Replies

1. 
   daverichards | Mar 06, 2012 06:06am | #1

   Den, it sounds to me as if one of two things has happened. Most likely, you made the first leg a component. Then you opened the component for editing, selected all of the geometry and copied it to the other three positions. This results in all four legs being loose geometry wrapped in one component. Not what you want. The fix would be to open the large component for editing, delete all but the original leg, close the component by clicking out in space with Select, and then copy the leg while its blue bounding box is displayed using the Move/Copy operation. Basically you're just cleaning up the component.

   The other way to get what you are seeing is to select all four leg components and make a component or group of them. First, to find out if that's the issue, open the large component for editing and then, with the Select tool, click on one of the legs. Does it also have a blue bounding box? If so, simply close the big component you you aren't in the Edit mode. Right click on the big component and choose Explde from the Context menu.

   I see variations on the first thing quite often with new users of the program. With a little practice, it goes away, though. The second thing can, in some case, be useful. It is referred to as nesting and is a strategy for creating sub-assemblies.

   -Dave 

1. 
   denj | Mar 06, 2012 10:11pm | #2

   Dave, thanks for the explanation to my problem.  I have   corrected it and now will be able to procede with the table exercise.  Sketchup is neat to learn with help of Tim's book but can be frustrating to the beginer when he gets hungup and can't figure out why.

   Thanks again.

   DenJ

2. 
   daverichards | Mar 07, 2012 09:49am | #3

   Den, I'm glad that helped. 

   I understand the frustration when you hit a bump in the road. Sometimes with any software I find it can be difficult to get past a bump if you can't specifically define the bump. How do you find a solution when you don't really know what the problem is? Often the solution to one problem is also the solution to another. For example, in SketchUp, drawing a reeded table leg is very similar to drawing a shell carving but it might not seem obvious at first. Dovetails and dentil molding are much the same as well. I doubt most folks wanting to draw dentil molding would think to search for how to draw dovetails, though.

   I've found the 'live' instruction I do via GoToMeeting to be handy because I can tailor a training session to suit the student(s) and use something they want to draw as the subject of the lessons.

   -Dave

1. 
   denj | Mar 08, 2012 04:24pm | #4

   Dave, I guess I am not aware of such a thing as your "live"  training sessions.  Where do I go to learn more?

   Den

1. 
   daverichards | Mar 09, 2012 09:12am | #5

   Den, you could drop me an e-mail at drkr4109atgmaildotcom and I can tell you about it.

   -dave