Thanks guys, all good points and clears it up. Dave, thanks for the pics, really helps. Inspecting mirrors is a job I could easily see myself doing.

@bob james said: @Gaius Whose guitar music is that??? Super music. I have no clue, Bob. I just grabbed an example from YT.

What TIG is preaching is the truth! Always draw everything on layer 0. Only assign components and groups to specific layers. Once you get in this habit, problems like this will go away, and you will find that the layer management control is much more straight forward than ACAD.

Do you have pictures which show the windows details and the dimensions?

Welcome! It's probably best if you use SketchUp's official stl importer: https://github.com/SketchUp/sketchup-stl

Speaking of skewed lots and buildings. While in college I rented a cheap little house that was built on a circular street (a church was in the center circle). It was a very narrow pie-shaped lot. The main room was pie-shaped. With crossing ceiling beams it was sort an optical illusion, as the room looked bigger or smaller, depending on where you stood. Very funny.

@rsguernsey said: Is there any hope for me? ... Nope - none at all! Just enjoy!

thanks so much for all your help and suggestions. hopefully i can produce something using the tools you have all recommended! much appreciated

you could use simlab or something else like it: http://www.simlab-soft.com/3d-plugins/3D-PDF-from-sketchup-main.aspx also, (i'm not sure how this works or if it works in windows world), you can export the model as a collada file then view it with an image viewer which will give 3D/navigation etc.. Preview.app on mac is the default viewer which will open a collada file.. maybe windows has something similar?

Hi folks. There is more than a straight line that can be used to close a face from ends of arcs. This simplify works by avoiding unnecessary intersections. See this SU file for ideas. Curved face.skp

@tig said: Perhaps 'spear' is a typo of 'sphere' ? Ah, yes. I see. I was reading it too literally.

I am keeping all plugins in the 'plugins' folder and not in any other folder of my choice. So deleted 000_AdditionalPluginFolders as you advised. The error messages are gone! Thanks.

And you can even ("easily") embed SketchFab models to your site [web 100%,480:1j3xbs5r]http://skfb.ly/ki3fdcba?autostart=0&transparent=0&autospin=0&controls=1&watermark=1[/web:1j3xbs5r]

Geometry 'sticks together'. Draw a face. Draw another face that touches it. Select just the first face and Move it. Parts of the connected face will distort as you do so, because they are also connected to the first face. However, had the two touching faces been inside their own groups then they do not interact. As Dave says, you have given the 'slabs' insufficient thicknesses. Walls are anywhere from ~4"/100mm to ~14"/350mm depending on what they are made from and their function. Floors and roofs will be about 1/10 of their 'span', down to about 1/20 depending on their materials and function again...

@danna said: Also got some excellent tips from a very kind member (Dave R) what if you also share those tips with us here?

@taffgoch said: That triangular-windowed roof makes a grand addition to the design. It could, just as easily, have been composed of rectangular windows, with triangular windows at the intersections. Have you compared the appearance of triangular vs. rectangular? -Taff (Make no mistake, I'm a fan of triangulated constructs.) it would seem like rectangles would make the number of different parts increase which would cause the cost to rise as well i might take a look at it later but for now im happy with the triangles

Dave told you what was wrong, either the entire model was made a very long distance from the 0,0,0 of the SU model, or you had some geometry hiding way out far away from the origin. That is one of the only things that will make "clipping" be that bad.

Some of the questions are difficult to answer beacause it is only possible to choose one option, but a great idea and I'm very interested in the result...

Hi Walter, it's here: http://www.smustard.com/products/ scroll down the page. Please use english in this forum. You can join to the german group if you want.

That would be great - I did try to clean up the file with just what was needed, but it's still over 5 mb's - so if I could send it to you that would be awesome. Thanks