Hi remus, I tried your suggestion. I found out that the smiley in the 3D warehouse is very big in size, measured in feet. So I used the scale tool and knocked the image size down to 2 inches and also the window. I then exported it as a bitmap. I then used Pro Motion to make the background transparent and saved it with a png ext. I then brought it into my Visual Basic 2008 application and the background was transparent. Now I have to some animation. Thanks very much for your help. In case anyone reading and need some more explanation, I am more than willing to do so. Douglas.

Although those shapes are not exactly like Taff's gravity well (which could be made by using the follow me tool to lathe the shape), they could easily be made with certain plugins. Have a look at Soap Skin and Bubbles and Bezier Patch. They are perfect for kind of regolar, still organic shapes.

@lonewolf said: I see alot of talk about Photoshop use in conjunction with Sketchup, is this a necessary program or are there alternatives? "PhotoShop" is already a kind of synonime for all image editing programs. There are other alternatives, of course, I myself use Corel PhotoPaint for instance but there is also Gimp - a free alternative for PS. In any case, you don't necessarily need an image editor but it may be useful to have one in your arsenal.

uhm.....good

ok this dose not explain why it is like this but i know how to behave not having this trouble anymore. lets blame it on the endles nirvana of programming reasons thanks for your help cu all. PS:off topic message WANTED DEAD ORE ALIVE looking for programmers experienced in linux audio projects ALSA and JACK brute fir and so on real money to be made with us... good and fair payment

With difficulty, althoug thats not a very helpful answer. I think your best bet would be whaats subd and smooth plugin, although it does cost $22 or so. it is very good for organic,flowy shapes such as this. Heres the link: http://www.smustard.com/script/SubdivideAndSmooth

sorry Jean Lemire, I dont get it.

Hey Guys, Many thanks for your responses, looks like I am certainly not the only one with this little dilemma. I think I might have to persevere with SPIRIT. It allows you to reference a sketch-up model into SPIRIT and work in SU which auto updates. I will have a look at power Cad, sounds interesting. A good example of what I am talking about came in to the office this morning. It is an upgrade of an existing shop tenancy. They want presentation 3D's to present to the Body Corporate for approval as well as a builders Preliminary price. So if I was able to produce some professional looking preliminary design 2D drawings from my SU model I could knock it out quite quickly and effectively along with an outline spec. I look forward to the day where Google are able to offer a plugin or even a very simple cad system designed around SU and as Intuitive as SU. If I had had the time and expertise I would do it myself Stan

u need this http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=153&t=6912 and later clean the unwanted lines anyway i think it was better if u used for first time push&pull and scale tools

At 9MB it's very unlikely to have started life as a SU model. The warehouse is full of cars converted from Max or Lightwave (mostly) that have been imported into SU then modified.

Chango..you're spot on about Vray..it also has a great PDF manual too!

This is very good advise- it will save you from troubles down the road in your work flow if you follow it. I find that in the end it's not at all as difficult to actually keep organized as you might thing at first. If you keep even simple things organized it is becomes habit; and since large SU models are only a bunch of small models put together, you should never have trouble if start out with good habits.

The problem is that the follow me tool explodes the curve and it is no longer a curve entity (with the center point inference). Now you found the answer - this ruby simply rocks and after a while you will even forget that it is not a native SU tool that you have been using for ages (also download the weld ruby - invaluable help!).

Hi, You can do this with LayOut, if you have SketchUp Pro installed. Place your model on a clean page, and scale the viewport to be slightly larger than the page. "Select View > Full Screen" to go into full screen presentation mode. Double click on the model to enter the 3D view, and pick your scenes from the context menu. You can also play animations from the context menu. john .

Great work. Thanks Boo. Rastus

Hi, I have used CAD for years. At first I thought SU was inexact but I just needed to learn how to use it--and for architectural work it's fine. Also I've seen extensive mechanical engineering work on it. Use the measuring tape tool, protractor, snapping and inferences. There's demos on these. Try Aidanchopra.com videos. For some things commonly done in CAD it will not be as efficient. Big thing in CAD is effective dimension and text tools. Actually spend a lot of time on that side of things for working drawings and SU is limited there. It is not a CAD program, designed for making working drawings and such. I've seen it incorporated in a CAD workflow. But it is not a toy if you use it right for modeling. Just check out the Gallery. I've heard mention of one person trying to use exclusively SU for working drawings. Try using in conjunction with a simple CAD 2d program that can export DXF or DWG. I actually don't know of a cheap one, or if that would be reliable enough for you.

The double shelves are on the wrong side. Just kidding! Good Work. Make sure it is attached to the wall with a strap etc. I like all the stuff in it. I have those box drawers too, but not modeled. Have fun.

Hello, I guess a safe uninstall will never hurt but maybe you can just install the English version on top of the existing German one. To be honest,I've never encountered with this situation yet so whatever you do and succeed, could you post your experiences?

I've used that layer and I don't recommend it. It gets really tedious to hide and unhide in the outline in my opinion. Its hard to know that something is turned off burried 4 levels down inside a group by using the outliner. All I can say about the weird lines getting lsot on weird layers is that its something that used to happen to me more frequently. Now it almost never happens. I think it is just because I have gotten better at keeping my geometry cleaner and making sure I create groups and components cleanly. But using any of these methods you can do very details work in SU. I modeled Neutra's house down to the outlets and light switches. On that model I just used the outliner to control my geometry. It worked all right, but it felt like it was more difficult than necessary. Other modles I've used layers better to control visibilty. Anyhow, keep it up. Feel free to post models that are getting messed up and let others look at them. They might have tips on how to keep it cleaner or how to clean it fater. Have fun, Chris

THNK YOU LARRY SHELDON