@kumba said: Trying to use SketchUp to create a layout of my house. Managed to work something together pretty decently, but it looks like I accidentally drew the whole thing on the wrong axis. Using the push/pull tool, extruding the walls visually in the right direction reveals I am actually going negative on their height. Yet from what I can tell, I am extruding up along the solid blue axis, which per SketchUp's own documentation is the one going up (otherwise known as the Z-axis to me). I'm either viewing this incorrectly, hitting a bug, or I need to flip my model a certain way. But I can't seem to figure out what is going on with flipping and then switching camera angles. I assume that, if I were looking down towards the layout, the model should appear as a light shade of blue, with the underside appearing whire (if I were to look up at it from under the ground (let's pretend I have x-ray vision for a brief moment)). Thoughts? Your normal model axes are XYZ / RGB with +X/Red to right, +Y/Green into the screen and +Z/Blue up the screen. Click the 'Iso' [perspective] button in the Views toolbar to return to this. You will also need to switch the axes on under View.Axes menu. The -ve axes' direction are colored too, but they're shown dotted. Of course you will orbit and zoom around the model and these will change on screen to face other directions, BUT the model should be aligned to these in its normal placement - typically you put the bottom-left-front corner at the intersections of the axes [the ORIGIN] with the XY[RG] plane [Z[B]=0] as the 'ground' - you can also set the ground/sky as visible colored raeas in you Style settings to help you orient yourself in the 3D world. It's also possible to change the axes and reset them temporarily using Tools>Axes Menu - you use this to temporarily set the axes for something like a roof plane - that way what you draw gets inference snaps to that plane's axes rather than the model's base axes... You can reset the axes back to the model axes this way: first Select 'nothing', then right-click over one of the axes and in the context-menu there will be a 'Reset' item if the axes are 'customized': reset them back to the model's axes, if so... Now let's assume you have the model axes set and visible and your model is drawn rotated in some way from where it should be. Make sure everything is visible [i.e. all layers are switched 'on' and there is no 'hidden' geometry etc - use View Hidden Geometry to toggle hidden things on/off]. Now Select everything by a right-left dragged fence - and make a Group of it - this isn't strictly necessary but makes your life a bit safer and easier... Now we can rotate/move everything in one lump... Select this group and use the Rotate Tool to rotate it so that its floors are 'flat' in the XY[RG] plane. If you have drawn it 'orthogonally' [with its main walls parallel to the axes - even the wrong axes !] you can probably set your rotation tool to a R/G/B plane by orbiting so that it's in the required quadrant of the sky/ground - lock it by holding down 'shift' until you snap on a rotation point; start to rotate in the required direction and type 90.0 to rotate the group correctly. To rotate something about an arbitrary edge drag the rotate tool along the edge and it snaps square to it. Now you should have you building-group rotated correctly - use the Move Tool on it to locate it sensibly - perhaps with it's bottom-left-front- corner at the ORIGIN. If the main floor level is above the 'ground' [e.g. the building is on a 'plinth' or 'veranda'] make suitable allowances for this in the Z/Blue location... You can now explode the building's group... BUT it might be more convenient to leave it grouped, so that when you add a site layout etc they don't get their geometries sticking together - which is one of the main uses of grouping in fact... You can also easily work inside the group to continue changing it - and you can even set the model to not display the rest of itself when editing - which makes accessing things behind others in another group/component etc MUCH easier... Hope this helps...

I did not have too many, but can I remember a work-around that I think I used. This may not be the one that worked [when traveling, I always remember the route to how I got lost and end up getting lost again] I set up a new drawing using styles, model info, ect to get it how I like, I than used Mass Materials Importer to get them into the drawing, Save as template, use for default. Then one by one over time, when I used one of them in my models I saved them into my materials folder. It means you have to use colours in models a lot for a while and it's annoying if you purge your drawing and then need one that you haven't moved, but you can always open a new drawing from templates and import the model over. anyway without being able to check my memory...

Menu Window/Components/Shapes or load from 3dwarehouse some geodesic volumes [image: iJxu_ball.jpg]

http://www.inglobetechnologies.com/en/products/arplugin_su/info.php perhaps

Yes, I used only the line tool - but then also deleted all the edges that could be deleted. If an edge cannot be deleted without losing the face with it, it means that it divides two, non-planar faces therefore necessary. At times like this you have two choices - check where the model went wrong (it could even be the elevation import) or silently soften that edge and don't talk about it.

