sketchup question on planning for scenes/layers

[mound]

So I do all my drawing in Layer0, making unique components out of every "thing" that one might construe as a chunk of wood. I have a good feel for and am working well with components and groups.

But when the design is "done" and you start breaking out "scenes" with layers (ie. to put together the pages of printed drawings to work from) it seems you have to start making unique and exploded copies of things from the main drawing..  which is all fine and good until you have a design change idea - maybe a tweak to a component..  Then what? Throw away all the scenes and start over? What's a strategy to allow for that while still allowing the breaking apart and making unique of components in various scenes & layers?? or am I approaching it wrong?

[Bob Lang]

So I do all my drawing in Layer0, making unique components out of every "thing" that one might construe as a chunk of wood. I have a good feel for and am working well with components and groups.

But when the design is "done" and you start breaking out "scenes" with layers (ie. to put together the pages of printed drawings to work from) it seems you have to start making unique and exploded copies of things from the main drawing..  which is all fine and good until you have a design change idea - maybe a tweak to a component..  Then what? Throw away all the scenes and start over? What's a strategy to allow for that while still allowing the breaking apart and making unique of components in various scenes & layers?? or am I approaching it wrong?

I tend to "Hide" objects in a given scene rather than work with layers. "Hidden Geometry" is one of the properties saved with a scene update, and this works well for showing something in one scene but not in another.
In a component, the geometry within the component definition can be on one layer (should always be Layer 0) and the component itself can be on another layer. If you assign a selected component to a layer through the Entity Info window, the layer assignment should only affect that instance of the component. You don't need to explode or edit the component to move it to another layer. In fact, if you do it that way you're asking for trouble.

Here are a couple of posts from my blog that go into excruciating detail on the subject:

https://readwatchdo.com/2013/11/organize...omponents/

https://readwatchdo.com/2013/11/organize...es-layers/

for what it's worth, I finish the model before I worry about showing the results in printed form and I copy parts of or all of the model off into empty space to show a detail or an aspect of the project.

[mound]

I tend to "Hide" objects in a given scene rather than work with layers. "Hidden Geometry" is one of the properties saved with a scene update, and this works well for showing something in one scene but not in another.
In a component, the geometry within the component definition can be on one layer (should always be Layer 0) and the component itself can be on another layer. If you assign a selected component to a layer through the Entity Info window, the layer assignment should only affect that instance of the component. You don't need to explode or edit the component to move it to another layer. In fact, if you do it that way you're asking for trouble.

Here are a couple of posts from my blog that go into excruciating detail on the subject:

https://readwatchdo.com/2013/11/organize...omponents/

https://readwatchdo.com/2013/11/organize...es-layers/

for what it's worth, I finish the model before I worry about showing the results in printed form and I copy parts of or all of the model off into empty space to show a detail or an aspect of the project.

wow great stuff! thanks. I'll have to digest this.

edit: I think "In a component, the geometry within the component definition can be on one layer (should always be Layer 0) and the component itself can be on another layer." is the key thing I was missing! Didn't think to separate the geometry itself from the component (which is really a wrapper for the geometry)