unfortunately the profiled sheeting is a "trapezoidal sheet metal". shape and dimensions are taken exactly from the manufacturer's leaflet. but I ended up hiding half of the edges now. it doesnt improve very much, but at least its a bit better.

how do you work with layers?

I myself have a very strict philosophy: I draw everything in default layer0 and never change the active layer. when I am finished creating an element (for example a window frame), pack it into a group or component. and not until that moment I start moving them into different layers to organise my model.
that has one simple reason (that I had to find out with a lot of trial and error). if you draw lines in different layers and accidentally draw the lines of the roof in the wall-layer. afterwards create a component and move it into the roof layer. if you now hide layer roof, the appropriate piece of structure will become invisible. but if you now hide the wall-layer, your roof will vanish again (the roof-component may still be visible, the lines within the component however are hidden).

what are your habits of working with layers? and how good do they work for you?
it would be really interesting to hear different approaches of organising a drawing.

I am definitely an obsessive one.

well, it changes, when I approach a deadline and have to get some nice pictures as quick as possible. then my accuracy suffers gravely. but afterwards, normally on frieday afternoons, I am cleaning up everything, structuring the layers anew, purging unused components and colours, properly naming scenes, layers, colours, components (and - if I get really obsessed - hundrets of groups ).

I think on long term it is absolutely necessary to be a bit obsessive (accurate). otherwise you will spend at least as much time dealing with problems that arise from an imprecise model

hi remus,

I like to model very detailed too. but it can as easily be a negative aspect as well.

for example I created a building with profiled sheeting on the roof. and instead of just using a texture (I wanted to keep a black and white style) I modeled the profile in 3D. if you now create a perspective view, there are far too many edges - the result is a black roof

I havent found a solution for that problem yet. hiding all (or some) edges doesnt help either, because the roof then doesnt fit to the grade of detail of the model anymore.
If you have any idea how to evade the "blackening" of distant geometry, it would be really great.

sorry Mike. I have no idea.
the only time I used a mac i was desperately trying to open the cd-drive until someone showed me, that you have your own key on the keyboard for it

that is indeed an interesting suggestion. I think I will try it on my next model.

I have been working on that specific model for some weeks though (it is used to analyze different options and test their visual impact on the whole building) and am past the 50 layers even now. but with your method I could next time empty layers and reuse them instead of deleting unwanted ones (but I am afraid, I will not be disciplined enough ).

nevertheless I would love a fuction, where you for example select all these scenes, where you want a specific layer to be invisible. then click on the layer's hide button with the right mouse button and choose from a context menu "hide for selected scenes". we would of course have to test, if such an option works for other things, like shadow settings, as well (with always using the right mouse button instead of the left).

hi Jean Lemire,

nice trick with the scenes. i didnt use them for drawing purposes yet.

I know this is not what you wanted to show us here. but I figured out a nice way to draw the form (chair leg?) you created in your tutorial in another way...

here is the tutorial.

chair_leg.skp

ah, it is that one. I read about such a thing that influences exported animations. so it is the same with images.

then lets hope that Google is mighty enough to solve this problem, because it can be really nasty, if you have got a nice perspective and cant use it because of the shadows.

hello there,

does anybody know the problem of partially inverted shadows. in some quite complicated models SketchUp renders not correctly and you will find bars across the picture, where light is dark and dark is light - inverted shadows. it is terribly annoying and I have now idea how to fix it.

it seems to me, that it only happens, if you (camera position) are standing within a shadow cast by an element in the model. unfortunately sometimes the really interesting perspectives are exactly at these places.
is this problem a bug we have to live with ore are there any settings to be adjusted to get rid of it?

doesnt solve my problem either, because I have a different combination of visible layers in every scene. for example:

                        scene1 = layer1, layer2
                        scene2 = layer1, layer3

now I create layer3 for a another option of my model. so the scene will be:

                        scene3 = layer1, layer4

but when I created layer4 it automatically shows up in scene1 and scene2 - I just want it to be visible in scene3 though. now I have to change and update the first two scenes seperately. Ctrl + Select or Shift + Select will not help me there, because if I update the layer visibility of several scenes at once, everyone of those scenes shows exactly the same set of layers. and that is not what I want.

hey Boofredlay,
could you upload the file for me? I would really much like to experiment with it (I wasnt able to create a model that shows this strange effect yet).

thanks Jean. this is a quick way to update multiple scenes at once (and quite a useful think to remember for my future work).

in that specific case I want every scene to show a different set of layers though (scene 1 - layer 1, scene 2 - layer to, etc).
so unfortunately it doesnt help me to set all scenes to one layer set. what I need, is the possibility to select specific scenes and change just one atribute in all of them at once (for example visibility of layer 5) without overwriting all the remaining layer visibilities (for they are different in each scene).

hello everybody,

I am currently working at quite a big model with many different options for construction elements. I use scenes with the same camera view and different layer sets to compare the various designs.

but if I now create another layer, with a fifth option for example, I want it to be hidden in the views of the previous four options. unfortunately the newly created layer is visible in every scene by default. my only chance is to visit each scene, uncheck the fifth layer and update it.

Is there an easier way to do this; for example to change one atribute (like the visibility of one layer) in several scenes at a time?

it would be great, if you knew a faster way - for it would safe me a lot of time.

I would be totally happy, if the bounding boxes of groups would allign to the actual axes.
if you change your axes (for example to fit a house into an existing survey model and still be able to refer to the house's axes), SketchUp still alignes the bounding boxes of new groups to the original axes.
that can drive you mad (and made me cheat with the compass orientation instead of rotating the building to its correct orientation).

but your idea sounds interesting too.

absolutely right!

my models would be much more readable, if one could enter the group's name immediately, without arkwardly using the mouse for the rename command.
it would be helpful too, if you could access the name field by twice clicking (not double clicking) the name of the group in the outliner - like it is possible in the layer edditor...

thanks a lot. I didnt know how to use the "Expand" command.
doesnt really help me though, because I am permanently changing the model, thus adding and deleting components every other minute.

but the expand-function is definitely something that needs to show up in SketchUp 7 for components created within the current file - preferably with a sort of tree structure, that enables you to easily retrace the parented component. of course thats something close to an outliner then. well, I hope they will think about that and surprise us with something increddibly useful...

hello everybody,

I am currently working on a quite complicated model of a shopping centre. to keep the file small and the model simple I am trying to use as many components as possible (instead of groups). As a result the "in model" section of the components window looks like a battlefield - impossible to keep an overview of this huge amount of components.

so my question is: is it possible, to assort components in the "in model" section, in a subfolder structure for example? or is this something I should suggest to the programmers for SU 7?