Situation:

I create a brick and make it a component. I stack those bricks into a wall and make that a component. I arrange those walls into a house and make that a component.

When I add that house to a new scene, all those pieces are named as expected.

When I want to add an individual wall component into the house scene, the brick components inside of the wall component have #number tacked onto the end of the name.

For example,

1 "Brick_red"
10 "Brick_red" = 1 "Brick_wall"
30 "Brick_wall" = 1 "Brick_house"

"Brick_house" (and all of it's sub-components) are added to the scene exactly as named.

When I add an extra "Brick_wall" to the scene, now all sub-components in the wall are called "Brick_red#1"

I can go into the Outliner, expand the components, look through all components for "Brick_red#1", manually select all "Brick_red#1" items, and then reload "Brick_red" from the component browser to force those "Brick_red#1" back to "Brick_red".

Is there a way to prevent this from happening? Or is there was to automatically forces these back to just "Brick_red"? With 1000 of pieces in a scene, this is something that'll be come mind-numbing to correct manually.

Mind-numbed,
alz

Check out this wizardry...

PlayUp Tools - Making It Easy to Make Worlds - SketchUp Plugin

(playuptools.com)

I know there's been requests for a SketchUp-to-Unreal (BSP) exporter for several years now. Looks like it might actually happen. Right now it's for Source (Valve/Half-Life)

Ah... layers... Yes, I had things on multiple layers. Let me try flattening that to 1 layer and see what happens

When I explode a building that has several nested components, random faces (like walls or ceilings) disappear.

Is there some order I should do (or not do) this action in?
Or is there some Ruby out there that explodes without losing faces?

Gotcha -- so it's a way to tell me when I load a scene that some items have been modified. Without this, I'd have to know which ones had been changed, and then find them individually in the scene to update.

Quick basic question --

What is the advantage of the XRef plugin over using the native "Reload" feature on a component?

I believe it's wrapped up in their 3D*.dll file (not ruby accessible).

I currently have mine set up to rotate around the location of my cursor. You can also set it up to rotate around whatever is currently selected. There's a few other rotation options (which I can't recall at the moment).

Related discussion:
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=6676

Here're my shortcut cheatsheets I use for SketchUp. It ties into several different plugins/functions. (So native SketchUp does not support all of these shortcuts - if you don't have the plugin/function, some items won't work.)

Does anyone else have custom cheatsheets?

right-click and save or view image to see complete image

All images

Related option: http://www.smustard.com/script/Repaint

Nice - Thanks Jim! I've added it as my new group shortcut.

@unknownuser said:

Thats the way it is, it's only when you pushpull to a 3d object that the faces are the right way.

Hmm rats... well that makes sense in the bigger picture.

Thanks for all the help!

AH! That's it... reversed face.

So 2nd question -- when drawing a simple rectangle, why is it reversed (face down)?

I can't remember if SketchUp always did this -- but whenever I apply a material with the paint bucket on an XY poly (top down), the material is applied backwards.

Why is it applied incorrectly (as the material and material thumbnail displays)?

Quick follow-up! Realized I had v1.1 and SMUSTARD has v1.2. Picked up latest and greatest and it works.

Hi Rick!

When you mentioned SMUSTARD I forgot to check which version I had. Sure enough I picked this up from SMUSTARD (v1.1)

I'm creating a simple test level with 3 rectangles, then applying a different material to each. Without anything selected (or selected), I run Repaint from the plugin menu. Then pick Texture, select material X, then material Y, and okay through the rest of the inputs. No change occurs however

Am I using the plugin incorrectly?

(this includes using getMaterials.rb)

Repaint is no longer working for me -- is anyone else using this and encountered this problem?

(http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDepot/Ruby/repaint.rb)
(http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDepot/Ruby/getMaterials.rb)

This is a great script for globally swapping materials from one to another. Is there some other way or script that does this?

There's an option to "Reset Skew" (right near "Reset Scale").

My interpretation of skew is to push or pull corners of the object in an independent direction. For example, taking a component cube and turning it into a trapezoid.

I can't find a way to actually skew the object though. Tugging on the scale handles keeps the object in its relative box shape.

What example would I need to be in to allow the "Reset Skew" option to function?

Follow-up solution for binding the 3D Connexion function "Center of Rotation" to a Space Explorer button:

• Create a shortcut in SketchUp for "Plugins/3DxSketchUp/Center of Rotation" (ie. "F6")
• Open the 3D Connexion Control Panel -> Button Configuation -> Custom Functions...
• Hit "New" and name the macro (ie. "Center Here")
• Inside User Macro, hit the key of your choice (ie. "F6") and hit "Save", then "Done"
• Select the name of your macro in the button dropdown of your choice (ie. "Center Here" for Panel)

@unknownuser said:

[attachment=0:1anqav2i]<!-- ia0 -->SP05.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:1anqav2i]

I have the Explorer -- is there a way to bind one of the buttons to "Center of Rotation"? It's not an option in the drop downs on the Button Configuration. It was quickly speed up modeling without the constant "go to toolbar" option.

Well that's good to know (I won't try to cobble together a test then).

On a side note, even with the cut/paste option, I'd still have to have the Outliner open and dig through the tree.

The Layer Manager script does a good job at letting you r-click and quickly move contents