Hi David,
My sincere apologies for the delay in getting back to this. I got tied up with family stuff last night and work today.
ScotlandtheDave wrote:Thats good to know that designing on the model isn't a horrible no-no. I certainly found it much easier to design on the model itself than create a component and try to get it oriented correctly. That was made a bit easier by figuring out the various pointer colours when clicking on various parts of the model to move it etc. The thing that really made it a bit easier was the discovery of the rotated rectangle feature as i have the model on a slightly dodgy axis, so that made creating square shapes a breeze relative to the rest of the model. the major downside that i found last night was that if you design on plan on a dodgy axis, flipping components has an odd effect on the piece
Yes, I generally recommend modeling the parts
in situ as much as possible. That way you can use what you've already drawn as references for what you're drawing next. For example, you could set out the bottom plates for the walls to define the perimeter of the shed and the place the studs on top. You might copy the bottom plates up for the top plates and let the space between determine the height of the studs. And you don't have to calculate the length. Place the top of the top plate at the full height of the wall and make the studs fit.
The Rotated Rectangle tool can be useful for drawing the parts as you've found. You could rotate the model axes although this requires caution and you could also draw the shed on axis and rotate it afterward. Actually, I would be most likely to do the last thing. I'd wait to add the pavers and the grass until after the shed is drawn. Then I'd rotate the entire shed as needed.
Drawing the rectangles off axis would still require adjusting the axis orientation at some point but it isn't terribly difficult.
For flipping components, which is extremely valuable, the orientation of both the component and model axes is very important so you need to have a good handle on that. (Four candles.
)
ScotlandtheDave wrote:Thanks also for the explanation on the bounding boxes, i didn't know why this happened, nor why all the textures were the same regardless of application. all good to know! Also, i'd been measuring all the faces of the components and naming them in the model, but it sounds like components will remove that effort.
I think you'll find it does make things easier working with components. As for materials, you should definitely apply them to the faces instead of the wrappers so you'll have control over their appearance and for those materials that are directional, you'll be able to adjust the materials to suit.
ScotlandtheDave wrote:I have a reasonably powerful laptop (core i7 and 8Gm RAM with 3Gb dedicated card) but i did wonder why it was toiling a bit at times, so texture mapping will explain it. Again, something that makes perfect sense in hindsight but the human brain wants OSB to look like OSB
You may notice when orbiting, panning or zooming that your model displays as wireframe if you've got textures and especially shadows turned on. It's SketchUp's way of keeping the navigation speed up by unloading the graphics card a little. Otherwise the graphics card has to continually rewrite the textures as you orbit. If the card can't pass the data to the display fast enough, it'll stop. By working in Monochrome, you'll keep the loading down on the graphics card while still seeing shading for a 3D appearance. It'll also help you keep on top of reversed faces. I don't remember any in your model but you do want to correct them when they appear.
ScotlandtheDave wrote:I was going to do a ground up redesign of this model, partly because i'd like to use Sketchup components properly and because the design is now a uniform rectangle so doesn't have to "fit" a particular space. I assume its a simple case of designing the components in the correcnt orientation them moving the complete model into its final position if need be? i.e. i could design the shed itself then place it within the ladscape, rather than try and design the shed on the landscape?
Thanks again for the feedback dave, Cheers
You've probably already restarted the model so this is a little late but yes, it's probably easier to start from scratch than to fix the old model. You can do some things differently like using components, getting axes oriented correctly and also, you might consider using layers.
Layers are different in SketchUp compared to other programs that have them. In SketchUp, layers have one use and that is controlling the visibility of entities. There is Hide which you already found but that's not good for more than temporarily getting things out of the way.
There are a a few basic rules for layers in SketchUp. Follow them and you won't get hurt.
Actually, if you follow them, you'll save yourself a lot of headaches and hair pulling.
Rule number one: Always leave Layer 0 active.
Rule number two: Always draw on Layer 0 and leave all edges and faces on that layer.
Rule number three: Only make layer associations for components/groups but leave all edges and faces within the component/group wrappers on Layer 0.
Rule number four: See rule number one.
Think about how you want to organize your model and make layers to suit. In this case you might make layers for the roof, landscape, walls, windows, doors, etc. If you want to show the shed with the roof off, you can turn off the roof layer. Or you might want to show the floor without the walls and windows.
Generally I draw the entire model first and create layers afterward. I get the model complete and then I create a scene showing the entire model. After that I create the layers and I turn their visibility off. then I assign components to layers. When I do, they clear the drawing space. When I have a blank screen I know I've assigned all of the components to layers. then just click the scene tab to make the model visible again. After that you can create scenes to show the model from different angles and with different layers turned on.
Alright. That's probably too much for now but I'll leave it. Have a good time with your shed.
Dave