@gaieus said: Well, in such a twisted case, the easiest thing is to temporarily move the axes (see attached where I put the origin into the pivot point, the red axis along the intersection of your shapes and the green to where the red originally was - so the red/green plane is now the same as it was but you could also align it with the face of your component). From here on, you can force SU to rotate it along the (current) green axis by left clicking into the origin/pivot point while still holding the left mouse button, dragging it along the green axis when it turns into green, releasing the mouse button clicking into the intersection of your leading triangle and the component plane starting the rotation finishing it by clicking on the upper endpoint of the triangle. If you want the axes aligned to the component face instead, right click on an axis and > Place. In this case with your first click, you establish the origin with the second, the red axis (best to place it where it is now) with the green axis, click on any of the far endpoints of your component. Ahhh Axis - way cool! Didn't explore that far. Thanks! Rick

Thanks to everyone for your help, I think I've got it now! Chris

Hi Steven and (a late) welcome from me, too. Have you actually downloaded and installed any plugins? In the meanwhile, I have added you to the woodworkers usergroup so you should be able to see and post in the woodworking forum down in the index page. Finally - your image does not show up. Could you rather attach it to your post?

Have a look at Thom's flatten and extrude plugin. If you separate what should be push-pulled together into groups/components, it will create very nice and quick results from your imports (that's actually what he wrote it for): http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=23491

thanks gladly appreciate it.

On Mac's, .pngs automatically export with transparent backgrounds. PC's don't, however. I believe there ways of doing it with either rendering plugins (twilight, podium, vray, etc), or perhaps just adjusting the colors and shadows of the model to white and black and re-exporting the animation frames, to come up with alpha frames for the entire animation. I've not tried it on a film though, just on one frame photos. Chris

@nuclearmoose said: SU seemed to randomly push a face across something but not leave the original face. Have you tried pressing ctrl (or alt for Mac), before using the push/pull tool? This fixes this problem (if it's the problem I think you mean?) Tom

I would try to get some used PE container that i could clean ,for example soap or shampoo factory's use them. Greetings, Bep [image: intermediate-bulk-container-ibc-330312.jpg]

Import Bluprint as picture. Draw the kontour on the picture Remove the rest. With followMe around the circle. [image: cMf3_Bild1.jpg] [image: 0jBi_Bild2.jpg] [image: D4Dg_Bild3.jpg] [image: eijs_Bottle11.jpg] [image: NcqE_Bottle1.jpg]

I recommend that you Shortcut the 'Reverse Faces' command to a key [I use Q=Reverse and Q+Alt=Orient] - with <Space.=Select - you can quickly reverse faces as you go. Alternatively you could try 2D Tools - You can draw a 'flat' 3-point Rectangle [at a preset Z-height, default=0] without a face at any orientation. In Lines, PolyLine [Curve] or Guide-Lines. There are also tools to add a face or hatching - these will face 'up' even at z=0...

Hi Jordan, i think you can do with sketchy phisics, depending of the level of details you want, complexity of the model and so on , surely it's a hard work!

It's good to know I don't have to shoot my computer. Thanks Miguel.

@martinrinehart said: You might find hiding very useful when stuff is in the way. Hide, fixup stuff blocked by the hidden stuff, unhide. Ooops! You just brought back geometry you never wanted to see again. I admit, that's happened to me, but now I use the Edit>Unhide>Last function; or turn on hidden geometry, select the geometry, and Edit>Unhide>Selected. Thanks for the tip!

The second half of my tutorial will cover scripting, from beginning to advanced. Too bad it's not available yet! Actually, if you look on my site you'll see that several chapters have been posted. The ones that you really want are 11-14, which start with a big "not yet!" warning. That should come off before the week is out. If you haven't learned Ruby yet, Chris Pine's tutorial is excellent, tho not SketchUp specific.

@eidam655 said: thanks i think i will use the Ruby console instead of paying $5 for the same functionality. and furthermore i found a videotutorial by AIA on SketchUp, where i've been given some tips on modelling from CAD plans; suddenly, i don't need this toggle anymore well, at least for now. thanks for the answers How much does that AIA video cost, or can you share? (usually can't afford anything "AIA"). Any help in that process is welcome.

thank you kindly. At least I don't feel like an idiot for not finding it in sketchup's native tools

Hello i`m a newbie on this forum. But i do SU for 6 months now. I need to improve my knowledge about SU and hope i can learning something. Thx

And to explain your unsuccessful way to set it by the template - templates do not set the tool selected but are actually model files themselves.

Thanks Gaieus

no, but look closely to that ''surface operations'' toolbar. It's not part of the row, it's acting like a dialog box. I can move it around. That's how mac treats it. go to view -> toolbars and choose the toolbar you want to see. I'm pretty sure that sketchup will open a toolbar that's a dialog box. Try that. edit: just read your post again, so ignore the post above. Then again, you can rearrange the toolbars so that it looks like the windows version, even though it doesn't stick. For that double-up thing, I'm sure mac has a large tool set. Go to view -> toolbars -> large tool set. I think the large toolset doubles up