Project Organization - Layers
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I would like to do more of my home designs using sketchup. I understand components, groups, and layers and how they work. I am looking for advice on how to best organize a project. Does anyone use the standard CAD layers? If so, what is the best way to set things up. Thanks
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You are not obliged to use "layers", there are just for visibility
In Sketchup a well organised "Outliner" elements can be sufficient!
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As Pilou said, layers in SketchUp are strictly for controlling visibility of entities. If you are planning to use them like you do in ACAD, you'll create problems for yourself.
As far as organization of your model, you need to decide what things you need to show and what you need to make invisible. Perhaps you'll make the roof a component and put it on a "roof" layer so you can turn it off and see the house below it. Maybe you'll need to show or not show appliances so they can be associated with another layer. You need to figure out what you want to show and what you don't and take it from there.
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If you are modelling a whole house I'd start by assuming you want to be able to separately hide the roof and ceiling, exterior walls, and floor assemblies. You may also wish to group, assign to layers, and be able to hide: furniture, cabinets, and especially plants and other entourage to speed up modeling work for when you don't need to see them, and of course, to clear things out of the way to work on portions of the model.
After that, if you are using SU for plans, you need to design specific layer setups for your different plan views, just as you do for the rendering views.
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I use old school layering in preference to outliner but I think that may be down to the time I've been working with architectural CAD. Outliner is more of an engineering solution, a very powerful one, but one I only use when trying to single out groups & components from an assembly.
As for what layers, then the fair response is it depends what you want to manage visually e.g. furniture separate from fixtures, windows, doors & walls internal or external. For construction drawings I have about 20 layers which relate to the various elements in my drawing. You can have too many though so only create what you need and try to develop a template so if you copy between projects you don't end up with multiple layers for the same thing e.g mywall, walls, wall in the same drawing.
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I have been using layers to separate different conceptual parts of a house plan. In part, this was done to help me go from a floorplan sketch on paper to a SketchUp model.
See this page: http://et365.pbworks.com/w/page/46205883/11%20Use%20Layers%20to%20Organize
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for me, i do all my modeling on the default 'layer 0', then move groups, components, or collections of them to particular layers, as required.
i often have a roof framing, floor framing, timber, foundation, footer, accessories (furniture, people, etc.), grid, layers, etc., as required.
i do like the outliner, but depending on what you are modeling it can be maddening once you get into 20-30 scenes setup for layout.
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