Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual

Sharing Components

Once you've create a component (dynamic or otherwise), you may want to share it with the whole wide world. Just think of the glory that will accrue to you as a SketchUp designer. Your path to fame is to upload your model to the 3D Warehouse. When you do so, you're giving Google permission to share the component with everyone and, sadly, you're not going to get paid. Not even a few shares of Google stock. Still your friends and colleagues will admire your skills as a SketchUp artist, and hey, you've used other designers' models from the 3D Warehouse, haven't you?

Purge Before Saving

Before you share your masterpieces with other SketchUp artists, it's best to get all the extra stuff out of the file. So if you're sharing the bench used in the previous exercises, you get rid of all the entities in the model that aren't related to the bench. Perhaps you added some trees or even a few extra lines as you were working. If that's the case, just select them and press Delete. Once the modeling window is cleaned up, here's a checklist of some other steps to make you component document lean and mean:

• Open the Components window (Window → Components), and click the In Model button. Then click the Details button and choose Purge Unused. This removes any components such as the model Sang from the document. Make sure to purge components before you purge materials. Otherwise you may end up with unneeded materials in your document.

• Open the Materials window (Window → Materials), and ...