That 'he' was me I used Solid Tools - subtract. But if you don't use Pro you can just intersect your geometry and delete what you don't need.

@alan fraser said: ...What this means from a practical point of view is that if, for instance, you have wrapped up geometry in a temporary group to avoid it sticking to adjoining geometry, then subsequently explode it; then that geometry will always revert to Layer 0...whatever layer the group was on...instead of spreading itself out over perhaps several layers. No Alan, when exploding a group or component, all that is inside and still default (as for layers0 and default texture) will inherit the groups layer and its texture. I'm sure you know and it's just a little mistake. @gaieus said: ...There is one (IMO buggy) behaviour in SU that you need to take care of: when there is a group/component on a certain layer (other than layer 0) and you explode this group/component, all the geometry will default to that layer (not to layer 0 where it was). This can mess up your model. There is a solution though. When you explode a group, all its content is still selected. With that selection active, quickly change the layer back to layer 0 in the Entity info box. Like Gaieus says. And the same behaviour applies to textures. Default entities inside the exploded environment inherit the groups layer and its texture.

Thanks everybody, a few hours of investigation found stray lines which was spotted with Smustard Stray Lines Plug in. As you say TIG it was a tiny unfinished loop which was wrong, I removed them, closed the loop and bam! Many thanks to you all, I can see this forum is going to be useful, but I'll try not to ask too many dumb ass questions! I'm OK with Final Cut Pro,Cinema 4D, Motion etc, but have just bought Sketchup and I'm really enjoying doing some engineering models on it. Thanks Again. Patrick

grouping did the job. thanks, guys.

Glad it helped, Belaar! I'm always excited to see people using Sketchup for 3D printing. Good thinking about using Curviloft to fix the tiny bit I'm also familiar with printing from Shapeways, and the only thing I would suggest is to add a small radius to the top and bottom edges so the final model isn't sharp. It might be easier to do that before bending. I made a couple comments in the attached model about the smoothing and making the model ready to send to Shapeways. Finnished ring.skp

Thanks. I grouped the models like suggested. It helped in some cases so for that I am grateful. Yes, I am using Zorro Version 2 rather than the previous one. No problem re: the discussion. You guys were addressing two separate topics. Fortunately, I understood where you were both coming from. Get some rest.

Thankyou that worked great for leaving the rails behind but now how do i eleminate the lines left behind on my surface?

You wouldn't want to share the file with us so we could see what's happening and perhaps have some hope of giving you some help?

@sketchymick said: I'm pretty confident that you'll be spot on with this, and I'm expecting that there will be 11.7 degrees between the north/south shadow and my compass north. One thing I can say is that my prediction is probably more accurate than my ability to measure it. Well I measured it today and I got about 12.5 degrees - which is good enough for me given the error is about as much as the thickness of the graduations on my compass. So Jim, I reckon your method works a treat.

It worked, you clever people. My first thought was... Wow! there must be more than 403 people connected! Thanks for the response. L.

@massimo said: Joint push pull (remember to press tab after you run the tool and choose "thickening" or "keep original faces") Or maybe this one by Thomthom (never tried it myself though). Great, great, great. Thanks. I already had it installed though, but also already got lost between all the plugins...

Thank you TIG for this one-liner which shows me that I have to learn ruby...

@tig said: You don't need a 'free-plugin' to divide lines. It's already built into Sketchup! Oh, sorry and thank you. I googled and just found a plugin from 1001 which is part of some shareware package.

Wow, not many people even know how to get to where you put those... In Mac speak, that's inside the app, right click >> show package contents. As TIG says it needs to be the HD path, and the best mac advice is... when you go to that folder, drag in into your side bar, so it becomes a drop-box for future 'manual' plugin instals not the new 'auto' ones. The 'gotcha' is, it is a 'drop-only-box', to trash a ruby from there you have to right click >> open enclosing folder >> move to trash. You can rename or shuffle the files/folders around and make new folders/sub-folders, etc... you just can't delete/trash them. john

Another variation of these methods is to produce the rounded corner first by using Rounded Corners in 3D on one corner of a cube. Then just delete everything you don't need and create a circle then a cylinder from any of the quadrants that form the edges of the cornerpiece. Mate 3 copies of this cylinder onto the rounded corner and use the OuterShell command. Explode the resulting group and you're pretty much done.

Hey Andy - Not sure what a "linear" .ies file is, but .ies is one of my requirements. I'd also like to see this kind of tabular comparison across a lot of features. I notice that several renderers have .ies compatibility, but only once upgraded to the "pro" versions. I also like Twilight's material editor (at least, as much as I've experimented with it in the demo) but then I see things like this texture for Maxwell http://resources.maxwellrender.com/news_scripts.php?t=1#page=2&mode=1&id=5540 and wonder what other renderers can do "that". Another biggie is subsurface scattering - or, at least, proper handling of light through transparent and translucent materials. For example, a "Japanese screen" that properly transmits illumination when being hit on one side with either bright ambient illumination, sunlight through trees (shadows), or a small bright spotlight. I don't know how to look this feature up comparitively. [edit] perhaps a good way to create a tabular comparison is to create the categories and ask the companies who make the renderers to fill in the details. Not sure what the best way to create the categories would be, but I assume a group effort may actually pay off in this case... cheers, Andrew

Yes, there is a big difference between hiding and softening. In your case (unless you have some very special reason), I would not hide but soften. Hiding will leave those (small, seemingly rectangular but probably triangulated) facets separate and your mesh will remain faceted. These facets can be selected individually even with hidden geometry (View menu) off. If you soften the dividing edges however, the whole surface will be one, continuous and (seemingly) nicely curved surface. Now the whole mesh can be selected as a whole unless you turn on hidden geometry.

Thanks. Indeed, as you are there to represent geometry much with textures, there could be some place of further reduction but still better than modelling every part.

thanks - will do.

Seems perfect for the DUH-DOH thread no ?