Scene and Layer Management

Overview

CabinetSense manages your scene tabs for you automatically, leaving you to concentrate on your design. You can have multiple perspective, plan, and elevation views. You can have as many scenes of the same set of components as you want. You can have some in 3D view while keeping others in 2D (parallel projection). You can keep things private to the scene or share them publicly with all scenes.

As you work on your model, CabinetSense is creating and managing the layers that your components reside on. It will share, or restrict, the visibility of your component on other scenes based on the type of component you are adding. For example:

• adding a dimension will keep it private to the scene that you are on
• adding a component and snapping it to a wall will share that component with all scenes where that wall is visible
  • drawing, using the native SketchUp tools (line, rectangle, circle...) will keep it private to the scene that you are on. But if you then make that artifact into a component.. it is then shared publicly as required with the other scenes.
  • if you toggle an item between private or public, that component will be switched between layers and shared as appropriate with the other scenes.
  • Preview Machining is private to the scene that you are on.

Standard Scenes

CabinetSense installs a SketchUp template for you to use as a starting point of each of your models. It includes 4 scenes:

• Project:
• This scene contains a project component and a material palette component.
• Important: The project scene has a unique feature in that it acts like a normal SketchUp workspace. It ignores all CabinetSense scene and layer rules (see above) and lets you work as if you had turned off that feature completely. Sometimes you need to whip up something and you don't want CabinetSense to inject its rules on it.... using the project scene allows you to do that.
• Everything that is on the project scene is private and is not shared among other scenes.
• Perspective
• All public artifacts from all scenes (except for the project scene of course) are visible by default in this scene and is displayed in 3D mode.
• Plan
• All public artifacts from all scenes are visible by default. The view is 2 dimensional looking down at the top of your model.
• Floor
• As you build your model, you will typically add walls where you will place your cabinets against. If a component is not attached to a wall... as might be the case when you are creating an island, it will be placed on the Floor Scene.
• When you add a component to your model, CabinetSense attempts to attach it to a wall. If it cannot do that, it attaches it to the floor.

Adding a Scene

You can add a new scene to your model by right-clicking on a scene tab and selecting Add.... CabinetSense will present you with the New Scene Dialog:

There are three actions to choose from and CabinetSense will automatically select the one that is most appropriate based on what you have selected in your current scene.

• New: Select this option if you want a blank scene as your starting point.
• Copy Current Scene: Makes a copy of the current scene that is active but only shares the artifacts that are public. CabinetSense will automatically select this option for you if you have no walls selected.
• Copy Selected Walls: Makes a copy of the wall(s) that are selected on your active scene and shares all public artifacts attached to those walls. CabinetSense will automatically select this option if you have one or more walls selected.

An Example

Here is an example of a room with some cabinets.

and here is the view of that same room in the plan scene:

Let's make a new scene to show the wall of cabinets in an elevation view.

a) Select the three walls that have cabinets (walls are shown in red outline) and right-click on the scene tab.

b) accept the default action and give the new scene a name.

c) Click okay. Notice that the new scene only has the 3 walls that were selected in the active scene.

d) press the Face Me toolbar icon

e) press the 3D toolbar icon

This new scene will remain in this perspective and will only show public artifacts attached to the 3 walls selected regardless of how much you add or change on other scenes. Of course any changes on other scenes that affect any of these three walls and the cabinets attached to them will be reflected here.

f) let's make the middle base cabinet private:

Select the middle base cabinet and press the Private toolbar icon The private function is unique in that it makes the cabinet visible on this scene. All other scenes will no longer see this cabinet.

g) select your Perspective scene. This middle cabinet is no longer visible there. It would also be removed from the Plan scene and any other scene that it was previously on.

h) let's toggle the door layer off on the elevation scene. Select that scene and press the Toggle Door toolbar icon. The toggle door layer only affects the scene that you are on. All other scenes are unaffected. This is the standard behavior of layer management... it only affects the scene that you are on. The Private option (explained above) is the only one that behaves opposite to this.

i) look at the perspective scene... it still has its doors.