Basic Placify Concepts

Placify gives you much greater control over components' and groups non-geometry properties than what Sketchup does on its own.

Components and instances are a core Sketchup concept. They are the building blocks of most models. Yet, until no, they have not yet to shown their full potential in Sketchup.

Placify tries to maximise the synergy of components and instances. With Placify, you can quickly achieve things that would otherwise be tedious or impossible in Sketchup.
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Supercharge Your Components

Placify supercharges Sketchup's container transformations. This includes position, scale, and rotation of components and groups. But also other properties, like shell material.

Placify offers powerful batch editing for most core commands.

Placify offers controlling several properties independently of each other. For example, you may change the size of any number of container instances, in place, without affecting position.

Control Component Definitions

Placify offers control over key properties of component definitions. This includes setting the position and orientation of component axes in batch. For example, you can select a hundred different components, filter for unique definitions, then, at the same time, set their axes to e.g. bottom center.

Containers are Components and Groups

Placify uses the general term "Containers". Containers refers to both components and groups. Placify generally works equally well for components and groups.

Placify also has Convert commands. You can easily turn your groups into components, or your components into groups.

All about Axes

Core Placify operations very much depend on container Axes. Every container has its own local origin, where its Axes meet. But only at one point in space. In Placify, this point is quite important.

Both the position and orientation of the Axes in relation to the container geometry matter.

Many core Placify commands, like Place, Spread, Spawn, and other, hinge on the position of container Axes.

Place, Spread, and Spawn will position instances based on the position of its Axes.

In Sketchup, you can set Axes manually. In Placify, you can batch-edit container Axes using the Placify Axes commands.

For example, you can select a hundred different components, filter for unique definitions, then set their Axes to bottom center in one go.

Troubleshooting Axes

Does it happen that some containers do not behave as expected? Probably, their Axes are not where you expect them to be.

To troubleshoot container behavior, try turning on container Axes visibility. Toggle it in Placify's View menu, via the command View Container Axes.

When container Axes are visible, you can see where the Axes are in relation to the container geometry.

Born to Batched

Most Placify commands allow you to edit selections in batch. At least where it should make sense.

Batch edit is quite powerful when working with models with large masses of containers. And when editing large asset libraries.

Computers were born to batch. Let's make them.

Pick-Me Up: Introducing In-Tool Select

Several Placify commands allow you to select containers within the tool itself. This means that you can start the tool with nothing selected, and then select containers while the tool is active. This is called picking. It's just another term for selecting. It also means that when you are done with the first selection, you can clear the selection, and continue operating the tool.

In other words, you do not need to exit the tool, activate Select tool, select containers, and then re-activate the tool. You simply cycle through using the tool, and picking containers in the tool itself.

Note that currently, not all commands that support pick work in exactly the same way.

To try out in-tool picking, add a few hundred trees to a large area. Then try re-spreading and moving them using Spread.

Small but Useful

Placify is not centered on one big tool. Instead, it contains dozens of of smaller tools and commands. They are related thematically.

While many users will find themselves often using core tools like Place, Size, and Spawn Brush, Placify really is not designed around one big tool.

Placify is more like a swiss army knife. It is a a collection of many smaller commands that can be used in combination to achieve powerful results.

Placify is designed to be compact. When you don't need it, it should stay out of the way.

Playful Tools

Placify also aims to be playful. Tools like Spawn Brush, Tint Brush, and Spread are designed to be expressive and fun to use.

Embrace Cross-Extension Niftiness

Placify is also host to various other nifty commands and tools. These may not be directly related to component control, but can be useful for other purposes.

As an example, take a tool like Face Brush. The Placify Face Brush lets you paint a freeform-rim face on the first hit elevation. You can expressivly paint a blob.

The Face Brush automatically groups the produced face. This face can be useful as a control group for other Placify commands, such as Spawn.

Or, you can use the face group to control terrain areas in Placify's sibling extension Holygon Landshape. You can use the face group to paint terrain zones, smoothen the terrain, or use it as a mask.