How exactly do the parts snap together? My wall pieces, for example, are always ever so slightly off when they snap into place. Is there a certain point on them I should be clicking when I move them together? 
I take this post to drop some sentences about what might help some of you in some of your difficulties.
First of all be sure about the fact that I do not feel bothered by any of such a question, the opposite is true, I am really happy about them! First of all this shows, that you are really using the parts, and that is great (!) and secondly I am preparing an advanced manual (working title is “
Playmo3D on a second view – Advanced techniques and hints”), so all your difficulties will really help me to understand better where specific difficulties in use may be found that I have to mention in detail.
So for the very beginning here are some short and sketchy notes on some FAQs.
In general, the point I tried to make strong in the published First-Steps manual (btw, thanks Tim for the warm words about it... seems I am on the right way when I keep this style for additional stuff?) was “get familiar with working in 3D”, sound trivial but this is the only difficulty that might bother most of you. Remember, the whole Playmo3D do not use any feature that is not SketchUp, that means, all what I try to describe is purely normal working with SU (in some aspects comparable to different 3D-programs), so don’t be afraid of using the SU Helping Center too.
Maybe the few additional examples in the following will help some of you with the specific Playmo3D-working.
Let’s have a closer look on “
the right adjustment” of e.g. some Steck walls (fig. 1a) (same is true for all other kind of parts of course):
In general all parts match exactly to each other, in other words there must not be any gap between them (fig. 1b, also 3a). If there is such a gap, you have made something wrong, but what and how to do it better?
In principle you can move and connect any part with any point you want to, but not every point is as useful as some others… therefore in the manual I talked about “prominent points“ and on this idea the Grid-System is constructed (so by the way, the Grids are not in any situation the best or easiest way (see SysX example below, next post). Also it is neither possible to list every part with its specific “best points” nor might be any mentioned point the best in any situation.
In most cases (and I guess this will be true for most of your difficulties) problems do not arise within choosing and moving the parts at specific points but not having a well chosen view on your parts in the project. This was the reason why in the manual I am repeating sentences like “remember Orbit/ Pan…” so often. THIS IS the key to nearly all adjustments. In my opinion using the shortcuts will do the job the very best, e.g. “hanging a part on your mouse” (see manual) and then just press "o" (for orbit). Now adjust your view – NOT to the part which you want to move but to the TARGET point, bring the mouse next to that point and now return to move-mode by just pressing "m" (for move) again (repeat these steps when you fail).
Often (a question of experience) you might be confused by some lines and/or marks that leads to a wrong chosen point. There might be some situations for that. For example, in some situations you might be confused by the blue “marking-outline” when you have selected a part. This outline is NOT identical with e.g. the Grid (fig. 1c), even if in some situations they may fall together. The blue outlines just mark the total dimension of a part. In the case of fig. 1c (the Steck castle connector) there are some bricks that are wider than the rest, therefore the blue outlines are wider in the top of the part too, but are NO MAGNETIC POINTS in our sense (the black dotted arrows in 1c show the “right “ prominent points for this situation).
Another difficulty might be that you do not find any Grid in some parts. Why and what to do? That’s fine, if there is no Grid, than simply because the part itself offers these points. In Steck e.g. the the wall’s Grid is build up on the (castle) wall connectors, so they do not have a Grid themselves (compare 1c).
In some situations the theoretically prominent Grid-points are covered by the parts like in the case of Steck Battlements (fig 2a). In that case e.g. use the middle point of the front side Grid-line in an upwards view (fig 2b).
