Couple of questions

pbacot

Hi!

I've come across a couple issues in modeling:

Is there an opposite of the hide command? "Hide all others"? Sometimes I want to look at a group or two in isolation without having to go through the hiding of everything else in my way. Sometimes I make it a component and work on an instance away from the model, but this can be a bother for every time this desire occurs.
Any tricks for extending a plane in its current aspect? I am working with irregular roof planes and they are not all in green and red aspects. To extend planes I draw outward with the line tool using the reference alignment to its existing lines--then erase the old lines, but this seems tedious. Sometimes I move a point, trying to keep in the same plane (reference alignment is not so easy here it seems). As I look at roof changes in design I am constantly needing to run the planes out to meet other planes. I've also come to prefer drawing the intersections more accurately rather than "intersect" with all the cleanup required afterwards.

Would that SU had "extend" tools as in CADD where a line or plane is extended to the next intersecting object. (I know that if you DRAW it there is a constraint to the plane.) DesignWorkshop had an "extend up" function. It would extend your wall planes up to meet the ceiling-- great for sloped conditions.

Thanks,

Peter

TIG

@pbacot said:

Hi!
I've come across a couple issues in modeling:

Is there an opposite of the hide command? "Hide all others"? Sometimes I want to look at a group or two in isolation without having to go through the hiding of everything else in my way. Sometimes I make it a component and work on an instance away from the model, but this can be a bother for every time this desire occurs.

Any tricks for extending a plane in its current aspect? I am working with irregular roof planes and they are not all in green and red aspects. To extend planes I draw outward with the line tool using the reference alignment to its existing lines--then erase the old lines, but this seems tedious. Sometimes I move a point, trying to keep in the same plane (reference alignment is not so easy here it seems). As I look at roof changes in design I am constantly needing to run the planes out to meet other planes. I've also come to prefer drawing the intersections more accurately rather than "intersect" with all the cleanup required afterwards.
Would that SU had "extend" tools as in CADD where a line or plane is extended to the next intersecting object. (I know that if you DRAW it there is a constraint to the plane.) DesignWorkshop had an "extend up" function. It would extend your wall planes up to meet the ceiling-- great for sloped conditions.
Thanks,
Peter

You don't need to actually 'Hide' stuff to see what you are doing during a group or component edit. Set a shortcut key to View > Component Edit > Hide Rest of Model [H+alt ?] AND ...> Hide Similar Components [H+alt+ctrl ?] - it apples to editing components and groups. You can toggle it on/off as you edit - sometimes you want the rest of the model there to snap to = on, other times it's blocking your view = off.
If you want to hide but say 2 groups you can select them and use one of the several scripts [one's mine] 'Invert Selection' - everything else is selected now - the Hide that - use a shortcut key again [H ?] with unhide last too [H+shift ?] etc
You can temporarily reset you axes to match the roof plane and then red/green locks apply to that; or draw some guide lines and snap to those or draw a temporary edge along the plane - inference to magenta shows it - or draw it on the roof then Edit>Copy & Paste it off the roof touching an edge a use that as you plane snap indicator.
As you have discovered extending the planes by moving sides and using 'intersect' to make new edges where faces intersect and erasing what's not needed is another way of working.
To extend the top edge of a vertical face up to the underside of a ceiling you simply use Move with nothing selected and pick the top edit and move it up till it touched the ceiling face. If the ceiling face is sloping then instead of picking on the edge pick on each of the two top vertices [corners] and Move them up vertically till they snap to the ceiling face - you can lock the move in the vertical [blue] by using shift to lock it in the blue or the up arrow key... You can also draw guide lines along such wall side edges [even if they are not vertical] and where they intersect with the ceiling plane a point is make that is inferable as an intersection for a snap - so you can then move the wall's related vertex [corner] up to that point...

d12dozr

In addition to TIG's tips mentioned above, I like to use TIG's EE by Vector tool to extend roof lines for roofs...double-click with the tape measure tool on an existing line to make a reference if possible, select the line to extrude, then run EEbyV. You can leave it grouped if you just want to use it as reference to draw new geometry, or explode it if you're satisfied.

TIG

@d12dozr said:

In addition to TIG's tips mentioned above, I like to use TIG's EE by Vector tool to extend roof lines for roofs...double-click with the tape measure tool on an existing line to make a reference if possible, select the line to extrude, then run EEbyV. You can leave it grouped if you just want to use it as reference to draw new geometry, or explode it if you're satisfied.

I was loathe to plug my own Plugin - I was trying to explain how to do it is raw SUp - BUT EEbyVector WILL do what you want

d12dozr

@tig said:

...I was loathe to plug my own Plugin...

I don't see the problem of mentioning it if its a free plug-in

BTW TIG, that is the tool I use most out of that excellent set (probably because its the simplest of them, and easiest for my simple mind to understand )

pbacot

Thanks TIG and d12.

Well I guess on the first one it's my oversight--never looked at that menu item, being only the average user as Pete would say... But great directions, TIG. After trying the "Hide the Rest of the Model" (wow, plain English!) a little, I definitely need to assign a toggle key! And I am feeling better already about the roofs from your advice. I'll check the plug in.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer. Certainly an honor to have top expert advice, just like that. And I am still amazed at how SU works when I do try the right approach. Seems to be reading my mind at times

Peter

TIG

SUp's inferencing can be like magic sometimes - it can be annoying at others BUT with use you know how to fool it into, for example, not locking the snap to the red axis when you are trying to pick a point just off it [tip orbit arouns so that the direction you are moving the cursor is not parallel to the sides of the screen - the red inference is less like to predominate - or still your cursor and wait a second and it'll suggest another inference]