Are 'cutting components' broken in the first Trimble build?
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I always have trouble with these things. Apart from the red/green axes thing (I'm red/green colour blind, I can't tell the difference, I never get it right first time) I always have difficulty knowing which is the 'front' and which is the 'back'.
Anyway, I'm using the new Trimble branded build, and I've followed 2 tutorial videos to try to get this to work - and failed...
As a test, I create a rectangle in a horizontal plane, create some more geometry, group it and move it in the direction of the rectangle. At this stage I just want the cutting plane to work, I can line stuff up later. I create a component using the gluing to any plane option, and checking the cut opening box.
Nothing. My components will insert and align themselves to any plane, but they don't cut rectangular holes. I've tried deleting the rectangle plane, I've tried making it transparent, I've tried leaving it solid. Nothing seems to work.
Am I missing something basic, or is this broken?
PS
Please, software developers and hardware manufacturers, what's with the red and green colour options? Seriously, 1 in 10 men are colour blind, most of my electronic equipment I can't tell whether it is on, or on standby - or off. You couldn't pick two worse contrasting colours if you tried!
SketchUp team, any chance you could give us colour options for the axes? -
I see no change with glued or cut hole components. Maybe you can share a sample model?
In general though, if I know I want to create a cut hole component I draw the profile of the hole on a face and select it with the edges and immediately create a cut hole component out of it before I model any more to it.
It could be something on how the geometry is that makes the different options in Make Component not be selected.
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The "Cut Opening" has rarely if ever worked for me. It obviously works for some but what the secret is is a mystery to me.
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I know this is an elementary comment, but, what ThomThom said immediately gave me a mental picture of when you draw something on a plane and pushpull it up in a volume the pulled face rises away from the original plane and if you make it a group or component it will leave a hole in the plane after you move the group.
This may not be what he means, but it is the image I get.
You can right click on the group to Unglue it and move it off the plane. You of course can edit either the plane or the group to close the missing face by tracing along an edge. -
@sdmitch said:
The "Cut Opening" has rarely if ever worked for me. It obviously works for some but what the secret is is a mystery to me.
It's all about having a closed loop of edges on the red & green axes of the component. The blue axis must be pointing upwards.
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If you are making a cutting component that stands alone draw it flat on the ground - loops on the ground plane will cut the hole[s], the blue/z axis is the face normal.
Obviously you have to give the cutting-component gluing and cutting behaviors.
A simpler way to do it - e.g. for a window - is to model it 'in place' on a 'wall' face and when you elect to make it into a component Sketchup assumes that it's going to glue/cut etc in the initial creation dialog - you can also adjust it's insertion point as desired - provided it's still on the wall's face-plane... -
So it will only cut through the face that it is "glued" to. If you place it in a wall with thickness, only the outer wall will be cut?
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@sdmitch said:
So it will only cut through the face that it is "glued" to. If you place it in a wall with thickness, only the outer wall will be cut?
Correct. SketchUp is a surface modeller - it will only cut through one face.
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Thanks ThomThom. That explains why I thought that all my attempts seemed to fail.
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Correct - a glued/cutting component only makes a 'hole' in the face it's on... however, my "Hole Punching Tool" script [amongst a few others - see the Plugins Index - http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=271170#p271170 ] is a context-specific toolset that will let you select a glued/cutting component-instance [or several at once] and have it punch through a 3d wall making reveals etc to match the 'inner-face', the difference with my tool compared to some others is that the cutting component and its associated reveal geometry select as one bound set [like the edges that form a 'curve' can't be selected individually], so if you move say a window it moves the geometry making up the 'hole' that it also punches through the wall with it. The toolset allows you to move/copy/swap/etc already punched instances, you can also un-punch/re-punch/re-glue etc...
So if you must have cutting components punching through wall thickness there are tools available... -
Another thing to note when making cut hole componentes - create them so no edges of the component you want to cut out touch the edges of the face it's stuck to. The component will not be created correctly unless you do this.
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@thomthom said:
I see no change with glued or cut hole components. Maybe you can share a sample model?
In general though, if I know I want to create a cut hole component I draw the profile of the hole on a face and select it with the edges and immediately create a cut hole component out of it before I model any more to it.
It could be something on how the geometry is that makes the different options in Make Component not be selected.
This is exactly how I do my glue/cut components,
I draw a rectangle on a surface, double click the inside of the rectangle(this should select the rectangle and the edges "only"... if you triple click it you went too far
), then right click it-> "create component" make sure cut opening and replace selection with component are checked, and press okay....After that, I double click the component and erase the rectangle but leave the edges.
As long as the edges are in a closed loop and are not inside a group/component they will cut the opening.
If it's a door or a component that might be touching the edge of the surface that I'm about to cut, I just move it a couple of inches off the edge before creating the component.
It sound more complicated than what it's. With practice, it's just a couple of secs.
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This gave me fits for a while. I couldn't figure out why I could get some components to glue and cut and not others. It seemed that when component axis was at a face, the cut would work, but when I tried to move the axis to the middle of the component, it wouldn't.
Then I read Thom Thom's post:
It's all about having a closed loop of edges on the red & green axes of the component. The blue axis must be pointing upwards.That is it in a nutshell. To get a component to cut through the face it's glued to, there must be a continuous edge around the component at the component's axis, which is where it will glue itself to the face.
Thanks TT.
Check out the attachment.
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