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As your skills in SketchUp progress so does your ability to model more complex objects with many parts obscured from view. At first you may find yourself moving these objects out of the way to be able to work on the obscured objects. Later you may discover hiding geometry and Groups and Components, to unhide those again at a later stage. The Layers panel and the ability to turn Layers off and on to hide and show objects respectively, is another way of working with obscured objects.
There are two useful options in the Components section of the Model Info panel. The Model Info panel is available from the menu by selecting Window > Model Info.
This tutorial examines how these options make modeling easier when certain objects are obscuring others and the use of shortcuts combined with these options.
Displayed on the right is a simple table model. The model consists of four legs, a table top and two reinforcement pieces.
Both the legs and reinforcement pieces are Components, the table top is a Group.
At this point the table has been modeled with some basic measurements in mind. It is time to add some detail to the table.
When one of the leg Components is opened the rest of the model fades somewhat into the background, depending on the fade slider setting (darker or lighter) as show on the right.
As we want to add detail to the top of the table leg Component we should check the 'Hide rest of model' tick box. Immediately the rest of the model is hidden from view and adding detail to the table leg Components is made easy without the table top obscuring the table legs.
Like hiding the entire model obscuring the view of your Component, other Components belonging to the same Component Instance may also obscure the view.
Displayed on the right is a simple model of a garden fence. The model consists of several vertical timber pieces which are Components and two horizontal reinforcement pieces which are other Components.
When one of the vertical timber piece Components is opened the rest of the model fades into the background.
Checking the 'Hide rest of model' tick box hides the other Component Instances of the horizontal reinforcement piece. However, the other Component Instances of the vertical timber piece which we are editing are also obscuring its view.
Checking 'Hide similar components' tick box hides the other Component Instances making editing this Instance easier.
The use of these functions is pretty straight forward. However, these functions become your most used ones when they are combined with shortcuts. Setting up some quick access shortcuts for these functions can save you tremendous amounts of time, as you hide and show parts of your model as you need to have access to them. An example of a shortcut which works quickly is the Shift key combined with a number, for example Shift+2 for hiding the rest of the model and Shift+3 for hiding similar Components. Using your left hand thumb for the Shift key and pointing finger for the numbers, hiding and showing items become a one second operation.