This might help. http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2007/07/wrapping-image-around-cylinder.html There is also a new(ish) UV Tools ruby script in the Ruby forum that, if you set it to cylindrical, will wrap an image around a cylinder precisely once. There are posts here and on the Google Groups site that deal with such things...cycloramas. There are also a few posts dealing with complete skydomes, which will also work; if you need to look up a little more.

Thanks guys, I'll try these ideas out. I've loaded skin.rb just need to work out how to use it! It keeps joining to only one corner of the second face.. Nick

Thanks for the heads up on this! I've been doing a lot of scaling of grouped objects and components and these little tidbits will help my aching mind.

I think I'm having the same problem. In my case it seems like there's no problem selecting faces on the sides of the model, but when I try to select a face that lies on the top, then the faces on top acts as if it wasn't there and a face underneath it is the one that actually gets selected. If you picture a box, I go to select the top face, but SU actually selects either the bottom or one of the sides. Weird... No problem selecting faces. Behavior seems to stop when using X-ray (ie. selection works like it should). I tried ticking and unticking boxes in the preferences but that didn't work. UPDATE: Tried once more turning off hardware acceleration and problem seems solved.

@remus said: Id like to particularly recommend CGtextures, from that list. Its a very comprehensive site, although there is a download limit (unless you fork out some cash, of course.) Thank you all for those links! I think that CGtextures is one of the best free textures sites! Bye

Import the image as an image, not as a texture. You can then treat it like a piece of geometry and manipulate it into position using the Move and Rotate tools...and also Scale. Position it over the round end of one of the components...although not actually making contact...then explode the image, sample it (Paint bucket + Alt) and paint the projected texture onto the round end. As far as putting a rectangular image onto a round surface, you just need to make sure that you have enough excess around the edges so that it will fit without starting to repeat itself.

@maverick83 said: Hi all The title says it all... I haven't figured out how i can import a 3D solidWorks design in SU... Is it possible? Do I need a third party software to achieve my goal? Thanks a lot!! p.s. i can save SolidWorks designs in these file format (i don't mention photograph format like .jpg ecc..): .prt .cgr .xaml .3dxml .u3d .eprt .stl .wrl .vda .sat .step .igs .x_b .x_t .sldftp .prtdot .sldprt Save to an acis file. Open DWGEditor. Import ACIS file. Save as a dwg. Import in Sketchup. Works great.

Ark, If you are "trimming" grass components, you will probably end up with some unbearable edge/face count in your model. As grass is (most of the time) not shown from very close, it may be wise to use png images with alpha transparency like in this grass component. Note however that this can also be a bit heavy to use all over the place so you might want to put it onto a separate layer and only turn its visibility on when exporting images.

Hi Tim, As Dylan says, there can be one or more access points for a plugin (aka. script, ruby.) A script can add a menu-item to any of the available menus, it can add a sub-menu with multiple child Menu items, it can add a Toolbar accessible under the View > Toolbars menu, it can use a context (right-click) menu, and finally it can make itself available in the Windows > Preferences > Extensions dialog. Once you get the .rb file into the Plugins folder, the easiest way to load it is to close and restart SketchUp. If you don't want to close SketchUp, you can load the file by opening the Window > Ruby Console, and entering: load "script_name.rb" (but replacing "script_name.rb" with the filename of the .rb file you've installed.) This is also a good way to do it if you are having trouble with a script because you can see any error messages that would prevent the plugin from being loaded.

Thanks Gaieus....just needed to trigger the old memory.

View (manu) > Hidden geometry. When you create a circle and immediately afterwards type a number followed by a letter s (like 48s) and hit enter, it will have that poly count. Also, until you do something to the circle (say extrude it), you can right click on the edge and choose "entity info" where you can still change the segment count (both methods work for the polygons, too). The free version is only limited in its export functions mainly and all modelling tools are equally available with the pro version.

I hope, Marlise, you did not tka that offensive that time! (As you know I didn't mean it that way)

There is an option on the shadows dialog box that says cast on ground, just uncheck that and you wont have to move the model. Post some pics in the gallery when you're done [image: Ejz4_Untitled-1.jpg]

@maverick83 said: Hi all Thank you all for helping me. I don't know... i have done exactly as lewiswadsworth said and actually i got my design imported in SU with only a few mesh lines that i successfully erased, but after that i've tried to import a little more complex item in SU and the result wasn't as good as the previous one... There are always too many meshes... It will take a hour to get rid of all those lines... And i've even selected the merge faces option in SU... Isn't there a way to send all those lines to hell without spending half the day? Thanks a lot!! No, curving surfaces in SU will always be composed of multiple polygons, unlike what you see in Rhino or Solidworks (which have different methods of describing geometry). Your best bet is to completely select one of the screws (every part of it) and then Right-Click. In the context menu, choose "Soften/Smooth Edges"; when the window pops up, move the slider until the edges you want hidden are gone.Make sure you check the "Soften Coplanar" box. They're not really gone, of course; they've been hidden and the face-normal spread between multiple polygons so that the multiple-surfaces look like one surface on your monitor. If you turn on View menu> hidden geometry, you can see and select the smoothed edges and individual polygon faces.

Awesomeness, thanks

You can build styles manually, without the use of the Style Builder. You need to rename a copy of the style to .zip extension, to see how its put together. The strokes are dictated by a series of png files.

There are really some great tutorials here

You just copy the script (*.rb file) into the Plugins folder of your SU application. Hopefully you have access to the Program Files folder. Then you can run it from the Plugins menu in SU (you will need to restart SU).

Thanks For all your words of advice I very much appreciate it. Thanks for the link Edson, It is the reason why I have been so late in coming back, I have spent a good few hours watching the clips. I have moved the model nearer to the origin and can zoom in and out ok now. I have split the 4.1km scheme into 10 segments so I will have to figure how to join them up again. diolch yn fawr Stephen

Hi Jaimie, hi folks. I had the same problem with my iMac and migthy mouse out of the box. If I remember correctly, I configured my mouse middle button as button number 3. Just ideas.