Welcome to GSCF. I believe what you need is 'Tools on surface' (TOS) plugin. Found here: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=11212&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=tools+on+surface

For a Windows machine the path to Plugins is C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 7\Plugins Anssi

I'm having this same issue, I've looked on the SU Animate Website and didn't find any help. I've posted the same question on their website in search for some answers.

Hi Danielle, Once a "cut through" component is placed in the model, it will always glue to (and cut through) the plane it was placed on. If the face of the two storeys are exactly on the ame plane, it should cut through there but if there is the slightest difference, it won't.

OP: Grouping vs layers - I need to go watch those basecamp videos again. There was one guy who worked one way and another guy promoting the other way. *Absoultly, use the way that best fits your needs and modeling style. Just a suggestion OP: Since you offered, I'd certainly be interested to see any changes you or anybody else wants to share. i will have to see about that now due to time restraints. During the holidays i had time on my hands, but now things are starting to get rolling again OP: and was sort of amused and bewlidered waching what the "orient faces" did and didn't do to the various faces - wondering why some faces are associated with the command and others aren't. SU has to guess as to which faces should go out and which faces should go in. For a human that logic is simple to evaluate, but to put that into an algorithm and have perfect results every time is quite challenging. The only info available to the program is the faces normal(vector3d) and the surrounding objects. I suppose it could be made perfect, but the compute time might take hours OP: I should probaby just pull the walls out to represent the added thickness of the siding. I'm just trying to get the dimensions correct so no officials are surprised. Actually, the sheathing should be overhanging the foundation ... <mumbling noises>. i would create the thickness using the [PP] tool and just "paint" it with a texture. That way those "sadistic" officials will get what they need. . Then you can pull it over the foundation quite easily. In this case you really DO need to apply the window afterward. Good Luck, come back any time

Thanks Chris, That did it!

Hi Kanonfodder, hi folks. To add to Gaieus's post, the lines must also be in the same context. For example, if 3 lines of a rectangle are in a group and the fourth line is outside the group, even if the endpoints are connected and the lines are coplanar, the face will not close. As for drawing curved surfaces like screws, you need to approximate them with a serie of faces that are all connected by common edges. Smoothing theses common edges will give the appearance of a curved face. Practice with a simple cylinder to get an idea. Draw a circle and pull the circular face to get a cylinder. If you show the geometry that is normally hidden, you will see that the cylindrical face is composed of rectangles that are arranged in a circular array. Each of the edges that are common to two rectangle is smoothed. Try to unsmooth theses edges. You will get a rough looking cylinder. Smooth them back to see the nice smoothed look reapears. Read the help about smoothing edges. Search the forums for screws, helix, spiral, etc. Just ideas.

I've been working with a tiny model too. One of the things that I did, aside from changing the precisions, is to work in a factor that is 1000x the real world size. When I finished all my precise work,I scaled down to the real world size and everything looked just fine. Then I "Saved" and lost a bunch of faces. It appears that SketchUp does a "validity check" on saving and finds all the things that become distorted when you scale down. I just couldn't work as tiny as I needed to no matter what.

Wow, thanks. Looks a lot better than most of the LuxRender ones. Is there a good photo tutorial like http://www.3d-software.ch/fileadmin/pdf/SketchUp_Maxwell_Tutorial/tutorial_sketchUp_maxwellrender.pdf this one?

You might be able to export solidworks->SU but you certainly wont be able to get anything usable from SU->solidowrks. This is because SU is a poly modeller and so only approximates surfaces, whereas solidworks is a solid modeller and uses maths to describe its surfaces. With regards to exporting and importing, it is pretty easy to approximate a mathematical surface as polygons (i.e. exporting from solidworks to SU) but near impossible to go from the approximation to exact mathematical solids (i.e. exporting from SU to solidworks.)

@marchy said: Installed the program again as administratorbut same error message came up !!!! opened as administrator and it worked closed it down went straight back to icon, same error message. Do i have to go in as aministrator every time? I installed SketchUp as administrator and now I can just double click on the icon and I don't get an error message. Although ometimes Vista does lots of weird things.

Hi Perk, I thought it was Jim (Foltz) who wrote such a plugin for a similar issue but I couldn't find it among his scripts. Try searching the Ruby forum maybe I remembered wrong.

Yeah, that's what happens (if I read you correctly).

And with that I could finish my first major attempt with sketchup, I present to you, a camera base.

@jean lemire said: Hi Paul, hi folks. Read SU help about the Dimension Tool. The Dimension Tool can auto select lines, arcs, circles and Freehand lines when the cursor is placed over one of these objects and will produce the dimension accordingly as per the following list: for a line, its length; for an arc, its diameter (by default, this can be changed to radius); for a circle, the same as for an arc; for a Freehand line, the length of the segment you are clicking on. Of course, for this to work, you must be inside the context of the object to dimension. If the object is inside a group or a component, you must first access the inside of the group or component. For a line or a polygon, you must click on one end of the line or one end of one side of the polygon and then click at the opposite end of the line or the opposite end of the side of the polygon. You can also dimension from a circle or arc or polygon center. You can dimension from a line midpoint. If you want to use two clicks to dimension any distance between two points from which you can obtain an inference, you do not need to be in the same context. You may use one or two temporary lines to get clikable points to start and/or end a dimension. After placing the dimension, you delete the line. This trick allows you to place the distance between to parallel faces, for example, or form the middle of a face to a point. I suggest that, after reading the help and seeing the video tutorials, you practice with all kind of dimensionning, including these tricks to get the feel of this tool. Play with the settings to position the dimension text, to orient it and to edit it. Many funny possibilities await you. Take a look the three SU files joined to this post for ideas. Thank you for your help, I found it. Thank you also for the files I downloaded

Thank you guys, that's really satisfying to do, just looked at your webpages/blogs - when im more confident with SU i'll ask about the whole rendering thing! thank you for taking the time to respond, Stew

Gaieus and remus, Thanks for responding! I found the problem to be my newbie failure to recognize the importance of Groups and Componets and to use them.

Thank you Gaieus and jessejames! I really appreciate your assistance. I'll give your ideas a try. Cheers, Jeff O.

It all depends when and what situation you need it. Cool question and topic though - both pro and contra examples (not reasons for sure).