Need Advice About This Advice [Groups or Components?]

hellnbak

It's a balmy 8 degrees here. Going to the beach this afternoon.

Rich O Brien

@Dave

302 Found

(www.screenr.com)

Dave R

@hellnbak said:

It's a balmy 8 degrees here. Going to the beach this afternoon.

I'd be going to the beach too if it was that warm here. It's -17C here. I had to put on a jacket.

Rich, thanks for that explanation and the S&G. I guess I'd do the deletion a different way but yours is quick.

Rich O Brien

It's quick alright. I think it was Coen that put me on to it way back. Still use it daily to delete crap.

@hellnbak

I think you need to take off your 3D Warehouse hat and move to the next level of bringing SketchUp to a stuttering stop

dale

I find myself moving more and more from groups to components for all the reasons Dave so eloquently spoke of above. It is hard to come up with a downside for doing this.
The only problem I have is I am still in the old habit of grouping, which I am slowly breaking.

Dave R

Dale, one of things that makes it easy for me is not having a keyboard shortcut set for Make Group. 'G' makes components and that's the way I always make them. That makes it more work to make a group than a component.

Dave R

Not to beat a dead horse but also remember there's the Make Unique command so that you can break the relationship of components when you do want them to be different. With the stuff I draw, I might want to have elements related to each other for awhile but then later in the process, I will break the relationship. Legs on tables with drawers are a good example of that. They need the same treatment up to a point. When it comes time to draw in the joinery for the rear apron and the front blades above and below the drawer front, the front and rear legs need to be separated in the process. Make Unique to the rescue.

Make Unique also comes in handy when you want to modify a model to make a different model. The bench was made from a copy of the fern stand in the background.

And in the next image, every piece of furniture was drawn starting from the chair on the left. By the way, all of these pieces of furniture are production pieces and the shop uses a similar idea for actually building these things.

Rich O Brien

You know you need to share ALL your textures with me don't you?

Dave R

That's only two and they're components as well. I just use Make Unique and modify them.

hellnbak

I'll be starting a pretty ambitious model soon, and I'm going to go the component route and see how it goes. I think the hardest part will breaking old habits.

Thanks for all the input and advice, much appreciated.

Dave R

Hi Ken,

So I'm assuming that you are referring to models you've already created using groups instead of components. I periodically receive models from others where this is the case. I would make components of each of the groups. Let sketchUp name them and assume it names them Component#1, Component#2, etc. Rename Component#1 if you wish. That can be done at any time later. Select all of the numbered components and in the Components browser, right click on Component#1 in the browser and choose Replace Selected. No plugin needed.

I don't have it but I think ThomThom or TIG did a plugin that will hunt through a model for identical groups and make them components. It might speed things up for you.

Dave R

@hellnbak said:

I think the hardest part will breaking old habits.

Get rid of your keyboard shortcut for making groups or change it to Make Component. That'll be the easiest way to break the habit.

ken

Dave R

Thank you for your reply. Today is the day I will almost stop using groups. This for me could be a "DUH" thread.

Ken

hellnbak

@dave r said:

@hellnbak said:

I think the hardest part will breaking old habits.

Get rid of your keyboard shortcut for making groups or change it to Make Component. That'll be the easiest way to break the habit.

That won't be hard, 'cause I don't have any keyboard shortcuts for making components or groups. I know, I'll make some shortcuts, and then get rid of them!

Dave R

How come there's no "snork" smilie.

Use G to make components. that's the default keyboard shortcut, anyway.

ken

This is a most interesting discussion.

Dave R, I have after looking at your post decided that components are the way for me to go. I hadn't used component that much, preferred groups. Now that read your posts and how you use component this is the way I will start modeling.

However, I have a question. I have a plugin that makes identical groups until I change the parameters, then it will make another series of identical groups. Is there a way I can select all the identical parts, and make them one component definition? Such if I have 10 parts all the same, select all tens parts and give them one component definition, so that after this conversion, I only need to modify one of the ten to modify all the ten.

Thanks for the discussion, you have changed my modeling procedures to the better.

Ken

dale

@dave r said:

Dale, one of things that makes it easy for me is not having a keyboard shortcut set for Make Group. 'G' makes components and that's the way I always make them. That makes it more work to make a group than a component.

Good idea.
I've been doing pretty good mostly, except for forgetting to "make unique" on a couple of trusses I was working on. But the fix was relatively easy.

ken

Dave R

Could you do me a favor. I tried you method of replacing one component by another. However in the attached Sketchup file, whenever I turn all the groups into separate components by the plugin tt_groups2comps.rb, by Thomthom and then select all components expect the chosen one, when I select replace, all the selected bolt components disappear. The process works on other components so I know how to do the select components and replace. However with these bolts I can not get it to replace the selected components, the outliners indicated they have been replaced but they do not show up in the model.

Note, if I explode all the bolts, then make them groups and then make all the groups components by using the plugin tt_groups2comps.rb, by Thomthom the process works. However without exploding I can not get the replace components selection to work.

So what is different about these groups? What am I doing wrong?

Thank you in advance.

Ken

Bolts1 Send.skp