It is official. I hate web design. I am too much of an idiot. First of all thanks for the advise. Much, much appreciated. Unfortunately I am struggling to get the code to do as it is told. I shall prevail though (cough cough, sob sob)

Your model is not bad, just build it like in real life: all separated parts must be a component or at least a group so they don't interfere with each others.

It's hard to tell without seeing your model. Is it possible the faces you're applying your materials to are reversed?

thankyou TIG/mitcorb, I turned all layers on and unhid all then zoomed to extents. I had a left behind a line at the original coordinates about 7000km away from the origin. I investigated one of my previous models that had the same issue and it was the same thing (a hidden component that I found in the outliner). Once I'd dealt with those, all was good. Thanks! Mick

@dave r said: ... I for one would be reluctant to trust the safety of my skin to a hang glider that was designed only with SketchUp. Right, indeed, lol

Yes, thank you Dave - very useful

Many thank, see you soon!!!

@Aerilius: thank you very much for pointing out as everything is crystal clear now. I will keep on previewing my models in GE for Windows until they decide to fix the issue (To a mod: please consider closing the topic, and thanks again for helping )

No problem. If you need to post something larger than the limit, you can always zip it.

Try this link.

As long as all the students' various sections are all related to each other by means of a common reference point (preferably located at the origin) you should be able to import/reload them as Gaius suggests...or even open each individual one to check it over, then select and copy it. Then Paste in Place in the master model file. That common reference point can be created by starting with a single, coherent base model, as Gaius suggests or, if you really want to test their accuracy, by getting them to model their sections from scratch, located by careful trigonometry.

@shudson said: Any tips for the best way to take two connected faces and put each on a different layer without creating them separately? Two faces touching at a point or sharing an edge or more. Double click on each face and group (or componentize), one after the other. Assign one of the groups to a different layer. The shared edge(s) goes with each face into the group. With both layers "visible" the appearance is no different, but they will not act like related geometry any longer.

Wow, that is awesome. Thank you for your efforts. They are much appreciated. I was trying to figure out if the edges were hidden, and I tried to figure out how to unhide, but I didn't start by turning on hidden geometry. Plus, I wasn't sure if that was the problem, so I cut short my efforts in that direction. Thanks again, Richard

thank you very much for the response friend

@unknownuser said: you'd have to extend the path into the box, yes? Yes and intersect... erase... etc or Boolean Diff if V8 pro...

Hi, A further possibility is the Follow Me tool [image: 3kUD_2012-04-13_145033.jpg] [image: uCUP_2012-04-13_145102.jpg]

[image: EWm6_tent2.png] You might also approach creating the canopy over the frame in a slightly different way. Instead of thinking about how to drape the large rectangle you have over the frame, draw the end and extrude it with Push/Pull. Then delete the bottom edges if you wish. You can get the area of the sections with the Text tool or from Entity Info. I kept it simple for getting the area since you wanted it down and dirty. There's probably a plugin that would give you the total area but I don't remember for sure and haven't searched yet. [image: GwP1_tent.png]

[image: yJzb_CAMERASTAND-1607.png] Is this what you're after? I did do it with Follow Me but I started with it scaled up by 100 instead of 10. Actually I redrew the knob to make it smoother. After running Follow Me you will wind up with a bunch of excess geometry. It's a bit like trying to fold a piece of wrapping paper flat on the top of a cylinder. Instead of folding those excess bits flat as you would in paper, you'll need to select the geometry and then run Intersect Faces. After that you just go around and delete the unwanted bits. [image: 5ssY_Knob.png] I had a little play with your knob. CAMERA STAND-1607.skp

Of course I learned it from Dave and his great blog/tutorials

thank you bro! i m trying Artisan, it works in a content way. Thank you!