The "Duh!" thread (aka the Doh! thread)

boofredlay

One for me was when Gaieus was from Gaieus' talk at the Basecamp (I saw the video) and using the rotate tool.

When you click the rotate tool and click the rotation point, don't let go of the mouse button... drag it out to either red or green (or any other snap point you set up) then click to start. This relieves any need for a vertical plane to get your rotation set up.

See image for example.

I have been using SU since V2 and never knew that until last year.

david_h

Ive had so many Duh Moments I don't know where to start . . .or rather D'oh!
I have still so many yet to experience I am sure. Maybe you can help me add to myD'uh Collection

I have never gotten into the OUtliner but the one thing I wish I knew how to do with it. . .if it can be done is in working with Nexted blocks and components in "Hide rest of Model" mode that you could have the group in which a component is nested visible but still have the rest of the model invisible? comprenez-vous? Or maybe there is a Ruby for this??? ***please oh please oh please!***Also. . .. we need a little smilie that says "D'UH! and D'OH!"

thomthom

@unknownuser said:

One for me was when Gaieus was from Gaieus' talk at the Basecamp (I saw the video) and using the rotate tool.

Yes! So did I. I've always built these extra constructs of faces and lines to align the rotate tool first. When I saw the video I thought he did some dark voodoo magic.

Ecuadorian

That method of rotation is in the introductory videos for V6 and were posted in 2007. This means one should never dismiss learning materials aimed at newbies, as there could be a trick or two one doesn't know yet. Kind of when I learned that the word "people" is plural and not singular... just before graduating from College .

david_h

I think the Rotate/Drag thing was new to V5. Could be wrong tho. Anyway. . . I"ve been using SU since V2 and didn't learn of that til then anyway.

EDIT. . .oh! oh! my duh moment this week! (yes they come that often. . .)

I discovered a "filter" in the Shortcuts box to search for the particular command.

Gaieus

@ecuadorian said:

Kind of when I learned that the word "people" is plural and not singular... just before graduating from College .

That's good (me as a foreign speaker of English fully understanding thet).

But all in all,I know what you mean. There's still a lot - if not other than little tricks of workflow at least - of this program!

(And I love this topic - maybe it should be made sticky in the Newbie forum!)

thomthom

I just had a vision of the planet where you hear "Duh!" shouted across the globe, with little speech bubbles to accompany, as people read this thread...

Gaieus

And they also keep banging their heads to the walls...

david_h

did you know that if you expand the component window with the little + sign and drag your custom component to the window below it saves it in the component directory for future use????? D'UH!

xrok1

@unknownuser said:

Ive had so many Duh Moments I don't know where to start . . .or rather D'oh!
I have still so many yet to experience I am sure. Maybe you can help me add to myD'uh Collection

I have never gotten into the OUtliner but the one thing I wish I knew how to do with it. . .if it can be done is in working with Nexted blocks and components in "Hide rest of Model" mode that you could have the group in which a component is nested visible but still have the rest of the model invisible? comprenez-vous? Or maybe there is a Ruby for this??? ***please oh please oh please!***Also. . .. we need a little smilie that says "D'UH! and D'OH!"

it would probably be better for your outer group to be a component instead of a group, with the other groups inside. that way it would work the way you want with all the internal groups visible when editing them through this outer component.

Gaieus

@daniel said:

...My second moment was embarrassing. I gave a short seminar to the local community design center on using sketchup, and I was explaining how SU will not cast shadows below the point of origin (default ground plane), and open a model to illustrate it, only to discover that SU had apparently fixed that (with veersion 7?).

Thanks Daniel, you saved me from another embarrassing "Duh"!

Daniel

I can remember two "duh" moments for myself. I had always known to make multiple copies in a row, to just type in the number of copies wanted followed by an "x". But it wasn't until reading the SU for Dummies book last year that you could make multiple copies evenly spaced in a given length by typing in the number followed by a slash. I felt stupid for not figuring that out.

My second moment was embarrassing. I gave a short seminar to the local community design center on using sketchup, and I was explaining how SU will not cast shadows below the point of origin (default ground plane), and open a model to illustrate it, only to discover that SU had apparently fixed that (with version 7?).

broomstick

@thomthom said:

A more recent Duh I had:

Being able to select only a few edges from a face and offset them instead of the whole face.

I had this one today!!

Daniel

Your welcome, Gaieus. I don't remember anybody mentioning it. Perhaps we've all become accustomed to modeling above the origin. Maybe I was distracted by Remus' bike porn thread (for the record, it is NOT what the title implies, and I was VERY disappointed).