Summary

For many projects you may be looking to break the model up into different spaces (zones) so that you can consider space plan layout or just so you can correctly account for variations in space use across a building.

When doing analysis in the web application, you can designate zones for each of your spaces and assign different properties to each. To do this with a model built in SketchUp, you need to describe the boundaries for each of the spaces in the 3D model. 

Key things to know:

• Lines drawn on the floor plate make space boundaries in SketchUp.
• Turn on this zoning by selecting "one zone per room" in the zoning tab
• Walls in SketchUp that make lines on the floor above will make zone boundaries for the floor above so be careful how you draw walls. This can be worked around by putting walls in different layers and hiding them when uploading.

More detail

Sefaira's One Zone per Room zoning strategy considers each unique room in SketchUp as a unique zone for Sefaira analysis.  

Sefaira identifies rooms in SketchUp based on divisions of the floor plate: 

Such divisions can be defined by a simple line, or a by the bottom or top edges of a single-plane interior wall. 

Any wall which intersects a floor plate will create a room because the edge of the wall is defining a room boundary on the floor plate (see image below). This can sometimes lead to unintentional zones being created due to a wall below intersecting the floor. 

Workarounds for known issues

1. Use Layers and Scenes: Place the top line and plane of the interior wall on a separate layer. Do not select the bottom line of the plane which creates the separation on the floor plate. Create two separate scenes in SketchUp (one showing the interior layer and one hiding the interior layer).  This will allow you to quickly turn off and on the interior walls so you could easily switch between a model ready for uploading and one to use for real time analysis with the plugin. 
   
   
   
   
2. Use groups and/or components.  Draw all internal walls within a group or component such that the wall lines do not actually intersect the floor plate (meaning if the floor plate is selected it is not divided).