup for Dummies book helped me a lot.

wheeljack · 1 May 2011, 15:21

So a lot of hobbyists have been using SU to design various parts for their projects and printing them at shapeways.com

The exported .dea files out of the free version, which is what I have, seems to upload unprintable for some reason. I was able to solve this by downloading MeshLab and importing the .dea file into it and then exporting it again as an STL. the same file became printable. I'm not sure how this wizardry works but it does.

hope this helps someone out. this bit of info would have saved me a week of swearing!