Relative measure without guidelines?

Helmi

Hi,

i wonder if there's a way to use relative distances in sketechup without adding a guideline for everything.

Example: I've got a cube with 100x100x100mm and want to put a whole in every corner of one side with the distance of let's say 20mm from each edge. The way i do it now is by adding guidelines from every edge (4 at all).

Any chance to do this in another way? Any kind of dynamic guides or something maybe as a plugin or something?

Thanks for helping,

Frank

Dave R

I'm not sure what is wrong with guides but you could place one hole and then use Move/Copy to place the other holes where you need them. In your example you would move/copy the first one 60mm parallel to an edge. You could then select that copy and the original and move/copy 60 mm parallel to the adjacent edge.

If you are using guides and find your model gets cluttered, simply delete the guides when you've finished using them. I have a keyboard shortcut for Edit>Delete Guides which makes it quick and easy to clean things up.

Helmi

Hi,

the problem with guides is simply that things get cluttered as you say. On the other hand you may find a hand full of guides useful until the construction is finished but deleting all guides would remove them too. Deleting only the guides that can be deleted by hand from time to time is possible of course but it's anything else but a smart workflow.

As other apps have something like dynamic guides a bit more extended and relative positioning i thought there might be a way with sketchup that i don't yet know of.

Thanks for helping,

Frank

mitcorb

I am not sure of where you are in learning this program, but it seems that perhaps taking advantage of the inferencing capabilities would help. I use guides less frequently because I have become accustomed to inferencing. This is a matter of hovering a few seconds on certain points during an operation. This methodology may not be best for you. And, it would depend on the type of modeling that you do.

srx

The point is that inference does not work for dimensions. I miss that too. Its much easier to dimension without using guidelines, like in Autocad.