Ha! The naughty kids must have clicked everywhere they reached and then forgot to reset the rendering styles! I want serious punishment! Now! Joking aside; I think in a couple of weeks you're going to learn from them. How old are they? (ah yeah, middle school - all right...) I have some experience with kids ranging from kindergarten to college. They are indeed great!

Go to Window>Styles>Edit>Edge and deselect Profiles. This should help a little. Regards, Bob

This little video sums it up rather nicely. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azFbj5hK9o4

It's at Window (at least on the PC) > Styles > In model (the little house icon) > Edit > Edge settings. But profiles are just set o 3 pixels so it shouldn't explain that huge difference!

What I would guess is that those facets aren't coplanar therefore SU also triangulates them. Try to delete one of the diagonal edges and if the face also disappears, this is the problem. Another way would be to use the text tool (make sure your import is ungrouped or you are editing it if grouped) to learn what the co-ordinates of the vertical edges are. Place the text tool on an endpoint of any of these edges then on the other endpoint. By default, the text tool will show the x,y,z co-ordinates the two first of which should be the same for those edges.

Obviously I didn't mean that you're snobbish or anything and I can understand it was more like a "metaphor". Indeed however I started to play around first - instead of watching videos or even reading the manual - and only started to look for information when I'd already reached my limits in finding out things on my own. BUT I can say that SU had been fun (and quite easy to discover) even to that point otherwise I'd've probably dropped it. So Jasmine, if you learn a couple of basic ideas and rules (how NOT to screw your models), it will be fun and easy to learn SU and become proficient in what you want to achieve.

Hi Jean, You can understand the reasons but I still use the "Old Guide". Yet on the Text tool page there is also some mentioning of double clicking though it's a bit more obscure: @unknownuser said: [image: tip-32.png] Tip- Double-click on any face, while in the Text Tool, to display the area of the face as a Text entity. Thanks for your tip however...

I have the same problem, nice guide.

C'mon, this place is the "Hi, I'm new here, let me introduce myself" dept! The best place to post your first post!

So I have it working now!!!! - I have icons and evertyhing its fine!! thank you!!! I bet you where going to tell me to put a file called DEFPARAM_Dir in there, well I have, i read that else where, maybe TBD actually told me. so its working ok. Is Putting plugins in the Users/Library/Application Support/SketchUp7/Sketchup/Plugins something new to look out for?? - so once it doesn't work in usual place put it here?? see if it works fantastic plugin by the way I'm using it already and its only 10 minutes old. get in.

Nicely done AndriyG81 Wow, your generosity is a great example of the helpfulness here on SketchUcation. Mike

Hi Everybody Ships and Hulls are your hobby ? Let's see this free program : http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeship/ (GNU public) It's fabulous and quasi-professional UI to build hulls... ( export > *.obj into SU works ) 8 models are drawn and you may build your own.Language option is implemented. Thanks to his father : M.v. Engeland MALAISE [image: rCHi_freeShip.JPG]

it works just fine for me. try rotating around while push/pulling to find a vertex on the back side to reference.

the purge did not work, what I did was took everything that was on layers back to layer 0, put the entities in groups and components, and have tried to sort things out via the outliner. the file size dropped from 11.8 megs to 1.2! So that was a one thing that contributed to the large file size. I sent the file to my engineer, but he has yet to respond...it is the weekend. thanks again for your support and insights. aloha red

exactly my thought ..

besides the follow up tool you could use Profile Builder.

Success!!! Thanks Everyone. [image: 3312922684_03bf54d650_o.jpg]

Thanks James, The conpet of "dynamic objecdts" is amazing, I will try to study and may be one day Il'' be able to build my own ones. I couldn't find any dynamic esclators in the wharehouse, as correctly Gaieus reports. Nevermind... Thanks for help

I am getting similar issues, my model is done on a MacBookPro, 10.5.6 and sent to a PC machine with one gig of ram. they downloaded Sketchup and cannot open the larger model 11.8megabites, but can a small handrail model.. I have sent this to another mac machine and it opened fine, we did the window>model info> statistics thing, it said everything was okay still having issues with the PC machine being able to open the larger model. any body got any ideas what to do??? thanks red

If you have access to Adobe Illustrator, you can use the customise brush tool to create the slat profiles along a curve, and then import the results into SU.