Are you asking this or saying? (BTW there's no kmz download for this one so I can't tell how it would behave in GE but I doubt it would animate). You can do the animation in SU, can't you?

In any given scene, you can reassign individual edges to a layer that is turned off. So it shouldn't be difficult to make a topless box with selected edges in a "off" layer. What do you mean by: "I use hidden layers now, but it doesn't work if camera is oriented to show both inside and outside." That, it doesn't work if you look down from the top as in the below? Also, I think, skp2dxf via free DoubleCad XT. SUs aligned, parallel projected (2D) scenes are exported to individual work sheets. They can then be cut and passed into separate 2Cad instances, each then saved as a dxf (worked in 2Cad pro beta). But, easier to pay for SU pro. [image: 8Vcj_Box.jpg] Box.skp

Welcome, Here are 2 plugins that can export a stl file: Didier Bur has su2stl, and cadspan has another sketchup 2 stl exporter.

Hmmm. I must be just special. Will have to explore more. Thanks

But as an "exchange" for this convenience,sometimes you have to scale something in more than one step. Still worth the effort.

They're definitely nice..!! Thanks for sharing... [image: evxl_birds-KT.jpg]

SU will go pretty big, but I'm not sure if it will go that big, you may need to scale it as Jean suggests. Of far more importance is the fact that if you were actually to make the planets to scale with the interplanetary distances you would never be able to zoom in on them. They would simply disappear as you approached them, due to a phenomenon known as clipping. Think of it as a depth of field issue...in order to accomodate a model that's a few billion miles in diameter, the closest you would be able to approach any particular object would be a few million. If you make a 'compressed' version as seen in most solar system diagrams, this wouldn't be a problem...although you still probably wouldn't be able to zoom down onto a planetary surface sufficiently close to see a moonbase, for example.

Gaieus, thank you for your advice. I'll try the push pull (and use default styles) and see what I come up with. I'll post the results.

Jean's suggestions are good and generally used when there is a problem like this especially with some CAD imports (where you can never make sure if there's some stray geometry far away). Also, did you make sure that your model - no matter how "not big" it is - is not too far away from the (original!!!) World origin? This would create the same issue. If it seems to be close to the origin, right click on one of the axes and if "Reset" is available in the context menu, click on it and it will place the origin back to its original position. Another guess could be a far away georeferencing. Are you by any chance modelling for Google Earth and have taken a GE Snapshot? Also (as I see you are on SU 7), in the very bottom left corner, there is a light bulb like icon (BTW what the heck is it supposed to be?). Hover over it and see if your model is georeferenced (by default in Boulder, Colorado). Other than this, my only idea would be to upload your model here...

If you have the control SW (Catalyst, I guess), make sure that you set "Antialiasing" (and maybe "Anisotropic filtering" - whatever it means ) to application controlled (see attached). [image: ZOoM_Catalyst.jpg] Note however that the control centre will not substitute an updated driver so indeed make sure your driver is updated. On the other hand, this machine at work has been the second one I have had Ati card on and neither have been really perfect with hardware acceleration on (although thank God, I haven't had display problems with them either).

The reason is that i need these arcs to get segmented ("polygonally") at these certain lengths later due to a certain textures structure i work with. Can you give me a hint about harnessing dynamic components to do the job ?

Hi Anthony, Still out there? Wanted to post the following message in a PM, so i wouldn't bother the rest of the community again with my endless cabin, but the PM seems te stuck in the 'outbox', so i'll post it anyway. Sorry guys! You helped me a lot some time ago with the cabin and in the beginning of March we (my wife and I) are going to the shelter to do some preparation and then in April a lot of us are going to help in the nuteringproject (?) (castration and sterilisation) of dogs and cats and education and about 4 or 5 of us are going to do the jobs in the shelter. Unfortunately this is a little group so we cannot do all that we wanted to do (we also were planning to do some jobs in another part of Bosnia but that will have to wait. Anyways, the cabin will (I really hate this) not be created in april but i am planning a trip in July with some other people and now i am trying to manage that we put some concrete floot in the shelter in April, so that we can start building in July. The cabin i liked very much, was your try 'a lot of wood max size' and i am still counting and drawing and calculating to be sure that this one can be build because if it can, then i can ask to create a concrete floor. Some minutes ago however, i heard how much it is going to cost to do that and that is a lot of money (for a volunteer foundation) so i am thinking about creating some kind of wall (only a couple of centimeters high) to put the cabin on (so no concrete inside the cabin). And that could be possible if the beams that you put on the roof would go down and we use balk-05. Pff, long story, what i would want to ask (since you already helped me so much), could i ask you for some more help if i would be needing that? (like which beams have you used in every wall (i am looking too ofcourse but some groups i cannot find the properties) and which one need to be cut in order to achieve that so i can tell the other people how much work we probably have to do and to figure out in what order we have to stack them) And (and this is really bad), i am looking at your skp and start to wonder why the beam on the roofs are not in the middle and see that i made a mistake in one of the beams... Beam-04 really is 4.20 (this is correct) but the hole in the middle really is in the middle (2.10), and not at 2.00. Would this change your drawing? I hope not, and i really hope that this year we can finish the cabin (and call it The Anthony) regards, Fred.

