I did what you guys suggested and it worked. Thank you so much for this advice. I am back in business!

My story is a bit similar. Years working with ACAD, 2D was great, but I was never able to draw a good 3D shape (aircraft fuselage). It took me about 2 weeks to get something usable in so called 2 1/2D. Tried other apps but none were either good enough, or simple enough. Then I saw an advert for SU in some tech pub I subscribe to, so I gave it a try. In under 2 hours after I very first turned it on, I had my fuselage shape. (The hard way with zero plug-ins) I then scrapped ACAD. That was over 8 years ago. And I now have over 25 plug-ins, but only use about 6 regularly, especially Fredo's Curviloft.

The way you did it will work, but ONLY if there is just 1 instance of the component. Where there are component copies, and you try to redefine the exploded elements (of one copy) as a component again, using the same name, it will become a unique component, with the desired new t-nail view. The other copies will belong to the "original" comp. and will retain the old t-nail view.

Hi folks. Yes, the double click to repeat a push/pull operation is easy but, when the number of faces get beyond 20, it begin to get less efficient. My trick, shown in the skp file of my previous post will work with 1000 shapes as fast as with 10. Just ideas.

@lamandrion said: Hello, is it possible to do this with one operation? Input: 3 Lines (Top, Ground, Profile) not really.. how are you going to get the ground curve drawn properly as the tranny is changing? that's the hardest part. it's best to do it in sections. I know a few tricks to maybe speed things up for you (for things like a waterfall through a rounded hip etc) but I really wouldn't recommend trying the approach you're showing in sketchup. in rhino, you have a good chance at drawing the coping then different profiles at key depth changes but that doesn't work out too well in sketchup.

I can report that having the Components Window pane closed while fiddling with the Outliner dramatically reduces the likelihood of crashes. I had been getting crashes in relatively small models too, so I think there is a problem with the code somewhere. I use a Mac also.

Thanks, these are exactly what I was looking for!

One simple way of looking at orbit and zoom control is to remember that SU uses the position of the cursor to work from. So if you start to orbit with the cursor on the object it will orbit around that point, however if you orbit with the cursor next to the object and therefore pointing at a non specific point in the distance it will orbit around that point therefore throwing your object out of view with only a small movement.

sorry 2013! hahah

This is a 'clipping issue' - it's well documented. Change between Perspective/Parallel Cameras to fix it. It's usually caused by having some loose geometry miles from the model's origin ? Or a component with its origin miles from its geometry. Especially noticeable in CAD imports where you have perhaps kept the origin ? Test to see what it is... Model Info > Statistics > Purge unused & Fix problems. Switch all Layers ON and View > Hidden Geometry ON If you Select All [Edit] and use Entity info it gives a count. Zoom out so you can see everything you expect to be in that selection... Now use Select with a fence holding Ctrl+Shift to remove those items from the selection. Are there still items in the Entity Info list ? Try to establish what they are. You can probably hit Delete and remove them and the clipping should stop. If you think it's a component origin issue... Model Info > Components > tick Show Component Axes... If any component-instances have issues use the context-menu to Change Axes to something more logical...

You're welcome.

@unknownuser said: You may have to temporarily paste in place a copy of the other component into your component while adjusting its textures.nen Yeah, that is what I was doing. Pasting a component or just one of the faces with a texture on it inside the group I have selected. Not a bad alternative, but just wondering if this was an option. Thanks!

Even easier than the Scale tool for this is the Tape Measure tool. If, in the case of the cube, you know you want it to be 75", measure from one corner to the other making sure to click on it both corners. Then type 75 and hit Enter. If you only want to resize the group or component in question, open it for editing, first. To the OP, in the case of resizing the lattice, is it all dimensions that need to be changed or just the overall size? It sounds to me as if the slats are probably the correct size and you only want to change the outside dimensions. In the case, scaling is absolutely the wrong tool to use. Instead, it sounds like you need to cut the lattice down to size. In the case you can draw a cutting plane at the correct location and use it to trim the slats. Without seeing the lattice model it's difficult to give more instructions but one consideration, depending on how the lattice is designed is that you may want to trim away some on both sides to keep things centered.

Hi Edwin, I may be wrong and hope that I am, I use VRay and I have check every time I update SKU to a newer version if it will be compatible. If it is I'd check out this tube video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9mkJOvXSDc

Hi Baton, Your images havent shown up on your thread, if you try again I may be able to suggest something.

@mitcorb said: Hi, Bryan: Do you mean this thread? http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15%26amp;t=56466 Thanks! Yes.

Hi Patrick - welcome! protolabs FAQ[1] says they accept .stl file also. Have you tried that format? You can get the .stl extension from the Extension Warehouse from in SketchUp. Your model will likely need to be a "solid" for best results. [1] http://www.protolabs.com/resources/molding-and-machining-faq

@mathieuweekes1 said: I have turned off extensions in Preferences and also removed everything out of the plugins folder in the library via Applications leaving the extensions that come with SU (sandbox, dynamic components etc) and Shaderlight. The result is that it is still crashing? Does this mean there is a problem with the renderer? well, what happens when you turn off Shaderlight? does sketchUp still crash? or, sketchUp is crashing while rendering with / using shaderlight? because to me, it's starting to sound more and more like shaderLight is causing the crashes as well as the odd toolbar behavior you're seeing.. you probably should contact shaderlight support.. @unknownuser said: Is it worth uninstalling SU14 and Shaderlight and reinstalling? if it were me, i'd try to narrow down the cause a bit more and if i concluded shaderlight was the problem, i'd ditch it and go find another renderer but that's just me.. another problem is that shaderlight may be doing something 'bad' to the .plist ..so if you do decide to uninstall it, you should probably reset the .plist again as outlined earlier in order to get rid of any possible corruption the plugin may have caused. @unknownuser said: To improve my understanding of best practises; What is the best method of installing plugins in SU. 2014? Is there anything I should avoid doing? the 'best' is to just use the sketchucation plugin store and trimbles built in extension warehouse.. if you get plugins from elsewhere, always try to get .rbz versions then install them via Sketchup->Preferences->Extensions->install Extensions.. doing that will eliminate any install errors.. unfortunately, it won't prevent errors in the plugin's code though

Makes sense. Thanks, I'll download a new Dibec plugin copy.

There's a whole raft of plugins you can use for this...once you get into it. Thom's QuadFace Tools has a great usability too. http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39442