Definitely with Stinkie on this one!

Hi Jim Thanks for your reply. I'm more than happy now purchasing laptop with Vista. cheers Alan http://www.hand-cut-dovetails.com

@gaieus said: @mr s said: ...and made beautiful women find me irresistible. Didn't Whaat or Fredo write a plugin that did just that?...

@mike lucey said: 1,000,000 businesses x $50 a shot, hey! that $50,000,000 Okay, now that it's revealed, the cannot blame the crisis for having to postpone 3D BaseCamp in Europe any more!

They have 3 GB of ram each. Not bad ubtil you try to final render. Then it slows way down.

@unknownuser said: Al, when you say "RPC"....any links to exactly who you are talking about? Larry This link is the RPC page on the Render Plus Wiki: RPC Objects This link is the RPC page on the ArchVision web site: ArchVision web site RPC makes quite a few objects which work well - especially as background in architectural renderings. [image: banner_people_BYU4.jpg] (This image from the ArchVision web site is not a SketchUp or an IRender Image) If you, or anyone else try our RPC, let me know what you think. We have not been able to find any interest in RPC in the SketchUp community. However, Revit comes with more than 100 RPC objects, so their may be more interest in the Revit community.

Looks very good...

Thanks BertB! I'll be doing something similar... SketchUp for modeling / presentation. I'll be running AutoCAD Architecture 2009 in BootCamp for intense structural work (3rd party overlay) or VM for easier work, review, take offs, etc. I don't do much 'rendering' aside from sketchy images that pull out as JPGs. Plenty of slideshows and walkthroughs. -Mike

Probably a ventilated bicycle seat, in order to cool down your....

If your feeling adventurous overclocking intel quad cores is pretty easy. Ive heard tales of the cheapest i7s being overclocked to 4 GHz with stock air cooling, so getting them up to 3GHz probably wouldnt be too bad. Would certainly be useful for rendering, as well.

Hi, ZWCAD 2009 is now released and it's fully compatible with acad (full, not just LT), up to dwg 2009. It comes in 2 flavours Std @ £390 and Pro £480 (UK prices). Pro has 2d & 3d design support, Std just has 2d design, but can view 3d files. If you know acad you can use zwcad, no retraining required. Get a free download from http://www.zwcad.org.uk.

[Later Edit] I must have been dreaming when I thought this worked for me. Now it is broken again. I went into the ATI Catalyst Control Center - to 3D / Standard settings and moved the Performance/Quality slider one to the right, from Balanced to High Quality. (It was not easy to figure out which setting to change, and the ATI help system offered no help) Then the SketchUp Bug Splats stopped and LightUp also works! [image: 3Y9p_bug-splat.JPG]

Thank You!

That looks pretty cool, but with such a large main screen, why not have a mini screen on both sides I wonder. I have two netbooks and their screens, including the frame, easily fit in the space of my 15.4" screen notebook when turned sideways.

@gaieus said: BTW guys, I have n nVidia 6800 (or 8600?) GeForce **GO**in my lappy. Can I use other nVidia drivers with it or should I stick to the one that was released for the lappy? I actually don't really have problems with it (although sometimes it gives weird cross hair like effects). I don't think you can use other Nvidia drivers with your card, if it would even load I doubt it would work correclty if at all, but you should be able to get the correct driver for your card, especially if it is branded Nvidia. Nvidia does have downloads for the GO series. I tried the link listed above in this post for Nvidias site. It takes you right to the page needed for finding your correct driver. I guess the real question is do you have enough of a problem with it to really experiment with trying to update your driver. In the old days Packerd Bell and Compact were notorius for taking other manufacturers chipsets and drivers and tweaking them to make them their own. Then you were stuck with that driver that was supplied with that machine, modems were even worse. As I stated above as long as your card is actually branded Nvidia, and you can get the actual series of the card, I don't think you'll run into to many problems. Just make sure you have backed up everything before attempting to update.

Wow, not my way to type,

I'm under no misconception, I know Blender is a totally diferent app to SU. What I mean is, within the linux community there is a widespread predisposition to only using free open source software regardless of whether it is the most efficient option.

@toxicvoxel said: Nice piece of kit. You need to be careful with the usb cable sockets on the Lacie (and probably most others) as a even little rough use during mobility can easily dislocate the port from the internal board. (My own experience.) Thanks Toxic... I'll make sure to take care of it. Marian; nice piece, too! And the size is not much bigger either (but the internal drive is)

Thanks Jim. I have read it and will reply. Mike

You say you have to work on heavy 3D projects, if this mean that you work with SU professionally than I wouldn't recommend both cards. SU is using OpenGL and the better option then would be ATI Fire 8700 or NVIDIA Quadro 5500. These graphic card have full OpenGL support and better drivers. They do cost a bit extra but it's worth the extra money. It doesn't matter which one you choose, they are both very good for 3D modeling and rendering. You can check here for a review: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/workstation-graphics-charts-2008/benchmarks,3.html Check here for SU and OpenGL: http://download.sketchup.com/OnlineDoc/gsu_mac/M-Technical_Reference/Tech-OpenGL.htm