ok my machine is possessed .... I couldn't see them in your post but this one worked, maybe the gnomes did it I can see them now [image: 20090216201730_38s.jpg] thank you,

@alan fraser said: Hans, In answer to your email,yYou can select whether you want go use an image as an image or a texture after you have selected File > Import. The image options re on the right of the dialog box, under the Preview window. You can't divide an image into parts in SketchUp, you can only choose to project the image onto an object that is too small to display it all. If you were then to scale the object bigger, the rest of the image would appear. The method is as I described above...import the image nd scale it to the size of the wall....then explode it, then group it to keep the geometry separate from the next stages. Draw a brick aligned with, for instance, the top left corner of the imported image, group it, then duplicate that group to create the rest of the wall...again lined up with the imported image. You can then sample the image and paint it, brick by brick, onto all of the different groups. Alternatively, you could simply divide the exploded image into many rectangles using the line tool. You can then group each rectangle separately and move them around. I hope this is now clear Thanks Alan. Now is it clear to me. Hans

I don't think you need to examine a Viz book for that - this is quite common in many rendering apps. SU is a surface modeller which means that "solids" are represented by "hollows" surrounded by back faces while front faces are to represent the "real world surfaces" of real objects. Most of the rendering engines (as well as solid modellers) can't interpret back faces so we need to be very consistent with them.

plz some1 i really need this in 10 hours

During the early days of experiments with split processors, there were ones that were single core but when it came to apps that could use multiple cores, this single core could work in "hyperthreading" (i.e. like nowadays multiple core) mode. I have a 3.8 GHz processor in my laptop and it can do that (so for rendering I can use it as a dual core). Probably the ideal machine for SU. True that together with the adapter it's about 9 kgs / 18 lbs and though it has two batteries, when unplugged, it will run out of charge within about 30-40 minutes (well, an old one anyway). Still, at least portable (with a wheelbarrow). Unfortunately this kind of development proved to be a dead-end.

The .igs file should be in your skindigo, i think it's called default.igs. Its worth noting that this will be deleted when you start a different render, though, so it's better to go plugins->skindigo->export scene if you plan on resuming the render.

Thank you everyone.I'm familiar with the use of tape measure tool. I still can't get it to work. I think I'll try to reinstall SU. I'll let you know what happens.

Hi McGuyver (hm... I seem to have been beaten but anyways...) This is not a stupid question at all and you guessed right; it's especially relevant if you want to export your model to other applications (I know it causes problems in 3ds format for sure). First of all, you need to understand that since in "real world", everything has some kind of thickness, therefore virtual, 3D models should also have thickness. Then there is a difference between "solid modelers" (where this "thicknes" is symbolised by some kind of a solid object) and "surface modelers" (like SU) where we only "pretend" this thickness by creating hollow boxes. Now the faces in these latter modlers obviously have two sides; a "front" (that should always be oriented to the "outsie world") and the back (which should be orinted towards the "inside thickness"). Normally only front faces are supposed to be displayed to the viewer (as you never go inside the thickness of anything unless you are a ghost going through walls). In SU, the "default" front face (depending on the template you use) is whitish or light brown (beige) while the back face is some kind of greyish-bluish. You can however change this at SketchUp (Window on PC) > Styles > In model (the small, house icon) > Face settings (the second icon on the top). See attached image (I'm on a PC so the dialog might be a bit different but you can get the idea) where I deleted one of the faces so as to reveal the back faces symbolising thickness oriented inside. [image: 38O3_FrontFace-BackFace.png] The best is to get used to correct orientation at the very beginning of both your learning curve as well as the beginning of any (later to be complex) model. You can always right click on a back face (or a whole selection of back faces) and select "Reverse face" from the context menu. Also, you can right click on a properly oriented front face and select "Orient faces" although with more complex models (especially when there are excess faces inside a "solid") this may not work properly. There are also plugins that automate correct face orientation with more or less success.