Hey guys, it's Aaron. We've been looking at live components recently, they're the...
as of right now, as of this recording, the new release from Sketchup labs.
And I just thought it would be cool to look a little bit into how
live components behave once you actually get them into a model because they are components,
kind of, so they kind of work the way components do but not completely, so that's why I figure we
should take a look at it. If it's that hard to describe exactly what it is then it's worth a
video right? So, let's take a look at using live components inside your model right now. All right,
so I have a model and I got two things in here, I got Sumele and I have a live component that I
downloaded. So, the first thing I want to look at before I even I mean, well here let me prove to
you what this is because one thing you should keep an eye on is if I click on Sumele over
here it tells me in my entity info that this is currently a component. This one right here if I
click on the toilet it does tell me it is a live component and what the name of the definition is.
If you don't already do it, I do recommend keeping entity info open. It it will, it flickers a little
bit, it will resize based on the thing you have picked, but man so much good information in there:
names, definitions, that kind of thing that is worth keeping open. As well as the
configure button, see right there I can actually configure this. So, here's the first thing about
live components: live components cannot be scaled using the scale tool. Let me show you what
I mean by that. Well, you probably already figure this out, if I hit scale and I hover over Sumele
I can click on her, I get the handles, I can make her whatever size I want. Live components,
if I come over here and lets you know let's let's get off of Sumele and then I'm going
to hit this. When I hover over the toilet, see a little "no" comes up, a little anti-symbol.
No scaling this component, so I can click as many times I want, it's not going to work. If I try
pre-selecting and then hitting scale, it's just going to deselect it. I can't use a traditional
scaling method. Now, that is intentional of course, because what I want to be able to do is
right click configure live component, the configuration menu is going to pop up and I
want to use those tools to reconfigure, rather than using the standard, like scale tool. Now
having said, that if i take this component and I stick it inside of a group for example, so,
I'm going to draw a little line here, I'm going to select both of those. I'm going to right-click
and I'm going to make those into a group. I can come in with scale now and scale those together.
So that bigger container is being scaled. The cool thing is that internally if I come into this group,
this is still a live component, that I can still, configure using my configuration menu,
just like it was before. But, by putting it inside that container and scaling it, I’ve made a larger
version with the same information. So, just a way around it, if you do have a live component
that looks good, but the only thing you have to do is you need to change the size of it,
just throw it in a group and you'll be able to do that. Okay, so get rid of that line. All right the
other thing is, or the next thing, not other, there’s a couple things we got going still.
Is if I make a copy, even though this is called a live component, rather than a standard component,
it is still a component. So, if I look at the definition of these two pieces,
the definition is the same: they're both called the toilet. And, if I select one of them and I bring
up my live component configuration menu and make a change, so say for example I want to push the
cistern up high or something like that, I'm gonna go ahead and change that. And look, both of them
are going to change when I do that, because they're components and because they are connected.
If I want to make this one separate from this one, I do have to right click on it, and I
have to hit make unique. Making it unique doesn't change the fact that it's still a live component,
but it does separate the tie between these two, sever the tie between these two. So,
if I load the configuration menu now, after I’ve hit make unique on the second one, I can edit this
using the same configuration, so I can bring that right back down to zero.
It doesn't change that other one though so, make unique, actually, keeps the live component, but
makes it its own. Okay, so next thing I want to look at is I'm going to make another copy
over here, I'm going to, again, make this one unique and I'm going to right-click and say
detach definition. By detaching definition, I've severed the tie that everything that makes this
a live component is not in this. So, if I click on this one right here, still a live component
still have the configure button, right here, now it's just a component, no configure button. It is
a component. So, if I was to copy this over here and then you know, double click, come in here,
and I don't know, maybe I’ll if I raise the lid or something like that, see the copy does it too. So,
it is working like a regular component, but it doesn't have that live component piece anymore.
So, here we have our original live component, here we have a unique live component,
here we have it broken down into just a component. Let's go one step further,
so these are, if you look at this, as I click between these two, these are the same definition,
so I'm going to grab this one and again, a fourth, or a third time make unique, and once I do that,
I can actually come in here and I can start exploding. So, as I explode, there we go, you can
see now; I have each of my separate pieces, so I could do whatever I want with this thing now. So,
if I wanted to do something like take this lid and raise it up and then grab this piece
and scale that up to the bottom of that, I could do that. I could take my lid here and I could
you know flip that partially open and then grab this piece and do the same thing here.
Basically, at this point, you know, the toilet is my oyster. I can do whatever I want with this
because now it's just a regular SketchUp model. So just a real quick review; here, we have a live
component; here we have a unique live component, separate from the beginning, the first one;
here we have a unique component because we broke it apart from here; and, over here we actually
have a collection of groups, totally broken apart from any componentization of any kind.
So those are the things I think about when I think about using a live component inside of a model.
Like I said live components are awesome, they are amazing, the ability to configure that geometry,
super cool, love the sliders, and the text being I’ll put in there, but
it's not always exactly what you want, and there are changes you might have to make
and these are the kinds of things you're going to think about when you get to that point.
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