g_wilson, I attempted to follow your directions, but failed due to noobness. I got a bit lost there, especially in the "select instances" step (could not find that in any menu/pop-up menu?). I did mess around with components, but getting Sketchup 2014 to transfer changes from one component member to all of them . . . didn't work. Selecting them all and scaling them all simultaneously brought about the usual behavior (centers of circles moving around). So, I solved my problem by starting from scratch and using circles of the needed size instead of scaling anything I had derived from another model.

@g_wilson said:

Make the circle a component temporarily if you wish -the circle must have an edge and face to be made a component - create component - then edit component and delete the face if you wish,the circle edge will still be a component - use this component to create your hole pattern - then to change the size of ALL these circles at once - select one of these circles -edit component - find cardinal point and do as before. To explode all these component circles at once - goto components list (in model)- select this component from list by right clicking - in pop-up - click "select instances" all occurrences of the circle will be highlighted- then select one instance of circle by right clicking on it - in pop-up click on "explode" - all circles will explode and merge with other geometry.

EDIT: This process MAINTAINS the hole pattern while fredoscale alters distances between holes as well as hole size.

Okay, I'll try this next.

@pbacot said:

According to first post the circles are on the origin so one function should do them all.

That was just with one circle on the origin. When I move+copied that circle twice and moved the copies along the green axis (off to the side) with uniform spacing and then tried scaling about the center with ctrl, it didn't work. The video above of FredoScale seems to be doing the same thing: increasing the size of the circles along with the distances between their centers.

I could scale then move to correct the distance changes, but this would be tedious in a model with hundreds or even thousands of circles that need to be scaled without getting any further apart.

Interesting. I may have to experiment with this. I was able to maintain the position of the center of the circle when scaling one circle using ctrl, but when doing a group of circles, the centers of all the circles still moved (major headache). I need to scale a group of circles while maintaining the distance between their centers. I might need FredoScale?

note: I suppose the scenario could apply to shapes other than circles. My particular problem has to do with circles, so I'm asking about them.

The scenario:

I have a circle centered on the origin, with the blue axis normal to the center of the circle. I want to scale the circle upwards in size - let's say, two times its current size - without taking the center of the circle off the origin. Scaling the circle and then moving it afterwards isn't an option in the scenario (I have my reasons for this restriction).

Can it be done?

Every attempt I've made to do perform this action has failed.

@dave r said:

SketchUp tells me that .19mm radius is too small so you probably ought to work at some larger scale and scale down when you're finished modeling. I expect you're working at below the tolerances built into SketchUp.

Yeah, that's what I had to do. I wouldn't even let me create a .19mm radius circle to start, so I had to scale it down. Then when I made copies and started moving them around . . .

In any case, I've learned my lesson. Thanks!

@dave r said:

How big are these cylinders? You shouldn't have to be scaling up and down to do this.

.38mm in diameter and 3mm in length. They need to be .131 mm apart measured from the edge in the x/y dimensions (.511 mm as measured from the vertical axis through the center of any given cylinder).

@dave r said:

It sounds like you have Precision set coarser than what you need and perhaps Length Snapping is enabled. Increase Precision and disable Length Snapping and see if that helps. Look under Window>Model Info>Units.

According to the units submenu, length snapping is disabled and precision is set to ".000000mm" which is the highest precision setting. Granted, I only just now checked that submenu on your advice (thanks!).

I found a workaround: I scaled the model to ten times its normal size and my movements worked just fine. Now I'm resizing back to 1/10th the current size. Too bad each resize operation (blue, red, green) takes about 2-3 hours to complete. My Sempron is pegged at 100% CPU utilization, poor thing. It is time for an upgrade.

Hi, I'm new here, just as I am new to Sketchup 2014 (last time I used Sketchup was back when it was called Google Sketchup, in 2008 or so I think). Anyway, I am laying out an array of cylinders in 3D Printer mode (millimeters). The cylinders need to be .131 mm apart as measured from their edges, and I've had no problems lining them up with a guideline. But when I start moving a cylinder (actually it's a move + copy) by typing in the precise amount of distance I want the cylinder moved, it seems to have a mind of its own as to how far it wants to go. There seems to be anywhere from .01 to .02 mm error in placing the object, and it seems to repeat the same error over and over when I attempt to make corrections. I've managed to line up several cylinders properly after repeatedly moving them around with the mouse and changing the distance between the cylinders to be aligned until it finally accepts my specified distance, but now that I have a large group I need to align, it seems to have gotten stuck in a rut.

Any idea what might be causing this, or what I can do about it? Is this a software-related problem? Could it be problems with my CPU's FPU calculations? It's a Sempron 140 + 8800 GTX Ultra vid card, fwiw.