Thanks Anssi. I went thru and cleaned up all the "blue" walls. I'll keep your suggestion in mind as I try to work thru this. P: jmac

Oh yeah..... I watched that one long time ago. I thought the concept was good, but didnt know where to apply it. It's all coming together now. Thanks. There is a really famous Hank in your neck of the woods, Cullman I think....

Hi Jim, Cheetah is a great piece of software! I use it primarily for renderings, but the modeling side is also very powerful. I, too, knew nothing about modeling (other than in Sketchup) when I got Cheetah and it has been a really exciting learning curve. Rendering, for me, has been all about experimenting different things. It can be frustrating at times and I am still only happy with about 25% of my final renderings, but I am starting to get a good grasp of settings that seem to work. The Cheetah forums are really good! There are a bunch of really experienced guys there who are very helpful. They are located here: http://www.cheetah3d.de/forum/ Welcome to the club here! I think you will really enjoy your time here. Talk about helpful and friendly!

Well to the wonderfully horrible clipping issue. Complaints about it are all over the "dead" forums. I do a lot of work with 100's of acres sites and large satellite groundplanes. Clipping is the bane of my existence. Often time, I have to have two models, one with everything and one that just has the part of the site I am currently working on because clipping is so bad. Lots of component reloads to get the big model updated. I know that other large site softwares display no clipping (Vue, for one) and I have never heard one reason for why Sketchup does clip. I would not hold your breath for this issue to be fixed and figuring out good work arounds is your best (only) bet.

Jean Lemire, And a very good idea too! I will add that if you don't hit a carriage return after entering the new view angle the angle doesn't apply. thanks for the advice, it worked!

I use the outliner to organize all my models. I don't use layers at all. Maybe I will get shot for saying that but that is just how I do it. I find it easiest when going from cad to SU to copy my cad file to a new location and then do some major cleanup prior to insertion. I make sure everything is 2D, delete anything unwanted, change all the lines to one layer and one color. I make sure that all connections are made, no small gaps... usually I make polylines so I know if there is a gap. Then I import it to SU and go from there. That way I don't need to discard it later, I just use that data. The script modelhead was talking about, I think, is makefaces. You select all your lines and run the script. It will fill in the faces without you having to draw lines to finish the face. You can get it here: http://www.smustard.com/scripts/ modelhead, no worries mate.

Eric, This last sentence may be the "key" for the problem - SU tends not to draw the faces when the geomeztry is too small. What you did to fix it is the usual way. Still the error message is pretty funny - thanks for posting!

Just click on the relevant mode on the Face Style toolbar. Presumably, you don't have it loaded at the moment. View > Toolbars > Face Style P: Alan Fraser

It's always a kind of try and redo thing when I'm working with it (not too much). The lines are just simple edges of a tin which you should (not just can) smotth afterwards. Select the group (it comes out groupped) and go to the soften dialogue , check bot boxes and try sliding it slowly. There are often some "obnoxious" lines that don't want to smooth - you can do this with the Ctrl+Eraser tool while editing the group.

Well, when it is already big, there aren't "best ways". Always keep in mind to use low poly geometry for everything you don't really want to show a close-up of and to use components extensively. Everything that is in your model more than in one instance, should be a component. Even repetitive elements within components should be nested components. Keep image sizes low. Even if you want some high-res images, SU will reduce them to a maximum 1024 size on either edge. There's no use to use bigger ones therefore. Use smaller, tilable textures instead (though some may look ugly when too big faces are paited with them). In reality, it's not even the file size that slows down SU when reaching a limit but the ability of the video card to display movements etc. Therefore use layers to temporarily hide geometry that you don't need while modelling certain details. This can also go extensive. Turn ioff materials while modelling (use monochrome mode - at least you can see where the back faces are) and also turn off shadows. Displaying them slows SU down considerably.

Gaieus, Jean I got it to work. Thanks for your help.

Just a WAG, but a couple nights ago I lost my USB keyboard on the laptop I use at home. Unplugging and plugging it back in got it back, but a few minutes later it went south again. I hadn't rebooted in days and had done some stuff in SU as well as a couple other memory intense programs, so I rebooted and all was well. I think the thing gets confused after a while.

You want to fill the screen as much as possible with the area you want to print. Click on "Parallel Project" and the view you want from the Camera menu. Then go to Print Preview. Unclick "Fit to Page" and "Use Model Extents" and Scale boxes should be lit up. Enter 1 in both of them. Only problem I've had with it is that it wants to print the entire screen so if something is real long or real wide in ratio to the other dimension, it prints out some unneeded blank pages.

Would such a "thingy" sell well on eBay? I think I found some in the loft.

By all means please keep up the transfer. Its something most people would be unwilling to do, so dont let me get in your way. I wont even bother making the suggestion in the proper forum until I find out that you guys are done with the move.

I figured it out. The whole thing was drawn incorrectly I found many lines not connected and lines drawn on top of lines it was a big mess but I isolated the roof and moved it into a new SU file which made it easier to isolate the problem Thanks anyway

Glad you like it and welcome. Nice model too.

wot's your normal monicker ???? I don't follow I work at building organisation that create 3d models of floorplans from the architects. We sort out the details of making the design work with timber, then press a button and guys on the floor make the frames and trusses from our 3d design. We use the Mitek based system for the bulk of our work - Engineering the trusses and so forth. However sketchup is becoming an ever increasing useful tool. Most of the detailers/draughters have had a crash course in what I know. But I am also about to begin studying architecture part time. Today I used sketchup to provide a 3d model of a "flitch beam - steel and timber) to masonary beam hangar. The ability to do this infront of a client in less than 5mins certainly adds to a wow factor. My next part time project is to design a cheap 'golf hut' for our local golf course. Sorry to wah on but very happy to live in the Mount, I think it is one of the nicest places in the world to visit let alone live.

did I not put 3ds in there sorry... I thought I put all 3 extensions in there... thanks Mateo, for the catch...

Yes I do. What a great tool. Use it all the time. Thanks for the suggestion.