Need Advice About This Advice [Groups or Components?]
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Ran across this extensive tutorial and wanted your inputs on the statement below:
"*To clear this from the start: you'll never need to use Groups, there are no downsides for using instanced Components all the time. Even if some part like room is used only once in your model, make it a Component. Just because this way you can, for example, make a copy of it away from an assembled building and make all the necessary changes without obstructions from the surrounding building geometry.
Basically, every single part (that you want to be free) you use in your building should be a separate component. Some modular source objects can contain up to several thousands of them.*"
This guy is saying that groups should not be used. Ever. Is there anything to what he's saying?
Just curious.
The complete tutorial can be found here:
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Isn't he suggesting from the point of view of exporting to crysis/crytek.
I see his point. If you make everything a component then you can move a copy away and change it then just delete the copy. DaveR is always mentioning this in his threads as a superior means of working faster.
I look at groups as wrappers. Don't use them that much. But I also don't use components to the same level as you!
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I never use groups in my work. Only components. I don't tell people not to use groups but I've never in more than 8 years of using SketchUp found a case where a group made more sense than a component.
The comment about copying a component out to work on it is good. I use this technique frequently for detailing joinery in the furniture that I draw. And if the editing I need to do on a component might result in gaps due to the tiny face limitation, I scale up that copy of the component before doing the editing. This avoids those gaps and when I'm finished, I just close the giant copy of the component and delete it.
I frequently see the suggestion of making a group for things that are one of a kind in the model. in the case of a table, for example, that might be the top. in my work, anyway, the table might have only one top but there's bound to be more than one copy of the table in the model space because I need to make an exploded view in addition to the assembled copy of the table. Then the benefit of making the top a component instead of a group should be obvious. If the top needs to be modified, any and all copies of the top will get the changes.
Also, by making only components I never ever wonder if the thing I've made is a group or a component and I know that all other instances of the component are getting modified when I edit one of them. I never have to check.
Of course there's the thing about being able to save components for use in other projects which is big as well as being able to set things like gluing planes, cutting openings and locating the insertion point for ease of use.
I've also read remarks that components are more work to create than groups. Well, yes, it might take a little longer to type in a component name but you don't have to do that. Let SketchUp generate the component names. And there was that recent thread where someone was asking for a way to identify a specific group out of a large quantity of groups. If their model had been made with components instead, they'd have been able to easily identify the component they were after.
Edit to add after a quick trip to surgery and back: Another good reason to use components instead of groups is this: Suppose you inadvertently delete a group and discover it only after 37 other operations have been done. You could undo back to before the deletion but in the process you lose all that work you did since deleting it. If it was a component instead, meh! Reinsert it by dragging it from the Components browser.
I've read comments about components cluttering up the In Model Components library. So what!? If you delete components and really don't need them back, purge unused. I run the Purge All plugin with a single keyboard shortcut which purges all unused stuff--and it purges unused components before purging unused materials so it takes care of all that, too.
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Rich, thanks for thinking of me.
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A good use of group is for deleting geometry while leaving the intersecting boundary in place. That's how I use groups.
I knew you'd say that
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The only time I ever use Group is more of a temporary grouping of a bunch of components that I want to move around together. I usually explode that group back to it's component parts or make it a component when necessary. And that is purely laziness, not wanting to hit enter after clicking make component.
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@unknownuser said:
A good use of group is for deleting geometry while leaving the intersecting boundary in place. That's how I use groups.
I'm not sure I follow that. Could you make a picture. Pleeease.
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This is really giving me something to think about. I don't like thinking
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Sorry man. Tell you what. go out for awhile and move some snow. That'll take your mind off it all. Especially if it is as cold there as it is here.
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It's a balmy 8 degrees here. Going to the beach this afternoon.
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@hellnbak said:
It's a balmy 8 degrees here. Going to the beach this afternoon.
I'd be going to the beach too if it was that warm here. It's -17C here. I had to put on a jacket.
Rich, thanks for that explanation and the S&G.
I guess I'd do the deletion a different way but yours is quick. -
It's quick alright. I think it was Coen that put me on to it way back. Still use it daily to delete crap.
I think you need to take off your 3D Warehouse hat and move to the next level of bringing SketchUp to a stuttering stop
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I find myself moving more and more from groups to components for all the reasons Dave so eloquently spoke of above. It is hard to come up with a downside for doing this.
The only problem I have is I am still in the old habit of grouping, which I am slowly breaking. -
Dale, one of things that makes it easy for me is not having a keyboard shortcut set for Make Group. 'G' makes components and that's the way I always make them. That makes it more work to make a group than a component.
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Not to beat a dead horse but also remember there's the Make Unique command so that you can break the relationship of components when you do want them to be different. With the stuff I draw, I might want to have elements related to each other for awhile but then later in the process, I will break the relationship. Legs on tables with drawers are a good example of that. They need the same treatment up to a point. When it comes time to draw in the joinery for the rear apron and the front blades above and below the drawer front, the front and rear legs need to be separated in the process. Make Unique to the rescue.
Make Unique also comes in handy when you want to modify a model to make a different model. The bench was made from a copy of the fern stand in the background.
And in the next image, every piece of furniture was drawn starting from the chair on the left. By the way, all of these pieces of furniture are production pieces and the shop uses a similar idea for actually building these things.
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You know you need to share ALL your textures with me don't you?
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That's only two and they're components as well. I just use Make Unique and modify them.
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I'll be starting a pretty ambitious model soon, and I'm going to go the component route and see how it goes. I think the hardest part will breaking old habits.
Thanks for all the input and advice, much appreciated.
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Hi Ken,
So I'm assuming that you are referring to models you've already created using groups instead of components. I periodically receive models from others where this is the case. I would make components of each of the groups. Let sketchUp name them and assume it names them Component#1, Component#2, etc. Rename Component#1 if you wish. That can be done at any time later. Select all of the numbered components and in the Components browser, right click on Component#1 in the browser and choose Replace Selected. No plugin needed.
I don't have it but I think ThomThom or TIG did a plugin that will hunt through a model for identical groups and make them components. It might speed things up for you.
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