Edit Part
The properties of a Part or of a group of Parts can be edited from the Parts List.
To edit the properties of a Part, click on the pencil symbol in the Parts List. If you select a single Part, the Part Properties Window will open, allowing you to edit a single part or a group of identical parts.
If a down arrow is the first icon after the description, multiple Parts are grouped together, because the Options setting Group Similar Parts is enabled. In that case, you will only be able to edit their common attributes. Click on the arrow to unfold the group and select each Part individually.
If you selected a group of Parts spread over several lines, only their common attributes can be changed.
Part Properties
The Part Properties window contains five tabs:
Material Specific Tab (Dimensional, Sheet Goods, ...)
Some tabs will only appear if a material has be assigned to the part.
OpenCutList can highlight the part in your model.
General
Within this tab, you may change the Name and Description of the component, associate it with a Material, and add or remove Tags.
Material Specific Tab
Depending on the type of material of the part, this tab will display the configuration options.
Axes
OpenCutList shows you how it interprets the local SketchUp axis (length is red, width is green and blue is thickness) of the Part. You may reorder the dimensions. At the same time, you may ask OpenCutList to change the location of the axes origin and to lock the orientation (in case you have selected Automatic orientation in the Options).
All axes operations are actual SketchUp operations, so they directly affect the local axes of your component.
When drawing your components, you may ignore the axes and then set them here.
If a part has been flipped along one of its axis with respect to the component definition, an icon will indicate that this part is mirrored.
Oversizes
The dimensions of your components are usually finished dimensions. A length and width oversize, and even a thickness oversize for solid wood, can be applied to all parts via the Material configuration. Note, however, that there are situations where one would like to make a single part slightly larger because it will be adjusted when the part will be installed (filler strip, cover panel, ...).
Info
Instances of components in SketchUp with the same thickness and the same material become parts in OpenCutList.
When creating a component with Make Component..., you may:
give the component definition a name by replacing the default text (usually Component#1), or leave the default identification.
set the component axes or rely on the default Sketchup behavior, which sets the component axes parallel to the model axes. The global option of the extension, Automatic orientation of parts, will then interpret the 3 dimensions of a part such that the largest dimension is length and the smallest dimension is thickness, the third dimension becoming width.
It is important to correctly set the component axes to convey the desired grain direction to OpenCutList. With the default Sketchup behaviour, you may get unexpected results, as in the case of a short but wide part.
These parameters may be changed at a later time, but OpenCutList will use them to describe the part in the Parts List and to retrieve its dimensions.
Description
A component may be reused several times in a model, therefore you can label the instance. This label will also appear in the Parts List.
The Bounding Box
Every component has an enclosing bounding box defined by the extent of the object along the component axes.
The length of this box is represented along the red axis, the width along the green and the thickness along the blue axis. If the components axes are set incorrectly, this may lead to a wrong interpretation of the dimensions of the component.
If you are not familiar with the concept of bounding box, checkout this video SketchUp Skill Builder: Group axis and bounding box.
Working with Scaled Components
OpenCutList also takes into account scaling of components. Although the description of the parts will be the same, they will appear on different lines of the Parts List.
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