Why don't section planes like my components?

BenSketch · 29 Jan 2008, 06:45

I hope this is an appropriate place for this rather specific question... If not, please advise a better resource.

I'm trying to use Sketchup's Section Planes & it seems to be freaking things out. From what I can tell, sometimes when I have an instance of a component that is being cut by a plane, stuff around it will cut but not the component (or part of it). It'll stick out right through the plane. Or the item will cut but every other instance will also, even if they aren't touched by the plane (so chunks show missing in other areas of the model).

I've not found any discussion of this on the web anywhere, so maybe it's just the way I'm doing things. I've included a couple models and screen shots of what I'm seeing. I suspected it might just be my system, but I reinstalled Sketchup and it's still doing it.

I can not figure out why Section Planes turn out so wacked out on my models. I've found if I drill down and iteratively explode the offending components it will eventually show correctly, but it's not supposed to work like that and that ruins the editable structure of the model. Also, sometimes as I do that other parts of the model start exhibiting the odd behavior (hence my suspicion something software-related was amiss.) Can anyone offer some insight?

Just reading forums like this over the last couple months has gotten me to where I am now with Sketchup, which is feeling pretty confident and using it periodically to show clients what I'll build them and show myself how I'll build it. Thanks to all for the info so far! Hope someone can help!

Thanks
--Ben

Couple models and screen shots of section issue

remus · 29 Jan 2008, 08:00

I can't think why the section planes won't cut the components, but as a rather tedious workaround you could explode the components and group them instead. It might be worth trying to group al the gemetry your trying to cut, although I haven't tried this so it probably won't work.

Howard leslie · 29 Jan 2008, 09:11

Ben,
See attached *.jpg's
...
Try the obvious things first:
Show Section Plane
Show Section Cut
(icons)
Then...
Right Click on any Section Plane of interest (The grey area with Section Arrows on each corner) - Select "Active Cut"
Model should Section Correctly.
...
I've had no problems with either your fireplace or office models.
Both seem to work fine (see attached screen dumps).
...
I'm using Windows - I think you're on a Mac ???
I'm not sure if this is significant.
...
Hope this helps
Howard L'

BenSketch · 29 Jan 2008, 15:10

Thanks for the quick replies.

Howard, I'd done all that you suggested already and tried again this morning. Your screen dump vs. mine seems to show it's some kind of issue with either my system in particular or maybe the Mac version of Sketchup. I've got the latest, re-installed & restarted. The fact it works fine on yours and not mine is puzzling & frustrating.

Is there any way my files might be corrupted? I've got the setting selected to automatically check when saving, but is there some mechanism to "rebuild" a potentially corrupt file? Any other ideas?

Thanks again for any additional help anyone can offer
--Be

@unknownuser said:

Ben,
See attached *.jpg's
...
Try the obvious things first:
Show Section Plane
Show Section Cut
(icons)
Then...
Right Click on any Section Plane of interest (The grey area with Section Arrows on each corner) - Select "Active Cut"
Model should Section Correctly.
...
I've had no problems with either your fireplace or office models.
Both seem to work fine (see attached screen dumps).
...
I'm using Windows - I think you're on a Mac ???
I'm not sure if this is significant.
...
Hope this helps
Howard L'

Howard leslie · 29 Jan 2008, 16:36

Ben,
On my machine (Windows) the files do not appear to be corrupt and work fine.
I can't reproduce the fault or bug you are experiencing.
...
There's no logical reason for this to work but see the attached files...
Try them on your Mac.
...
All I've done is purge your files and saved them with Windows based SU.
See if they behave any better.
...
Good Luck
Howard L'

Windows_Saved_Versions.zip

BenSketch · 29 Jan 2008, 18:07

Howard,
Thanks for your efforts. Was hoping that might do some magic, too, but no dice.

I even booted from a backup of my system from months ago w/previous version of SU and previous version of Mac OS and it still does it. In other models of mine, too. And models I downloaded off Google's 3d Warehouse site. Something is way weird.

I'm stumped. Does Google offer any kind of actual tech support for this kind of thing? I had a hard time finding anything helpful on their site.

Thanks again. Don't know what I'm going to do from here...
--Ben

boofredlay · 29 Jan 2008, 18:23

Hey Ben, some of the SU guys are regulars here. I will send a couple Private Messages along and see if they can help.

brad · 29 Jan 2008, 19:29

Hi Everyone,

I downloaded the problem models and tried them both on PC and Mac. I was never able to see the problem.

I'll continue to look at the problem and let you know what I find.

boofredlay · 29 Jan 2008, 19:30

Thank you Brad.

BenSketch · 29 Jan 2008, 22:27

Thanks Brad & Boofredlay.

I now suspect the problem is NOT actually with the models since I've seen the same behavior in models I've downloaded from Google and we've had at least 2 folks (both on PCs) from this forum who have not seen the issue when viewing my models.

Still stumped, but hoping
Thanks again --Ben

jeff hammond · 30 Jan 2008, 00:17

i tried it on two macs.. an intel quad and a g4 powerbook.. no problem on the desktop but the laptop shows the same problem.. i'll look into it more in a few hours... don't forget to share your solution if you come up with one..

jeff hammond · 30 Jan 2008, 01:54

yeah, definitely weird...

i've duplicated this behavior as well...
@unknownuser said:

Or the item will cut but every other instance will also, even if they aren't touched by the plane

one thing i've noticed is that if you delete any instances in front of the section plane (the part of the model not being cut away), the problems will no longer occur.. (with the mantle example, if you delete the instance on the left side of the jpg that you attached then the horizontal 2x2 will cut as expected)...

the computer is still linking the component instances together while you're trying to cut them.. if there's an uncut instance somewhere in the model, then the one you're trying to cut will remain even though you've run the plane through it..

i'm not too worried about it though because my main computer works just fine..
good luck.

sorgesu · 30 Jan 2008, 03:47

Any possibility the problem is specific to certain video cards? Open GL settings?

jeff hammond · 30 Jan 2008, 04:28

good call susan... turning off 'use hardware acceleration' in su's opengl preference fixes the problem... (though performance is horrible -- borderline unusable)...

fwiw, the card in that computer is an ati mobility radeon 9600 (64mb)..

BenSketch · 30 Jan 2008, 06:02

Ahh... there it is. Thanks Susan & Jeff (& everyone else).

I'd tried this off a hunch from posts I'd seen on another issue, but since SU gave showed a message it would take effect for new windows I'd simply re-opened the file (rendering looked different, but still showed the issue). Now that you've confirmed, I changed the setting and then quit & relaunched SU and indeed the issue disappears.

Also sadly indeed, it is barely useable in that mode. Guess I can do most of my building/manipulating with the acceleration on, then turn it off for establishing some final views with cuts. Was hoping planes could be more useful for me than that, but maybe with my next computer (since I don't dare imagine Google addressing this older, apparently rather specific hardware issue in future releases).

Thanks again everyone. Incredible resource we've got here.
--Ben

p.s. if anyone is interested in the details, I'm running OS 10.4.11 and Sketchup for Mac 6.4.120 on a 1.42GHZ iBook G4 which the spec says has a 4X AGP ATI Mobility Radeon 9550 with 32 MB of DDR SDRAM