Ooh cool, it worked just fine for me and I don't have a key or anything here at home. I only got through the intro, but I'll watch it later. Looks very interesting, thanks for the link! Chris

Toby, Thanks for your help as well.

Thank You. - Scotty

Hi Solo and Gaieus, Thanks for the feedback. I have enjoyed the good cheer and banter. And they say people with engineering PhDs from Purdue ain't got no sense of funny. Actually the title of the post says it well: "simplest animation approach sought". Also in my post to the Welcome New SketchUp User of May03, 2009, I have mentioned the reasons for this work. The images will be used in a case study & article that I have just finished. The subject is aviation safety. In 1996 there was a night time air crash with a AeroPeru Boeing 757 where the static ports were accidentally left covered with tape ( see photo of wreckage ). This led to the generation and display of erroneous flight data that ultimately caused the plane to impact with the sea. I have come up with about 25 solutions, and this is one of the simplest ones. The airflow causes the cover to lift and clear the ports. Another uses a laser light source. All of this work is voluntary and on the basis of Common Good. I hope you like the new use for a Segway. Appreciate your feedback and ideas so far. I will keep asking them questions. .. ss [image: BUkh_ports.jpg] [image: qetX_Fig.8.jpg]

It's a basic tenet of Sketchup that to separate geometry you must either separately group the geometry or make it a component and then place instances of it. By default all geometry sticks together inside a model, or group or component. Hiding geometry or putting it onto layers that are switched 'off' will never separate the geometry. Layers in Sketchup are NOT the same as layers in CAD. Layers are used to control visibility NOT geometry interaction. Let's imagine a simple building. You'll probably want the walls on the 'WALL' layer and the roof on the 'ROOF' layer. That way you can switch off the roof and see inside the space from above... To put things onto these layers so you can switch them on and off you should make the wall geometry with everything on Layer0 and then group the parts, make that group's layer WALL. Similarly make the roof geometry on Layer0 and group it [note how you can separate stuff early on - draw a couple of the roof's edges and group them immediately, edit that group and then everything you make inside the roof-group remains separated from the rest of the model, whilst you can still snap to any of it, drawn over it etc]. Now put the roof on layer ROOF. Now you can hide the roof or wall by simply switching off layers. Also naming the roof-group and wall-group logically allows you to select these in the Outliner... Putting the model's raw geometry [or basic geometry inside a group/component] will only stop it being seen - it will not stop it interacting with other things. It is usually best to have all raw faces and edges on Layer0 - keep the active_layer Layer0 [radio button], the visibility of layers is controlled by the tick-box...

If you use the GlobalMaterialChanger.rb script you can use it with NO selection so the whole model gets done, enter the 'mystery material' and replace it with <<Default>> (none). You can choose to 'mine' down into all groups and definition/instances etc. It might take awhile on a big model...

Hey Thrundar good to know there is one more brother in Christ

Hi Sharina, You may need to activate the toolbar from View (menu) Toolbars (and there, somewhere at the bottom). Also make sure not only to install the .rb file but the whole folder the script comes with directly under the Plugins folder.

Hey, glad you got it working. Too bad it took so much work! Chris

I noticed it when i got a new computer. Sorry for leaving that out.

Yep it's a LiDAR based scanner, I don't rent it though my colleague owns it and I borrow it from him. I have access to the software for it, Leica's software is called cyclone, which is great, but It isn't all to mac compatible so I need to be on a computer with a license to use it. That is where sketchup comes in, I'm trying to see if I can use it effectively vs other software as it's free and works on my mac. Seems if I decimate the point cloud to sub 10k points there are no problems, so I'm just rendering small parts at a time and them bringing the surfaces together.

Keep in mind that you only need to draw half of the back splat if it is symmetrical. Make that half a component, copy and flip to make the opposite side. Hide the seam lines to complete it. [image: 2db88f60.jpg]

ok thanks

As well as how the script might decide what and what not to dimension we have all forgotten that dimensions are barely accessible through Ruby [layer, hidden etc and that's about it]. You can make an external component and insert it with X-scaling between the end points [with rotation to suit] and a Y-scaling for the offset for the leaders etc... then explode it ?

@remus said: not sure what an LWK is, could you expand a bit... 2)window->styles->edit->turn off profiles 3)The bes think to do here is make your own texture. the provided textures are pretty crap, really, and tend to tiles badly (i.e. they look bad when you use them for large areas.) If youve got photoshop this should be fairly simple, the main thing is to make sure there are no distinctive patterns that repeat. this goes for colour changes as well. once youve made your texture, you can import it in to SU by going file->import->'use image as material' LWK...sorry..Linework from CAD. I just imported it. Some of it was at the right elevations, but most, whoever did the original LWK did set it right and therefore I have LWK up and down and not really right at all. 2)window->styles->edit->turn off profiles OMG...THANKS is NOT NEARLY enough....HOW COOL IS THIS NOW!! I do have photoshop...I tried most of the day yesterday (boss was out of town) to create trees and such and could not get those to work out either. I think I got one to work right but wasn't really great. I will have to work more on textures CAT

As always, YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST thanks again aloha red

Yup, that video came to my mind, too. Note however that while it may work (and look nice) on faces with such "little" curve, if the curve is "deeper" (i.e. say close to a half circle) when projected, the material will be distorted on the sides. For your model now it's perfect of course.

If you right click the installer and click 'run as administrator' you might have more luck.

Hi folks. I would simply draw a line that goes from one end of the object to the opposite end and centered on the two ends. To avoid messing with the model, I would group it if not done already. Then, after going in X-Ray Mode, I would select both the object and the line and I would grab the selection by the midpoint of the line and move it in order to snap the grabbed midpoint to the origin. Finally I would delete the added line and deactivate X-Ray mode. Just ideas.

As for "keeping copying them", scroll down to where it talks about Linear arrays here.