[req] Drawing through walls, disable layers or hidden paint

onidarbe

Hi,
I wonder if anyone has the time and skills to solve a more difficult, although very nice and much asked plugin for Sketchup?

THE PROBLEM:
If one is drawing an interior in a room or house while showing other people what you are drawing, then walls behind the interior should keep visible, while those in front should not be there.
3 Solutions I could think of, which are getting more difficult from 1 to 3:

I know one can make the backside of faces invisible, but one can not select and work through them as if they aren't there. So what I was thinking of, is a program running in the background, hiding every 100% transparent face and unhide them again as soon as the other colored side is facing the viewing(camera) angle again.
Because sidewalls from windows are still in front of the interior objects and sometimes one doesn’t want to color the outside of a room transparent , maybe one could automatically hide all faces/components in a particular layer that are in front of any other object on all other layers. Compared to the distance of the viewing eye/camera.
And if that can’t be done, then maybe one could add a “disable/not selectable” attribute on the layers besides the already existing “visible” box.

Thank you and greetings from Belgium.

cotty

You can use scenes with different active section cuts, see attachment...

viewinroom.skp

Dave R

@unknownuser said:

...much asked plugin for Sketchup?

I've never seen anyone ask for this before. Hmmm...

It sounds to me like you might find it useful to change the way you organize your model. Or maybe just organizing your model properly is the solution instead of a plugin.

onidarbe

Thanks for replying.

Well looking for this, I did find requests, but no solution so far. Mostly for disabling layers like one can in most other drawing programs. So a visible layer not selectable

Although I thank you for the explication of using scenes with section cuts, is not exactly a solution. I could however use that until a better solution comes up.

You need to see the context I want to use SU: Me drawing a kitchen in a room using mostly existing dynamic components, while the customer is dreaming and looking to the drawing build up. Because they don't have spatial awareness it would look nice if one always sees the background walls, floor and sealing, while I'm turning and turning to place all the cabinets against the walls. I could use scenes with section cuts, only I need to keep joggling through the pages.

Maybe is't because of the programs I'm used to. Maybe there is an other solution.
Can I have 2 simultaneous views, windows or even monitors? One I can draw in with section cuts, and one that I can turn around now and then using the walls-faces with 1 side transparent.

thank you

Dave R

It sounds to me like you could use a little help in understanding the way SketchUp works. You don't draw on layers and layers are not "selectable" in the sense you mean. Layers are only used to control visibility. You use components and groups to keep things separate, not layers as you are used to with other programs.

Put the walls of your kitchen on a "walls" layer and you can turn that layer off so it isn't visible. Maybe in your case you would have layers for each wall. So if you are looking at the north elevation, perhaps you turn off the south wall layer and maybe the south wall cabinets layer or whatever is on the south wall. Organize your model so you can turn off the visibility of those things that would be in the way.

You can lock components or groups that you don't want to be able to modify. This may help you, too.

By the way, in SketchUp you should always draw on Layer 0, always leave Layer 0 active (radio button to left of layer name), always leave edges and faces on Layer 0 and only associate components or groups with other layers. If you don't follow these basic rules, you will find yourself frustrated in short order. I would suggest that you look at the Online Help files and read about layers.

BTW, no, you cannot have two simultaneous views in SketchUp.

Jim

Controlled clipping.

Might be possible using a Section Plane which is aligned to the camera with an Observer.