There are scripts to 'flatten' geometry - if that's too draconian try using the Sandbox tools to Drape the edges down onto the surface a a large rectangle you've drawn below it so again then are coplanar... A little more detail about this mess-up might help us tailor a better response ?

LO is probably the most flexible... but there's also my **2D Tools** 2D Text tool that makes a 'flat' bit of 3D-text which sticks to a surface [actually a tiny bit above to avoid z-fighting], and can be in 'text'*, in any installed font, any fixed height, any standard color, style[ B/I ] etc etc... see its guide for more details. There are no leaders and the text works best viewed 'flat' in plan or elevation - but it doesn't "float around" and potentially change size with view distance like normal SUp text !!! *Note - to make line-breaks you have to include \n in the text in the dialog [until it migrates to a webdialog]. Later on you can edit any aspect of a piece of this text [componnet] my selecting it and right-click context-menu and Edit 2D Text - and entering new details in the dialog that opens... This 'text' is a component so copying it means that editing one instance changes all other copies - useful if you say the same text lots of times - confusing it you don't think it through [perhaps try make-unique if you mess up]...

Merci beaucoup Pilou, That helps a lot A+ ! LeRoger

And accurate, and time saving!

Good point MuseumMaker, The Science For CG is certainly a must to read. There are plenty of good tutorials in CGTalk.

you could also try edrawings. you can password protect your files and even put an expiry date on them. @unknownuser said: Save as EXE/ZIP with Built-in Viewer eDrawings offers a complete, self-contained communication tool since no other viewing software is needed. eDrawings files can be saved as self extracting executables and zip files that contain the viewer as well as design data for sharing & collaboration. [image: skp20.jpg] http://edrawings.geometricglobal.com/Downloads/eDrawings+for+SketchUp/index.aspx

I've had this problem too, the best advice I can give is to treat it like a real animation if you want to have a man take five steps then you need to make five men in different positions first then place them where you want them all on the one layer. Then assign each of them to there own layer. After this turn off all you don't wont to see and make a scene, turn him off and the next in line on and make another scene and so on. Don't work with scenes and layers at the same time it can get real frustrating, its not a strict rule, the ants were added after the centipede was up and running with no problems but other modifications have unexpected results and figuring out why is frustrating . This is an animation I made with this method however because each centipede occupied almost the exact position I had to go about it slightly differently. Save it first Centipede and ant last.skp

congrats, looking good. baz

Thanks Gaieus, that tutorial is very useful. I have been told that the latest install does come with it though!

A smaller tapering cylinder along a 3D spiraling helix staring at the impeller's blade ends should work better with transparency and a good bump-map ?

Thanks. I can't seem to find a .skb that has my changes, but c'est la vie. Lesson learned.

Nice work and design Kevin, the link was originally not working, but it is now. Enjoyed your site.

I preferred Twightlight render. Very easy to learn and quite affordable.

@leedeetee said: I am wondering if there is a way to be able to see the size of the various components and items within the model? Sort of. Assuming you have a train, delete everything but the locomotive. File/Save As ... locomotive.skp. Load again. Delete everything but the caboose. File/Save As ... caboose.skp. And so on. File/New. File/Import locomotive.skp. File/Import ... through caboose.skp. After each import, click the origin. Each piece will be a separate component in the completed model. Clicking the origin will reassemble perfectly. And each piece will be much friendlier to work with than the 25MB full model. Trick: open locomotive.skp. Create a layer named locomotive. Select all. Use Entity Info to move everything into the locomotive layer. Save. When you import, your completed model has a layer named "locomotive" with a single component, also named "locomotive".

Help might help ??? http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=114539 Right-click context-menu should have 'delete' as an option for a selected compo's icon in the model pane of the compo'browser. Similarly 'save_as...' Save as collection etc etc etc...............

@greentoaster said: having the center of the cylinder coaxial with the green or red axis seems impossible. For all these problems, drag out a rectangle near, but not touching, your work. Push/pull up to box size. Triple-click, group. Place the thing you want on the appropriate face. Hold the shift key down to lock orientation. Go do your thing. (Works for Circles, Polygons, Rotate tool, Protractor, ...

Oh sh...t sorry, I totally forgot that question.

I work with similar models in the landscaping industry, What works for me is to have your terrain that you created with your sandbox tool (make sure its exploded - not a group) Then make your road a group, edit the group and use your pull tool and pull your road up past and through your terrain. Then exit out of your group and select both you terrain and road ground and then use the interest with selected tool. Hope this helps

So there is a little "trick" that I left out. The steps to scale to absolute lengths would be: Select everything you want to scale Select the scale Tool Scale the selection from one corner - don't worry about the size at this time. The Measurements box will not become available until you do this. After scaling, type in the dimensions including the units - 10",10",6" - and press Enter Because inches uses the " as the suffix,you need to use the Shift key, but the Shift key resets the Measurements box. This is why you need to go ahead and scale to an arbitrary size first, and enter the absolute lengths afterward. If you were using mm, then you could grab one corner, begin to scale, and before completing the scale operation, you could enter the lengths: 3mm,3mm,3mm (for example.)

Thank you so much for your 2 cents worth I really appreciate your answer! In order to give you more details about my pc, I had to download a little program (SIW for Windows) to learn what exactly I have under the hood. That program gave me far more information than I care to know, but here is in essence what my little pc is made of: Acer Aspire T135. Physical Memory 448MB. Virtual Memory 1056MB. AMD Sempron 64 3000+FSB800MHZ. 3 PCI and 1 AGP. OS:Windows XP Home & Linux Mint. I bought the machine maybe 4ish years ago for surfing the internet, writing letters and so on. This is definitely not a designers’ computer, but I am on a very tight budget so I can not buy a new machine. I am trying to model the house that I am currently living in – a traditional French farm house located in the French Alps. I have uploaded 3 pictures showing the project for you to see: http://www.monsamoens.com/sketchupexamples.html The model is made up of many layers of course so that Sketchup does not freak out, but even so, it is getting super difficult to more this building around in this stage of the project. I am making a video of this design and have tried to export scenes as AVI files and Flash files with Sketchup, but I found that the quality was simply awful and totally unusable. Could this be due to my non-existent graphics card ? To get around this, I export the scenes as individual png frames, and then string those frames together using VirtualDub to make AVI files. This works fine. You recommended an older GeForce card. I looked them up on the French Ebay and 27 cards are available, from cheap to OMG! The SIW program mentioned above says I have 3 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot. However, it does not tell me if the PCI slot is a PCI or PCI express slot! I have ordered a 1GB choco-bar of memory for my machine, so that should help the critter a wee bit. Maybe if I paint the computer case a Ferrari red with a nice white stripe, then that would speed things up… Thanks again for taking the time to reply.