Components and Layers

This illustrates how a component can be within a component within a component. These steps can be repeated endlessly and are important to understand; many objects in SketchUp are components constructed from other components. This makes the ability to navigate between component instances very important.

Once you can navigate between them, you can easily edit components within components. 1. Exit the Cube Faces and Cube component instance and return to the general model workspace. 2. Select the Cylinder component, right-click, and select Edit Component (or double-click on the component). Notice that the Cylinder components within the Cube Faces component instance have the same vivid appearance. 3. Push/Pull the top of the Cylinder another 5´. All versions of the Cylinder component will be adjusted (Fig. 3-19). Exit the component instance and return to the general modeling space.

Fig. 3-19: Editing the Cylinder component will edit all similar components, regardless of the instance in which they are located.

In the previous chapter, you were introduced to SketchUp Layers and their importance in organizing geometry within a model. Components and groups can easily be placed on layers. Using layers provides a powerful way to maintain model organization and maintain computer performance; intensive components, such as trees, are easier to control within a model.

Using the previous Cube components, the following exercise demonstrates this technique. 1. From the Window menu, select Layers. Create a new layer called Cubes. 2. Select all component versions of the cube by using the selection arrow and holding down Shift (Add Select). Once all the Cube components are selected, right-click while hovering over one of the cubes and from the context menu, select Entity Info.