@steved said: " There is a new program that allows the user to write award winning movie scripts! it is called microsoft word" Hi Steved. Pardon my ignorance, but is there an even better, and freeware application called "Open Office", which unlike word, won't cost you a penny? Or am I missing something here? "Movie Scripts"??? What's "movie scripts" got to do with SketchUp? A nifty little viral marketing plug for Microsoft perhaps?!

Hi Kirk, What I suspect is that you have some issues with your graphic subsystem. In SketchUp, open your Preferences panel from the Window menu and Go to the OpenGL settings. Here disable ("uncheck") hardware acceleration to see if this is the case.

@jim said: The mesh in the first post isn't very clean - there are many edges that are not connected to anything, and many that do not actually intersect. You really need to get in close to find them, but they are there. It might explain some of the results of using some of the plug-ins. Is this sort of thing a use for TIG's manifold plug-in? All of the rail ( cline) profiles do not intersect( except some places at the ends) with the bulkheads and if one uses a cutting plane and tries to create them there are points that look obviously out of place. Trying to fill in with a bezier curve can be done but the hull then is not correct. Working with the orginal post model with out correcting the profiles and itersection will probably result in problems just getting worse IMHO.

Welcome to SCF.

Pilou - as we say 'I let the cat out of the bag'

@chris murphy said: Thanks guys. I think SU is going to be fun, and i look forward to all our interactions. Thanks again. Chris And good luck with your house!

@edo said: Hello all, just got in this forum...so im gonna need your help ... Ok, i want to make a soccer stadium about 30.000 seats and i would like if is posible invite in this stadium on each seat a fan that's interested in this stadium and i would like to put there names in seats ? is it posible with this software or i need look for another software. any help with this i would apriciate, thank you all Edo 30,000 seats? Each with a different name? OK, you can do it... but what for? It takes a lot of computer power to just display the seats, let alone the stadium...

Last November I put it on my IT wishlist for this year. So I am hoping to get a copy to play around with soon. It oes look intersting for visualization. Chrs

Hi Rod, Every component has an insertion point. This point is the component's axes. Normally, the axes is placed at one of the component's corner. Use this point as the focus when placing a component to your model. When you place a component and the insertion point seems placed in the middle of the component. Most probably, the axes is still at the component's corner, but you view it from the opposite side. Insertion points in Dynamic Component behave differently though. Harrynov

My 'true tangent toolset' only works on coplanar arcs/edges etc The no coplanar edges need a twisted curve - perhaps the bezier tools would be best ?

I have the rounded corners plugin but I can't get it to work. I for got trying follow me. Thanks for the help. Todd

Yes, with LightUp you can "bake" shading effects on your materials and export those in certain formats. There is a fully working, 30-day trial of it - give it a "trial" (Sorry for the terrible pun but I could not resist )

@gaieus said: @3dbuilder said: ...When saving a model, Sketchup should automatically purge the model of unused components and materials... No way! I constantly work with models where I keep things only in the "browser" and such. ... this should at least be an Options option.

Well, if it works only without hardware acceleration, it means that your video card is not fully OpenGL compliant. This also means that it will not "share the burden" of displaying the model with the processor so when you get to the limits of the processor, you will experience problems with bigger models sooner. All in all - your SU performance may decrease. Best would be to upgrade to a better card (well, sooner or later). Have a look at the Apple OpenGL Chart for a comparison. Otherwise I would recommend to upgrade your SU version to 7, too - although the Hardware requirements may even be a bit higher (especially OpenGL version - I think SU 6 needs 1.4 while SU 7 needs 1.5)

Thanks for everyone's help on this issue. What this was all about, is that I wanted to show the effect of using a 360 Panaromic HDRi image as background for rendering, and a smooth dome makes it easier to see how the HDRI is reflected. I wanted a good tool to make a quick, smooth dome - especially for reflection examples. The image below uses a Free HDRi provided by Bryan James. He made a 360 photo of the interior of St. John's Cathedral in NYC. The Sketch Up model is a reflective ground plane, and a reflective dome. Everything else is generated using the HDRi for lighting, shadows, background and reflection. [image: Z7Y9_stjohnsHDRI.jpg]