Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual

Using the Make Unique Command

With the help of components and arrays, the front yard's fence is beginning to take shape. The fence boards look like fence board, but they're kind of floating in mid-air, not attached to anything. In the real world, fences have posts. These thicker pieces of lumber support the rest of the structure. You can turn one of your pickets into a fence post, but before you do that, you need to let SketchUp know that you only want to make changes to one fence board. You do that by using the Make Unique command.

Here's how you do it:

1. With Select (space bar), right-click the fence post next to the driveway. From the shortcut menu (Figure 5-19) choose Make Unique.

   After you choose Make Unique, nothing much appears to change, but rest assured, it has.

   

   Figure 5-19. You can separate one component from the pack with the Make Unique command. Just right-click the component and choose Make Unique from the shortcut menu.

2. Double-click the fence board.

   The fence board component opens for editing. That's right, the fence board is still a component.

3. Use Push/Pull to pull the face about 5 more inches.

   You want to turn this board into a 6 x 6-inch post. You can type 5 if you want to do it accurately, or you can eyeball it. The Push/Pull changes only affect the selected fence board.

4. Use the Line (L) tool to draw a line separating the picket's point from the rest of the board.

   The Line tool ...