Using components to increase productivity

If you have come to SketchUp without any prior knowledge of 3D CAD, one of the features that will absolutely amaze you is components. When you create a component, you can copy it as many times as you like. These copies are all linked to the original component and are called instances. If you now change something in one of the instances, all the other copies will also change!

Imagine how much difference this single capability will make when modeling your building. The following are some of the benefits that'll allow you to ease your work:

• Identical things only need to be drawn once

• Modifying one tree, roof tile, or fence panel will update all that exist in the model

• Components can be created as crude placeholders first and fleshed out later

• You can save components to an external file and edit the details there without the rest of the scene present

• If you want to replace all the components in a scene, you just reload another component in its place

To organize...