I’ve discovered it’s easier to lay out a molecule with scaffolding as shown. The scaffolding is part of a component and can be deleted with a couple mouse clicks when it’s time to display the molecule. If you want to then work on it some more, the scaffolding can be restored with a couple more mouse clicks. I’ll show how to do this in a later blog entry.
Scaffolding is necessary because it is otherwise very difficult in Sketchup to connect objects internally without flipping back and forth between regular and x-ray views. And cylinders just do not like to be rotated, so you have to connect them to a flat surface, which when rotated will rotate the connecting cylinder as well.
I’m sure there’s an easier way to do this, but at least this is getting there.
Engineer Zero 