How to evenly divide shelf component inside a cabinet?

togatheone

Hello Friends,
I made a group on sketchup to model a cabinet for my living room.
After offsetting and everything, i made a rectangle to make my shelf
component. Following some instructions on the youtube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kae7uZxyOzQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eyoutube%2Ecom%2Fuser%2F4sketchupgo2school&feature=player_profilepage
; i'm trying to evenly divide the shelves inside my cabinet.
How do i do that?

Gaieus

Hi André and welcome.

From that video, you have learnt how to make copies with the Move tool

Now to make several copies, you can use the so called "Linear arrays" (scroll down the page to the title).

Basically it's when you have made one copy in the way displayed in the video you linked, you type x6(for instance) and hit Enterto add altogether 6 instances evenly distributed along the direction you copied the first (of the 6).

Alternatively, you can copy the first instance to the farthermost place and type /6(and hit Enter) then SU will divide the whole distance with the correct amount. (note that you never have to click into the Measurement box before typing).

Additionally, whenever you right click a line, at the bottom(ish) of your context menu, there is a "Divide" command. You can also use that in certain occasions to mark the places where you copy your instances.

BTW Radial arrays work the same way with the Rotate tool

togatheone

Hi Gaieus,
Thanks for the answer!
But i'm still having trouble withe the linear arrays.
As soon as i copy the shelf and click on the destned point for that copied item, the copied item is selected and the riginal deselected. As i try to make copies or to divid it evenly by typing the numbers, if i'm doing it while moving the copied shelf it tells me abou invalid length. If i do it after, nothing appears on the bottom left corner (measurements/length) on my google sketchup, where it stays unusable to enter any number to divide my copy.
Any idea of what is happenning?

Gaieus

The steps (normally) are:

select the item you want to copy
select the Move tool and hit the Ctrl key
move the copy (now it behaves as you described and the moved copy will be highlighted) - also "finish" the move; i.e. click to place it
type x6 (or whatever you wish) and hit Enter.
Maybe you are missing something (a step) or doing something wrong here.

togatheone

I don't know what i was doing wrong, but i did it from the beginning and ended with everything ok
Thanks a lot for the help!

MartinRinehart

Outer arrays are covered here:

http://www.martinrinehart.com/models/tutorial/tutorial_02.html#precision

Inner arrays are covered here:

http://www.martinrinehart.com/models/tutorial/tutorial_08.html#bed3

(Inner: page down a couple times, until you see the array of ballusters. Start just above the array with "We are about to use an inner array.")

You use an outer array when you make a railing and you know how far apart the ballusters should be. You use an inner array where you can position the first and last, but aren't sure about what spacing will look best.