Well, I started using SU more than 3 years ago, when SU 5 "Beta" was first made free by Google after acquiring the software. I have been struggling with and complaining abut this ever since. But sigh... In fact, with an extra step,it can be solved...

Hi TIm, I am not sure I am following you. You say: @unknownuser said: the window that lets me name the component does show up on my screen, but it will let me make a component still. Now how do you make that component then? Anyway, something may have gone wrong with your SU. Go to Window (menu) > Preferences > Workspace and there, at the bottom, restore workspace. Hope it will fix your hiding dialogs.

@bigkahuna said: Crud, it's Windows only and I'm on a Mac. Shoot. We don't know when we will start converting things to the Mac. I don't suppose you want to run in a Parallels Window?

Animation is amazingly simple. http://www.martinrinehart.com/models/tutorial/tutorial_10.html#animation Do add the 'X' keyboard shortcut. (See keyboard shortcut section, beginning of Chapter 10.) You'll be glad you did.

For cabinet design and furniture design, another feature to look for is the ability to render edge lines. Often, because edge lines are turned on by default in SketchUp, modelers tend to use edge lines to provide detail which is lost in rendering add-on which cannot process edge lines. [image: Cabinet-edges.jpg] (Cabinet rendered with edge lines) [image: Cabinet-no-edges.jpg] (Cabinet rendered without edge lines)

Hi and welcome....where's overthere?

Thank you very much for your assistance and advice, the old saying is true if all else fails read the instructions, do you think i have likely made a similar error with the Bezier package as after the load up I was not able to activate the toolbar icon but the plugin seems to be working ok as my son says to me often dad "(stay step away from the computer you dont know what your doing", he's not wrong however im not too bad at woodworking which why im keen to learn SU to help in furniture design. Newbies such as I are fortunate to have the expertise and talent at our disposal given freely. Once again many thanks for your help. Regards bbbb bill

Filled means that SU will fill the outlines with faces. If you don't fill it, it will be only the edges bounding the empty ehm... "nothing", so you don't have anything to paint first of all.

Here is a long and useful thread by Simon about this: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=10103&p=65577

Id check your graphics settings first, see if theirs anything funny going on there. to do that, go window->preferences->openGL and tick 'hardware acceleration', if it isnt already

Thanks TIG and Jean. Gaieus, your job sounds like fun! I have learned so much from this forum. It's a fantastic place where everyone is so willing to share their knowledge. Hopefully I can give a little back some day soon.

Thanks Anssi for that great explanation. Cheers, Derek

Google must have been listening - today it seems they've enabled a link in the 3D Warehouse from your models to see your profile. A step in the right direction me thinks? eg: http://www.google.com/profiles/TheOtherMartinTaylor#

Hi Mogogirl, hi folks. Make sure that you have not smoothed some edges accidentally. If this is the case, applying paint to one face that has some edges smooted will cause the color or texture to be applied also to the faces sharing smoothed edges with this face. If not sure, can you post your model by attaching it to a post. You don't need to post the whole model, only the problematic part. Just ideas.

Glad we could help Mary

Unbelievable clarity in that communication. I doubt the other side will want to show it to a jury.

Thanks for the sugestion on the plug in I'll check it out

I'm so confused! I hope bbbb got his problem figured out!

Here is the plugin: http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=161784 and of course, all previous versions still have the import option (although as an "official" download, Google only provides the latest version for the Free SU).

If you want, you can even set up scenes with certain views (and even camera settings like perspective/orthogonal) and by clicking on these scenes, you can easily navigate between the different views.