How to model a guitar neck

Roger

This is directed at Lee, but I welcome anyone else to jump in with a different viewpoint.

Never make a model in one big file. Make every part as a separate file and then in your master file do nothing but assemble the pieces.

I break this rule more times than I like to admit and I pay dearly every time. You can also lock components to protect them, but they still contribute to file size and slow response in later phases of construction. The more I do it, the better I like individual files for sub-components so that no drawing is done in the final master file, only assembly.

leeahoward

@Roger. Learn something new every day. So you do that primarily for performance or are there other reasons? Does it speed up rendering/navigation or just saving? I use the outliner with groups pretty heavily because it just makes sense to me, but haven't done much with components yet. Not even sure how to work with components from another file or what the implications of that are. What happens if you want to send someone a copy of your sketchup file? Do you have to send all the files together?
-Lee

Roger

People have more problems with large complex project than small simple one. So it helps me break the project into small enough segments that nothing ever becomes overwhelmingly complex. And if I have a fatal error, I can always isolate to problem and toss the damaged component knowing I can bring in a new instance of the damaged piece. And, there is a performance boost.

bjornkn

@unknownuser said:

What happens if you want to send someone a copy of your sketchup file? Do you have to send all the files together?
No. SketchUp never uses any external files AFAIK. It's all there inside the .skp file, including images and imported components/files. Makes it very simple to share, but may cause some huge files if you have a lot of textures/images.