ok.....will do that... thanks gaieus..really appreciate your help..

I tried starting with a cylinder, texturing it and converting it to the shape you need via FFD, but the textures went crazy...

hello i use Art-cam to Model/sculpt faces or anything organic, it is an expensive program at around five grand but i use it commercially and it was provided by the company..however there is a forum for art-cam users who will sculpt for you ...other than that there is an app called mud-box from alias and also there is z brush from pixologic..all these programs require some extensive work coming to a usable workflow but if you are artistic they are the bees knees, and a real compliment to a wacom. mud-box is about the most versatile for freeform organics in a simple fashion z brush is a steep but rewarding learning curve and art-cam is the type of software used by industry for routing wood or metal but is hight field technology or is "flat" 2.5D ..mud-box is 3D there are apps geared more to animation then Modeling in which the mesh is manipulable like hexagon or maya, or any other "subdivision modeler"like studio max ..cheetah for mac.. They normally require the use of bones and constraints that move the mesh in scale and dimension giving the "movement" through animated key frames. Google virtual clay or subdivision modeling look also at sensible technologies ...awsome.......for me anyway

I'd like to label -tag- every edge in my draw with a incremental character A-to z, and possibility to start with A or B.... Thanks

Awww, I'm trying to be lazy about it. When you have ~400 components on a level, replacing all the text can be kind of a chore. I'll just plop them down after I do the mirror function.

What Miguel says... You can always check what colours/textures your (double sided) faces have by right clicking on a face and selecting "Entity info" from the context menu. You will then get the dialog with a small thumbnail for either colour/texture. [image: jdUs_DoubleFace.jpg] Notice that in this exmple I set the "Front face" (which is the "whitish" by default) as an opaque grey and the "Back face" (the "bluish" by default) as a 100% translucent something (in this case what the colour originally is is indifferent). Translucency is indicated by that diagonally divided rectangle of the colour sample.

Depending on the shapes you want, you might also need "Soap skin & Bubble": http://www.tensile-structures.de/index.html

Okay, in this case it's what I also mentioned. I think you should have given your floor a thickness by first PushPulling the whole starting face to 20 cm, THEN offsetting (or drawing) the wall thickness and only then PushPulling the walls. You can still give the floor some thickness by using the PushPull tool combined with the Ctrl key.Press Ctrl (and keep pressed) and PushPull your floor to a thickness. You may need to correctly re-orient the resulting faces.

@unknownuser said: If I'm using the program wrong, so be it. It doesn't seem to damage my workflow at all. If you have a settled workflow and able to follow it without any problems, no-one can say "you are using the program wrong". What we mean here (and especially in the "Newbie department") is that if someone has no experience or a well founded workflow, (s)he shouldn't switch between layers without really knowing what (s)he does. @unknownuser said: The only real problem is that I can't make a component that can "cut" across multiple components or layers of geometry, and have to rely on intersections and clean-up. That's just a limitation of Sketchup and not layer related. That's true - it has nothing to do with layers but components which separate geometry and prevent things from interacting and affecting each other. But never mind; components cannot cut through thick walls anyway so once someone models with double faced walls, needs to intersect things (or use other tricks) anyway.

I usually create a separate curved section the same proportions as the logo. Import the logo and paint to the section then apply to the cylinder. Remember, if the logo is not bounded by a rectangle, lets say it's a circle, you will need to create a transparent bg and save as a png.

@gaieus said: Hi Hans, Without using plugins, the intzersection method is the only efficient way to make a shape like that. You seem to use it efficiently and with a little routine, it shouldn't be too cumbersome to do it. However there are two cool plugin; ToolsOnSurface and JointPushPull, that would make such modeling faster and easier once you get a hang of them. With Tools On Surface, you can draw shapes (circles, polygons, lines) as well as use tools like offset and such on curved surfaces as well as "normally" only on single faces. With Joint PushPull, you can do what it says; PushPull these curved surfaces into 3D thus giving them thickness. Nice chair BTW Hi Gaieus, Thanks for your helpfull info The jointpushpull plugin was already in my plugin folder Tools on surface seems me excellent. Is downloaded and it works. Thanks Hans

Chris, I'll give that script a try later today and see how it goes. Hopefully I'll learn something. Much thanks for your help, Barry

For the SU Viewer you still need to send an skp file which could be opened in SU if someone wanted to change anything.

@gaieus said: Anyway, I have now added you to the Woodworking usergroup so you should be able to see/post in that forum. @damathecat said: OK, OK,,,, now I'm really embarrassing myself.... where IS the Woodworking Section???? Maybe it was full moon when I wrote the above... You weren't a member despite I thought I'd added you. Sorry; try now again.

To Gaieus and anybody else. If there is one thing I have learned over the thirty years since college graduation, it is that you never stop learning. Another thing I have learned is that there is always someone out there somewhere who has more knowledge than me or is smarter than me and since computers and forums have come into existence these sources of knowledge and wisdom can be accessed for answers or ways to find answers. You guys are part of the source. Thank you for that. mitcorb

3D modeling is one big "figure out how?"

Hi Halkun (and welcome). The method you are doing is the way it should be done in (native = no plugin) sketchup. One thing you need to know however is that intersection lines will always appear in the context you are in at the moment of performing the action (i.e. in your case, outside of either component) this also means that you can only perform a boolean intersection if the two shapes are within the same context (i.e. in your case they are not two, separate components) Well, that was two, not one, but the solution is: after placing both components and the other geometry, explode everything, do the intersection and delete unwanted geometry. There is also a fine "BoolTools" plugin should you need this operation very frequently and especially hate deleting unwanted stuff. It's $ 10 however - but that's only a snack at McDonalds... It works with separate groups (and end up with one, "joint" group)

yeah, it works, thanx a lot! Ralph

@architekturn said: If you just want to see the tumbnails... just download the program "3d Photo Browser". That will allow you to see tumbnails of 3d max, sketchup, 3ds, etc... thanks for submit good stuff. that 's great tool. I think that is good software for who use windows xp64 bit http://www.download.com/3D-Photo-Browser/3000-2193_4-10264200.html

One way to learn, is to tke the advice here, and make a sample scene of your model; couple of walls with a window, portion of roof, yard, driveway, and trees. Small to cut down render time. Set your render settings for speed, and do a bunch of quick changes. Work on one thing at a time, like the grass. Try different textures, scale it, rotate and recolor. At first, don't change many things at once, you won't know what is making the difference. In the hands of the right person, even the very basic stuff in SU will often do, but there are times you have to get better textures. Do this to get a feel, don't try for perfection, everything will change when rendering the big model. The glow around the trees may be a problem with the renderers alpha support. If so, you have to get better, or 3d trees. Take out the gray looking trees, they don't match the composition. For variety, scale, rotate, skew, combine, recolor, and flip the trees. And of course, you got to get shadows. A good rendering is as much about composition as it is about render materials. Try different angles and views. 2d components look best when viewed at eye level. If it doesn't look OK in SU, the render will not help. Often post processing makes a huge difference, still, its best to first depend on SU, then the renderers, and only if necessary a post processor. Oh, at first, plan to spend at least 4 time as much time as you might think you take.