Google - SketchUp

Lesson 42: Layers

The usefulness of layers

As in Photoshop, or any other drawing program, we use the layers in SketchUp to organize the objects in different slides in the drawing.

The difference, however, with the layers of your drawing and the layers in SketchUp is that the layers in SketchUp only relate to what is in it, and not on the order of the layers.

For example, in Photoshop you can place an object in a layer over another layer, by clicking and dragging, you will not be able to do so in SketchUp.

In SketchUp, you can place a single layer to accommodate the different objects.

This object must be a group or a component.

The use of this is that we can can hide or show its contents

This makes it easy when we go through the forest of the trees that are no more there. In other words, in a complex drawing we have quite a lot of components or groups . When you actually go from one to select another, this can sometimes make us feel frustrated.

One solution is to hide the layers where we have nothing to search and display only the layers where we want to make changes.

 

Layer

The first thing we should do is make a layer.

To make a layer, click the “Window” button in the menu bar and choose the “Layers” option in the drop-down menu. This opens the “Layers”.

Layer0 is the default layer in SketchUp and can not be removed.
All that is created by you, can be deleted.
As you can see in the image below, I have already made a number of layers, for example the “Fence” layer, “House”layer and the “Garage”layer.
To create a layer and to hide its content in the drawing, click the checkbox beside the name of the layer, so that it is unchecked.

To view the drawing in the colors of different layers, click the arrow pointing to right at the top right and choose “Color by Layer” in the drop-down menu.

This displays all objects in your drawing, back in the color of the layer. You can also change the color of the layer by clicking on the “Layers” button.

To create a new layer, for example those trees in place, click the icon with the plus sign (+) at the top left of the “Layers”.

This places a new layer in the list. Give it an appropriate name, “Trees” for example. Close the window.

 

Place Object in a layer

Now to add the tree components to this newly created layer, right click a tree, and select “Object Properties” from the drop-down menu.

 

 This will open the object properties window of this component.

Click the downward pointing arrow next to the “Layer” box, and select the layer you just created, that is “Trees”.

Do the same for the second tree, a place it in the “Trees” layer.

When we return to open the “Layers”, we click the checkbox for the layer “Trees”, so that it is unchecked, then the trees are gone.
They are not actually gone, they are just invisible, which means you can not accidentally select them.

If you want it to be visible again then click the checkbox in the “Layers”again.

I think, you have understood.

 

 

 

 

 

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