I must say that I have had lots of joy with the 8800 GTX's, I have them in all but my Mac and must say the performance is excellent. I would suggest the Nvidia brand for now (and until the whole AMD and ATI thing settles down and a stable product is released)

About the fonts problems, Download the Fonts Support Pack http://www.progesoft.com/icad/files/FONT_SHX_PCAD.zip and decompress into the Font folder otherwise download the latest update

This doesn't look hard at all, Remus: http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/build-a-hackintosh-mac-for-under-800-321913.php I've built more elaborate computers and set up odder software. It seems like someone else has already done all the hard tweaking. You know, an Apple Store just opened down the street. It's wall-to-wall-to-glass-staircase in expensive, attitude-laden minimalist hardware...I'm really tempted to make one of these Frankensteins just to--metaphorically of course--stick my finger in Mr. Job's eye.

Jon, I appreciate the input but quite honestly that is a little too low end for what they are looking for. I did not see anything regarding VR or hotspots which are a major item they are looking for. I just know I will hear that this looks too "game like" for our purpose. I do not think the money is the big issue to them currently it is more the output quality and how well it plays with Sketchup. Scott

LOL, the "good" old days! Nothing can be as bad as getting a Visio drawing that people call "CAD". Now that is one program that need to be put out to pasture.

I am currently running a Dell M90. It is the laptop before the new M series. I have it completely maxed out and it is a beast. I have thrown everything at it and have not had one issue. It is incredibly fast. It have a quadro card in it at 512mb and makes a work of difference. My only complaint is my back....with the brick of a charging cord it weighs in at over 14lbs! Now add in all the other stuff I carry (magazines, mouse, graphics tablet, etc.) and it is ALOT to lug around. is it worth it? YES, it is just a powerful as most high end desktops. Make sure you get a good backpack or briefcase that will hold a 17" laptop (not a lot of choices). I opted for a backpack as it is a little easier to fit more crap in it;) Scott

I think I isolated the issue... I had an ancient program that was made to create a backup image called EZRestore... it came with my MB. anyway... it was a piece of crap and as it ran out of memory (it did not have an option to add to the partition it had created) was messing up many proggies ability to access the registry properly. I got rid of the program and things are working much better.

I have an ATI Radeon card and SU does the same on my computer. Don't throw your card away just because of this.

something in your voice i guess ha ha pav

I've similar problems in the past in other applications when using ATi GFX hardware. It was (almost) always fixed by a driver update.

Google just blogged about this. Pretty cool! http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/ Todd

juju thanks so much for that input. I am going to forward it to the computer lab. The cards are so new that they may be able to trade them in and get something valuable for their money. So I have the codes right then, It made sense to you. Thanks a million.

Thank you all for the support. I will try it out as soon that I have made some nice things. ( I have a lot ideas... )

I would love to see Mental Ray for SketchUp. It would be possible if someone wrote a exporter from SketchUp to a .mi file. Then you could render with MR standalone or the compatible new almost interactive Holomatix Rendition.

I never got into this - no way to test for me, and I didn't feel I had the math skills at the time to convert between faceted edges and the real curves needed for CNC. However, someone did it. Google it. Todd

I recently purchased Modo 302 and from the little time I have spent with it I can say it is well worth the money. Not only does it have the tools that many SU'ers have been asking for for quite some time but us also has a very intuitive UV mappper/unwrapper and does excellent rendering all within the native app. Again, I have not got too far into it I am still going through all the tutorials and manual but they are also developing a Sketchup plugin. Currently it is still in beta and is a but buggy. Once that is worked out I can truly put this into my workflow. Scott

It would be cool to see some top renders done with the engine in SU to really see how far it can be stretched. I personally had trouble getting good output from it (demo), as the render lingo is different from the other render packages I use, making it more difficult to climb the learning curve. My first impression is that a lot of tweaking is involved to get the light as you want. (EDIT): It seems I get the render engines mixed up. I tested the Render Plus demo and not the 'Sketchup rendering system'... So many launches of different render plugs on the market seems to confuse me. I mean: Turbosketch, Irender, Accurender nXt,IDX renditioner, Render Plus,Sketchup Rendering System.... Is anyone still following?....

thanks Guys all seems to be going OK with it. I worked on SU and Layout last night on my notebook then sync'd it to the PC this morning and all is OK. If things do start to play up I will have a look at Sync Toy Jim mentioned...... Cheers again.

Il stick to reading a book.

Follow-up solution for binding the 3D Connexion function "Center of Rotation" to a Space Explorer button: Create a shortcut in SketchUp for "Plugins/3DxSketchUp/Center of Rotation" (ie. "F6") Open the 3D Connexion Control Panel -> Button Configuation -> Custom Functions... Hit "New" and name the macro (ie. "Center Here") Inside User Macro, hit the key of your choice (ie. "F6") and hit "Save", then "Done" Select the name of your macro in the button dropdown of your choice (ie. "Center Here" for Panel)