GUEST ARTICLE

SketchUp components are the collection of generic objects or entities for systematizing and replicating portions of your 3D model. Components can be instanced and reprocessed several times throughout a model.

The Components Browser in Sketchup permits you to insert and arrange components for utilization within your models. If you apply components it will minimize your file sizes efficiently. Components are easily editable and if any changes occur to any of the components every other component will be changed simultaneously.    

Sketchup comes with a handful of samples like doors, window, furniture etc. which can be dragged and dropped into your model. These models have the ability to cut their own openings at the time of placement. Sketchup’s “cut opening components are really helpful for exterior building models.

One can access these models from the components dialog box. Select window components in Sketchup to open the dialog box and then select the Architecture collection from the Navigation drop-down menu.

Components are mingled with some very helpful geometric tools which lead to easy scaling, dividing and aligning of components.

One can create “components” which permits him to place a prearranged figure in several places and making changes in all locations by just editing it once.

As for instance a chair is drawn once and it is being changed into a component, then 6 instances of the component are used to surround a table. Edits to the original "definition" will then propagate across all of its instances. The Component Definition class includes the global entities and settings for each definition.

The best part contains clustering faces and edges into a solitary, transferable entity (a concrete beam for example). Components have the same grouping features with the additional benefit of repeated updating for similar instances. Components are ideal for furniture and other general elements like windows and doors

Elements are ‘grouped’ into bunches of accumulated elements or formed into ‘components’–Groups and components don’t have an effect by ‘stickiness’ instead they are very helpful for organizing the model – Groups are ‘instance’ based elements while components are more like ‘type’.