0:01 As you recall from our earlier investigation of our floorplan, some repeating objects were drawn as blocks and others were not that should have been.
0:12 For example, the columns definitely should be blocks as they appear to be all the same.
0:18 Also, all of the windows and doors should be blocks as well.
0:23 Let’s take a minute to do a refresher on how blocks work once in SketchUp in order to ensure we’ve set them up properly in here CAD.
0:33 I’m going to pop back into the SketchUp file with the non-cleaned up floorplan we imported earlier.
0:40 Then, going into the linework group, I’ll select a few different doors and try to find one that was drawn as a block...which means it is now a component in SketchUp.
0:52 I can tell by selecting this one that it’s a component by checking the ‘Entity Info’ panel where it says it is a component.
1:00 It will also tell me how many more instances of that component are in the model.
1:07 As you can see, in addition to the doors not all being blocks, not all the blocks or components, are the same definition.
1:16 This causes a problem because if I were to place a 3D door inside of the door block, only one or a few would update, not all of them.
1:27 Forcing me to do them all individually and thus taking up more time.
1:32 Especially if I have to change one of the doors later.
1:36 Especially if I have to change one of the doors later.
1:36 So I can’t stress this point enough.
1:39 Take the time to replace loose linework with blocks and ensure you’re using the same block for all of the same type of door.
1:48 For our example, I’ve simplified things and used the same door everywhere.
1:54 Same thing is true for the windows.
1:56 I’ve gone ahead and used the same window component for all of them so that when I get into SketchUp, I can be confident that once I add my 3D geometry to the block, it will apply to all of them.
2:09 Let’s also touch on block and layer standards real quick before moving on.
2:14 Like SketchUp, it’s good practice to have all your loose linework on ‘Layer 0’...then create your block...and assign the block itself to the proper layer.
2:31 For example, if you move a block from one layer...
2:38 to another layer with a different color and it stays the same color, that’s usually a red flag that the internal linework is on a different layer other than '0'.
2:50 So keep an eye out for that as you draft, or in our case, re-draft the blocks within our floorplan.
3:01 Lastly, you might find yourself with some of these complex or dynamic blocks that have text tags and multiple layers embedded into it.
3:13 If that’s the case, since SketchUp doesn’t read text and we want to reduce our layer count and geometry count up front, it may be worth the effort to explode the block…
3:26 delete any unnecessary tags or other data…then assign the linework to 'Layer 0'…and then create a nice new simple block definition.