scaling a downloaded component

[Beechwood Chip]

I'm reorganizing my garage in sketchup, so I drew the outline of the garage and started downloading models for shelves, garden hose, bicycle, etc. Everything was fine until I downloaded a model of my car (a Subaru Legacy station wagon).  Before anyone gives me grief for keeping my car in my shop, my shop is in my basement, which is larger than my garage.

I found a model of a Subaru Legacy wagon and downloaded it into my drawing.  It was huge!  My entire garage could have fit into the hubcap.  So, I used the scale tool on a corner (to keep all the proportions the same) and tried to shrink it down.  I did that about three times and it was getting smaller; now my entire garage could fit in the luggage area.

So, I measured the length of the rescaled car model (1900") and the length of my actual car (168"), and divided to get 0.097 as the ratio.  Then I used the scale tool again, but this time entered 0,097.  Now I had the opposite problem; my car was tiny!  The wierd thing is that, when I measure it with the tape measure tool, it says it is 168" long.  But it's sitting in the middle of my garage like a Radio Shack remote controlled model.  It's as if the car model is using a different scale factor than the rest of the drawing.  

I guess I could stretch it until it looks right, put part of the idea of using sketchup is to have accurate sizes for things.  And I can't make it 168" long, because sketchup thinks it alr4eady is 168" long!

Any ideas what I did wrong, or what I can do to fix it?

Thanks!

 

[Beechwood Chip]

Quitting Sketchup and then starting it again fixed the problem.

[Bob Lang]

Glad to hear it worked. The problem may have been that the original model was made with metric dimensions instead of inches and somehow they didn't convert when you imported the component.

You can also scale a component to its real size with the Tape Measure tool. Open the component for editing, get the Tape Measure tool and tap the CTRL key. That toggles off the "Create Guides" function and the Tape Measure can now be used to scale. Click on one end of the component, then the opposite end. Before you do anything else, type the desired number and hit Enter. SketchUp will ask if you want to "resize the active group or component". Click yes and it will change size in all three dimensions.