Sketchup Entity Info

[Marietta Bleasdale]

HiI am 2 days short of my trial on Sketchup pro and was going well.

However I have lost access to tag display and entity info tables in all current drawings. Even in a new drawing I have no access or visibility?

Thanks Mark

This article orients you to creating 3D models in the SketchUp for Web interface. Find out how to create a new model, changes its units of measure, and geolocate it. You also find a brief intro to SketchUp for Web tools and panels and references to articles that explain how to use them.

To see details about an entity in your model, select it and click the Entity Info icon. As shown in the following figure, the Entity Info panel that appears shows details such as the type, instance, definition, layer, shadow settings, and visibility setting.

As you create a 3D model in SketchUp for Web, the tools look a little different but work just as they do in SketchUp Pro. In the SketchUp for Web interface, you find the toolbar of tools on the left. Some tools display a little arrow, which means that clicking the tool displays a flyout menu of several related tools, as shown in the following figure.

With SketchUp for Web, you can insert image files (PNG or JPG) or a SketchUp (SKP) file. When you insert an image file, you can insert it as an image or a material. When you insert a SketchUp model, the model becomes a component within your currently open model.

On the right side of the SketchUp for Web interface are icons that open a tray of panels. Click an icon to open the tray, and click any panel name to toggle it open or closed. The following table points you to a Help Center article that explains more about each panel.

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The Entity Info dialogue box can be found by either clicking on Window in the menu at the top of the screen or right clicking on any entity in your model and selecting Entity Info. Entity info does just like the title describes in that it tells some information

Entity Info tells you what layer your entity is on and allows you to change it. It also allows you to change your component name if you have a component selected. For us woodworkers it also shows the volume of your selected items. If you divide this number by 144 you will get a board feet value.

SketchUp models geometry based on an edge. Edges make up any shape or surface. The next position on the basic SketchUp entities list is a circle. In this text, you can learn all the details that have something to do with arcs and circles.

SketchUp uses Polygonal Modeling to approximate their surfaces. This means a set of edges describes every surface. The same situation is with circles, so each of them consists bunch of edges. The most practical information is that you need to decide.

In that case, your model will be "light" and it will optimize performance. You can also set big values of segments to make the model realistic but work slower. It's your choice and you need to know about that decision to make at the beginning of the design process.

If you need to find in the SketchUp circle circumference read this paragraph. This is possible only in newer SketchUp versions. If you work in SketchUp 2017 Make, you will not find this information. To get the circle circumference, open the Entity Info tray window. Next, select a circle that you would like to check.

However BE AWARE that if you explode a circle and select all those edges you will see summary of edges length. It means that depending on the circle segments amount the length of all those edges will be different!

There is an easy way to change the circle diameter and its sides (segments). Need to open the Entity Info window, as described above, and you can change the radius or segments as you need. When you change the numeric value in the window and press enter, the circle is redrawn with a new radius:

Basic functionalities work the same as circle drawing. But there is an extra parameter which is an arc angle and a start point. After you set the arc center point and its start point you need to show an arc angle as well. Same as before you can use also numeric keys to set precise values.

The difference between those two geometric entities is that a Circle is a full Arc with a 360 angle. When you open the Entity Info tray window you can see the proper entity type. The same as with the circle you can check and change basic parameters like radius and segment amount.

Any circle or arc can be transformed into a group of edges. For example, if you select circle edge and open the context menu you find there Explode function. When you explode a circle shape every segment of the circle is a separate edge.

If you select a few edges that are connected to each other you can use the context menu: Weld function. As a result, you get a Curve. In other words, the curve geometry is a group of connected edges that are not a full circle or an arc.

If you need to create an arc between two edges you can use SketchUp native tools for that. Because you read this article you know all the needed information to draw a smooth arc on the corner of edges. But, there is a simple plugin that will help you a lot with that. Check this SketchUp round edges extension and read more about how to round edges in SketchUp.

To draw an arc between edges do a few simple steps:

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