Component Library

Overview

Building your own library of cabinets and cabinet parts will make your work less time-consuming. You can create your library with all of the building standards that your shop uses. You can create libraries of:

• Cabinets
• Cabinet Parts
  • Shelves
  • Partitions
  • Applied ends
• Complex Structures
  • Islands
  • Runs of Cabinets
  • Anything that you can imagine!

Storing a Component in your Library

You can take any component and save it to your library.

In the following example, I took the base Euro cabinet and added a door, drawer, and shelf. I could have also changed any of the properties from any component within the cabinet to make it the way that I build my cabinets.

You also have the option of renaming any of the components to your particular convention. In this example, I will change the name of the cabinet, and the name of the right end. You can change the names of any of the other sub-components as well.

1. Open the Entity Info Window:

1. Drill down to the right cabinet end.

1. There are two properties that you have the option of changing. Which property(s) you change will have an effect on how they are named in your exported part lists. It also will affect what is displayed at the top of the component options dialog.
2. Name: If used, this name will appear in place of the definition name. When placed on a group component (IE. Drawer Component), all of its child components will have the group name + ":"+ child name. Examples of how this could be used is to differentiate top, middle, and bottom drawer parts (Top: Drawer Bottom, Middle: Drawer Bottom...)
3. Important: The name property of the top level component (the cabinet in our example) is reserved for the CabinetSense Part Numbering function. At this level, you should only change the definition name.
4. Definition: When The Name field is empty, this field will be used on your export lists. When you change the definition name, It becomes the SketchUp Definition... which has special significance. SketchUp does not allow different parts to have the same definition name.. you will get an error message if this happens. Still, this is the best way to rename your parts as it becomes your standard name and will always be used unless you again overide it by adding a value to the Name field.
1. Change the name

1. Adding "Right Gable" to the name field will make this the field that is shown on your part lists. SketchUp, however, will still know the internal definition as "Right End". As mentioned above, you could achieve the same result for your parts lists by changing the definition name to "Right Gable". The only requirement is that Sketchup will only permit this if no other component in your model has a definition name of exactly "Right Gable".
1. Change to the top level component.
2. Back up to the model tree until you have the cabinet selected.

1. As previously mentioned, the name field (value 1..27) is used by the CabinetSense part numbering scheme and its value will not have any affect on your library component. You must use the Definition name to change the name of the cabinet.
1. Change the definition name.
2. The definition name will become the file name that SketchUp uses to store your library component. In our case, SketchUp will want to name our file "Base 1D1D.skp".

1. Important: Make sure that you have the correct component selected. If you had the Cabinet's Right End Selected, Sketchup will only save that as the new component... probably not what you would be expecting.
2. Save the component back to your library
3. Right (context) click on the selected component and choose Save As. This will bring up the Save File dialog where you can select where to save your library component.

1. Choose the Library Location

1. Sketchup uses the component location preference to set the default file location for you (see below on how to change this default). Navigate to where you want to keep your component and save your component.
2. Important: You should check the File Name to ensure that it matches the definition name that you gave the component. This name can change if you accidentally hover over a different file name in the Save As dialog.
1. Press Save to store your library component

How To Store a Complex Structure

You can create libraries that consist of complete series of cabinets and parts just as easy as creating a single cabinet.

1. In this example, I will take 3 cabinets:

1. make one component by selecting all three and choosing Make Component.
2. tip: for more information on making components please see Part Shaping

1. Give your complex component a name

1. and save it to your library using the technique described above.

How to Use a complex Component in your model

You can place your complex component just like any other component by dragging it from the component browser window. Before you can resize or export it however, you must first get rid of the outermost component grouping. This will return the structure to it's initial components.... in our example this will be the three cabinets.

Do this by exploding the complex component. Select the the component, right (context) click and choose explode.

Setting your Library File Preference

You can tell Sketchup where you would like to save your library components via the Sketchup Preferences Dialog:

This will become the default location when you save an entry into your library.