SketchUp Training Series: Layers

SketchUp has a system of layers that are very helpful in organizing your model however the way that layers work in Sketchup is different from other software you may use so it's important to understand the distinctions that make Sketchup different in many other programs you put various entities on different layers and when you turn that layer off you also turn off the ability to edit any geometry on that layer this is not true of Sketchup you see sketchup's layering system only controls the visibility of the geometry not the geometry itself have a look at this example we have a simple house with layers for the base walls and roof of the house we can toggle those layers on and off to hide the geometry if we wanted to work on the roof alone we could hide the other layers make adjustments to the roof then perhaps turn the roof off toggle the base layer on and extend it outward here is the problem when we turn all the layers back on you can see that although the walls layer was off the walls have been badly altered because they were still connected to the other geometry as we said before this behavior is not typical of most software and unless you know how to properly use layers in Sketchup this could be very frustrating so here is the proper way to use layers and to organize your model make this your absolute rule to follow always use groups and components as the primary way to organize and separate geometry never put any geometry onto a layer without first making it a group or component then put that group inside the layer this also means you should always keep layer zero is the active layer for drawing any geometry group geometry as you need and put those groups into layers in our house example we need to make separate groups of the base walls and roof first then put those groups into layers you can see by making them groups first when we toggle layers off and make changes they don't affect the other layers because that geometry is isolated inside the group now that you understand how to best use layers let's look at the layers dialog box and options for working with layers find the layers dialog box in the window menu you can add new layers or select layers and delete them double-click on a layer name to rename it the layers are arranged alphabetically by visibility or by color and you can choose which layer is active we recommend always making sure layer zero is the active layer after adding or deleting layers each layer is automatically colored so you can view your model by its layer colors click on this flyout arrow and toggle color by layer to view your model by its layers toggle it off again in the same way also in this flyout menu is the option to perjure layers this will delete any empty layers this is especially useful when you have imported a cat file with many layers and quickly want to get rid of any extra layers after creating several layers you can assign items to layers in different ways but the method depends on whether you're using a Mac or Windows PC for both platforms you can use the entity info dialog box which can be found under the window menu this gives you information on any entity you select and you can also choose a layer for those entities as well select a group and select a layer for it to be on select another group and assign it to a different layer on a Windows PC you can also add a layers toolbar go to the View menu then toolbars and open the layers toolbar leave this toolbar free-floating or dog it to a convenient place for your work now select entities in your model and pull down the toolbar menu to assign a layer find what works best for you the layers toolbar or the entity info box however be aware that if nothing is selected and you select a new layer in the layers toolbar you are making that layer the active layer as we've discussed we recommend always keeping layers 0 the active layer so just be sure to have entities selected before selecting new layers in the toolbar on a Mac the layers toolbar works a little differently go to the View menu then choose customize toolbar drag the layers item to the toolbar and hit enter this option allows you to set the active layer but does not change the assign layer of an item to change the assign layer use the entity info dialog box you can delete layers that have content inside of them but Sketchup will ask you what to do with the content you can move the content to the default layer which is layer 0 move it to another active layer or completely delete the content one tip is when working with CAD files those files often come in with many layers if you'd like to condense the layers you could select and delete multiple layers moving all that geometry at once to a new layer finally some tips for other uses of layers when working on large models you can group various entities together and put them on layers to help you speed up the performance of Sketchup for example if we had many trees in the model that we're slowing Sketchup down we could put those on a layer and turn them off Sketchup will run much faster without needing to display those trees you can also combine layers with scenes to toggle layers on and off layers are one of the attributes that can be saved in a scene so you could toggle various layers on and off and save those settings so you can control the layers through the scene tabs this is often helpful when working on a complex model or creating a presentation to quickly move through various options view the video or documentation on scenes for more information you

Channel: SketchUp

Views: 432,716

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Keywords: SketchUp, 3D modeling, Trimble Navigation (Business Operation), Google, layers, training, tutorial

Id: oCz1aC99txo

Length: 7min 39sec (459 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 19 2014