@tig said: Do NOT Explode the Curves - you need those later ! Thank you, Tig. If you are ever bored, being able to select those (components) without exploding would be a really nice feature.

Oh thanks a lot, your observation is cool, thanks again!

Thanks Gaieus, Sorry about the terminology - model next time. Regards John L

@jim said: UI.toolbar("Construction Line Tool").show UI.toolbar("Construction Line Tool").hide But even if the plugin is not installed, this method creates a toolbar entry in the View > Toolbars menu. So the problem for a script is knowing which toolbars are in use. You can get a list of native Toolbar names ( UI.toolbar_names) but there is not a good way to get a list of Ruby toolbars. I have a dialog that uses a text file to create a list of installed toolbars and toggle them on/off, but I'm still working on a good way to identify the Ruby toolbar names. Jim, Was wondering if you made any progress with this. It would be great to have a custom toolbar for rubies. For example the BZ Toolbar contains many tools and I only use one of them. It takes up a lot of real estate. Thanks

Funny you should say that.... I still don't understand what TIG means about only doing my Sketchup modelling during daylight hours ? The wierdo mad script to set the shadow clock to real time has no effect (on my iMac) to the Sketchup editor.. it doesn't go dark, I don't see glorious sunsets or sunrises...

No worries. Actually it is kind of a SketchUp thing anyway.

@unknownuser said: Did you do something to the drawing first? No ! I made this in V7 Colors and square are post production

Glad it worked for you. For what it's worth, I didn't find any need to scale up but perhaps you are using more and thus shorter line segments in your curves than did I.

@tig said: This version was made using my ExtrudeEdgesByRails tool ... seems to work OK ? The mesh it generates is very clean and nice, but if you look at it in side view it is not what you always want. But I found out that Curviloft works with a little workaround. (One edge, no vertex in the center.) [image: ol30_skinning2.png]

As with the other folders like Plugins, Components, Materials etc on a MAC it's in a Library folder-structure based at the HD 'root' level... Typing [or copy+paste] +enter this text into the Ruby Console Sketchup.find_support_file("Styles") should return the exact path - please ensure that you use the exact path that's given. Make a subfolder in there of your own Styles - e.g. 'MyStyles'... On a restart that subfolder should always appear under the list of available Styles in the Style Browser dialog...

Have a look at Google Sketchup support. This covers everything that can affect SU performance including "Computer settings" which sounds like what you are after. baz http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=36235

@charly2008 said: or with Perpendicular Face Tools by Chris Fullmer. @gaieus said: Or use this plugin: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=17396

Thanks everyone, I did it. Simple really!! I can get one with the design for a Radio Controlled Lancaster which I going to use a CNC hot wire foam cutter for. On my 3rd Lanc now but I want to do my own and not somebody else. Some stuff on my website may be of interest http://www.rckeith.co.uk/lanc.html Keith

Another way.http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=15784&hilit=screw#p122571 with screw plugin. [image: aIX5_screwchair.png]

Welcome and fire away.

OK, I've got my mesh. The original cad contours had 1.3 million edges. Thanks guys for your suggestions... like I said - it's been a great learning experience. TIG - I experimented more with the simply contour plugin - most of the problem were with my contour set - some were ludicrously convoluted whereas most were quite simple. There was no one setting that did a good job with all of them, but with some selective processing of different sets of contours based on complexity, it worked well. Ogan - I tried tgi3d amorph. Haven't had time to explore it all properly (hardly at all actually - there seems a lot too it), but I ran through your suggested method. I had a similar experience here to that described above. Setting a 20m segment length worked for some of the contours, whereas other lengths were required to get anything acceptable for other segments. In other words I had to do a lot of selective processing using different settings to get a good overall result. In the end I used "Edge Tools" to simplify all the curves to within 2m of the original, then went and cleaned up the overlapping contours with reference to the original dwg. At the same time I deleted any extraneous noise. This all took about 1hr, but wasn't too onerous. Then I just used the sandbox tools to create a mesh from contours. The result is shown in the attached. This was definitely the quickest way to process the entire contour set in 1 go and came up with an acceptable result. I think my method posted at the beginning of this thread gave a really nice result, but was too labour intensive for anyone dealing with a lot of lines, but otherwise I'd recommend it. [image: DNNr_mesh.jpg] thanks again for your help with this... Regards Mick

The 2d import is located very far above z=0, which doesn't help... BUT the 2d plans were obviously imported from a CAD file [dwg/dxf?] and they contain some rogue geometry that's miles off. If you edit that component [double-click it], then use edit > 'select all' [ctrl+A], and then deselect the visible parts by using select+fence whilst holding shift+ctrl, then press 'delete', the 'unseen' CAD file's rogue geometry that's a zillion miles away [and totally useless to you anyway] is removed... then the whole thing works OK with the wall faces displaying properly etc etc. The extents of the model were so distorted by this issue that SUp couldn't properly calculate the visible geometry, so faces went weird...

The boundingbox plugin is good for that, or measuring any irregular shaped object

Thanks for the suggestion

Yes, and the line is correct: <unit meter="0.02539999969303608" name="inch" /> but I tried some more exports and moved around the geometry to see which entries in the collada-file changed. One line (perhaps something like the origin of the group?) had very small values in the original file: <matrix>2.775557561562893e-015 -1 0 2.314960629921188 1 2.775557561562893e-015 0 -7.105427357595022e-015 -0 0 1 -2.775557561561001e-017 0 0 0 1</matrix> and changed to: <matrix>1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1</matrix> after moving the group around and back to the origin. So I think the problem was not the geometry itself but the position of the group relative to the origin?!