Google SketchUp® 7 For Dummies®

Chapter 15. Ten SketchUp Traps and Their Workarounds

In This Chapter

• Knowing why faces, colors, and edges aren't behaving right

• Coping with a slow or crashing SketchUp

• Viewing your model the way you want

• Persuading components to budge

• Recovering from Eraser disasters

The bad news is that every single new SketchUp user encounters certain problems, usually in the first couple of hours using the software. I guess you could call these problems growing pains. The good news is that such predictability means that I can write a chapter that anticipates a lot of the bad stuff you'll go through. I can't prevent it from happening, but I can help you make sense of what's going on so you can get on with your life as quickly as possible.

SketchUp Won't Create a Face Where I Want It To

You've dutifully traced all around where you'd like SketchUp to create a face, but nothing's happening. Try checking whether your edges aren't all on the same plane or whether one edge is part of a separate group or component.

To check whether you have a component problem, try hiding groups or components and checking the edges to make sure that they're all in the group or component you think they're in. See Chapter 5 for details.

Note

However, 90 percent of the time when SketchUp doesn't create a face where you think it should, an edge isn't on the plane you think it's on. To check whether your edges are coplanar, draw an edge that cuts diagonally across the area where you want a face to appear. If a face appears now, your ...