Leon wrote:
"Steve Turner" wrote in message
...
Leon wrote:

I've been messing with it a lot lately and it IS pretty dang spiffy. But
I'm also a TurboCAD junky and there are a lot of things from that program
that I miss terribly in Sketchup. Some of the decisions it automatically
makes for you can be pretty maddening (merging entities together when they
just happen to be touching, for example) but perhaps with time I'll learn
to work around my preconceived notions of how it *ought* to operate. For
a free program it's pretty damned incredible.


If I understand you correctly, merging, remember to make all pieces a
component first, just like you would when actually building and assembling.
When you make each piece a component they no longer are automatically
"permanently attracted to each other"

Hoping that I am understanding your situation, taking a box for instance,
draw 1 side and give it depth, "push" to the disired thickness. If you need
to rabbet the ends or put a dado in at the bottom do that now. When that
piece is absolutely completed make it in to a component. Now any other line
or part that may be along the same lines of the side can be easily moved or
modified. Copy that component side to make the other side and rotate as
needed. If you make any modifications to one component all copies will also
automatically modify the same "UNLESS" you make that component "Unique" All
components can be modified later if necessary. After you have drawn all the
components, move them together to assemble. As long as all of the pieces
are components you can move and manulipulate as desired.
Remember that you must edit a component to midify it. Simply drawing extra
lines on a component will not make them a part of the component.





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I'd add one thing to that. I have a terrible time with the Rotate tool
and try to avoid it as much as possible. Creating a second side of a box
by Copy/Pasting works well but the associated geometry with the original
side appears on the opposite end or side of the component. Leon proposes
rotating the component. That works, but I've found a simpler method.
Using the Scale tool allows you to scale the component into itself and
create a mirror image.

I set the scaling to -1, and I've got my component "rotated" without
rotating. I"ve done this very successfully with rabbeted/dovetailed
sides/ends and it takes seconds.

There is a video on the SU site that shows how this works.

Tanus