Preserving moves in scene changes

Involute

I'm using SketchUp Pro 7.1. I have a drawing of a chest of drawers. I'd like to have one scene where the drawers are closed and another where one of the drawers is open, so by clicking on, say, the "Closed" tab, I see the drawers closed, and then clicking on the "Open" tab I see one of the drawers open. It would be nice, but not essential, if the opening/closing were animated. I try to create this effect by creating a scene with the drawers closed, then creating another scene, opening the drawer (with a move), and updating the second scene. This just causes the drawer to be open in both scenes, however. If I then close the drawer in the first scene and update it, the drawer is closed in both scenes. How can I get the desired effect? Thanks.

Jim

You profile says you are using Pro, and this sounds like a good application of Dynamic Components.

However, Dynamic Components do not require (nor can they work easily with) Scenes.

Alternatively, there is a plugin named proper_animation that is able to animate objects between Scene changes. It can be a little tricky to get started, but works well.

Involute

Thanks for the tip. I hadn't used dynamic components before, but after watching one of the videos I got the drawer to open and close with a click. I'd still like to know why my initial approach didn't work. Any ideas?

Gaieus

@jim said:

You profile says you are using Pro, and this sounds like a good application of Dynamic Components.

That's Pro 6 (with no DC's yet) EDIT: maybe not, as he could poke the drawer as he says?

@involute said:

I'd still like to know why my initial approach didn't work. Any ideas?

The problem is/was that scenes cannot remember former positions of objects. They are either here (or closed) or there (say open).

You could do it this way;

create two layers - one for a drawer open and one for closed.
In one scene, set the drawer closed and put it on the "closed" layer while turn the visibility of the "open" layer off. Update the scene.
Now COPY (not just move) the drawer into an open state, put it on the "open" layer, turn its visibility on while turn the visibility of the "closed" layer off. Make a new scene.
This would now show your drawer open/closed in the respective scenes but there is no real animation of them.

Jim

An exception is Section Planes - they can be animated between Scenes.

OT:

And now that I think of it, there isn't anything special about a SectionPlane.

I wonder if you could make SketchUp think a regular Group is a SectionPlane, if it would animate the Group as if it was a Section?

Gaieus

True, section planes can display animation (for the information however; you also need to set up two of them just like with the drawers).

YouTube - SketchUp: Creating section animations with scenes
[flash=480,385:1avec9xk]http://www.youtube.com/v/-sQ-7dt95yw?fs=1&hl=en_GB[/flash:1avec9xk]