thanks greyhead for the input. i went ahead and redid the neck portion again. i didnt even think about bending the neck at the same angle as the headstock. i need to open my mind about sketchup and realize that anything can be done. i tend to rush and get a sloppy model and then just try to keep working with it when problems arise. i will post pics if i can get the volute just right. till then i will keep the back of the neck the same. thanks again.

Sorry it took me a couple of days to get back. Surprise birthday party put me in "summer" mode real quick. No worries with the .tiff stuff. I was able to work around it, and all the info i was able to find said that .png was a better format anyway. i'm in good shape now. I just wish i was better at post processing. I've been busting my butt on some of the tutorials posted - but i was trying to use GIMP rather than PS to really no avail. I think i'm going to return this GIMP how to book and just shell out the dough for PS. Its just easier to work around - no bugs. I'm not trying to be a programer, just a proficient designer. LOL! Anyway thanks for the trys. Archi

I thought this a very interesting problem so I tried playing to see if the situation could be improved. There's some good news but it might not be viable in every case... I made a similar model to ridix's one. I could see the same problem in mine when I had the edge display turned off. The white phantom edges would appear particularly when the shadows were turned on. The trick I found that could improve things was to temporarily turn back on edge display and select an offending line. With it selected, look to the 'entity info' panel and note there is an option to "smooth". (If you don't see the 'entity info' panel, right click on the line and choose it from the top of the context menu). To the selected line apply that "smooth" option. Switch edge display back off and you will see the white phantom edge will be gone. For some models this technique will work very well. For others the "smooth" function might alter the display of some faces so much as to become a curse. (I can anticipate: "Damn that Ross! - Damn him to hell!"). The 'smooth' function works by rendering the faces connected to the edge with a varying tonal value. It can be hard to anticipate the effect it will have. Faces defined with lots of edges can get their display screwed up when the edges are smoothed. In conclusion don't just select all edges (easy in wire-frame display mode) and 'smooth' them all. Do that and your faces will look wonky. (The resulting inflated look is fun but rarely useful). Instead apply it to offending phantom edges and see if the effect looks good. Play. The best way to have fun. You will learn while you do. Regards, Ross

If i may add, any exhibition space/reception/foyers interiors are also welcome. thanks

thanks for the tip bye

Cut and Paste works. Thanks.

@outersketcher said: ...Anyway, I figured it out. I needed to ungroup each element before intersecting them... Well, esson learned; the intersection lines are always created in the context you are in. If there are two groups and you are outside their context and you make an intersection, the newly created lines will be outside the groups so they won't create faces within the groups.

It depends how detailed you want the material to be. The maximum size I have made (or can be made without wasting your time and processor power) is 1024x1024 pixels. But this size really ought to be reserved for materials like a large sample of brick or stone that can be repeated without any obvious tiling...something like maybe 20 bricks wide by 50 bricks high. Other samples of textures can be much smaller. Most would be either 256x256 or 128x128; some can even be as small as 64x64. It is best to keep the sizes as multiples of 2 in this way, because they are more easily handled by the graphics processor....not a problem with one or two materials, but if you have dozens of them any small delays can multiply. In order to get some materials of a specific aspect ratio to tile seamlessly, you may not be able to have both dimensions conforming to these sizes, so just choose 1 side and let the other be whatever it is.

Thanks Guy..great hints Andrew

Oh thank you!! What a quick reply! bye

What i want is to draw a house, and define a way from room to room as (directed/undirected)graph in sketchup. After that i would like to parse skp-file and extract that graph, so i can run some algorithm on it. Hope this is understandable so far, my english is not so good as it should be , if not so ask please... Thanks a lot for your help!

Hi Ahr8tch, hi folks. My answer given in Google groups at: http://groups.google.ca/group/sketchuphowto/browse_thread/thread/6f0c3e16287b97f4?hl=fr The Large Tool Set is an assemblage of the most used tools taken from the various Tool palettes. This set don't contain all the available tools. My suggestion is to turn off this Large Tool Set and to turn on all the other Tool palettes that contain the tools that you normally use. These palettes have a grab bar and they can be positionned around your model window to suits you needs. Just ideas.

Hi Jugganaut, hi folks. If you have smoothed the edges of your I-Beam, all of them, you wont be able to push or pull the ends since it will be seen by SU as a curved face. If this is the case, make hidden geometry visible and then unsmooth the perimeter of the ends. You will then be able to pull your beam to whatever length you want. Just ideas

Eureka! I just forgot the simple task of resetting the axes to its original position. All is well now. Thanks again for your help!

I played around with backlit leds today. Here's a little array. The visible part is a transparent cylindrical component with a plexiglass material. The lighting is from five small rectangles that are coloured emitters hidden just behind the cylinders inside the 'work surface'. Just an idea, not to scale. Bob [image: QC9v_leds.jpg]

hi, i had a similar problem but used photoshop to find the best alignment for the model, save a JPEG of the image and then photomatch it with the SU model to get the orientation right just so i could get a nie high res shot with shadows etc... its not the solution but it might save you a bit of time

Thank you Pilou. I will try the method and the script. edit: Piou thanks again. This is exactly what I was looking for.

Try this: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=253&t=9342&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=

Thanks also DAVE R, there are a lot of secrets in that fabulous software. MALAISE

Kurt, About the unfilled loop: 3 out of 4 corners are coplanar, obvious (3 form a triangle and are always coplanar) One solution: the bottom corner near the green axis needs to be moved in the red AND green direction to fix things, to position it perfectly below the other endpoint of the vertical black line => result=blue. But there is more going on here. These examples give the most problems because you do have the topline that shows as being on axis but it is NOT!! It is within tolerance, so to speak. The vertical black one is without tolerance hence shows black as it should. To resume: the short vertical black has an angle with blue that is without tolerance while the longer top red edge has an angle within tolerance with red. How to check: change your settings as follows: Window > Model Info > Units > change Format: Fractional to Decimal with high precision. Open your nested component to reach the bottom level, the edges and endpoints in question (i.e. ultimate edit mode). Use the ‘Text’ tool to label the 4 endpoints. You will see following coordinates: A= 13,559926", 2,049547", 12,394535" C= 10,567197", 2,049763", 12,394535" B= 13,559926", 2,049547", 11,842216" D= 10,569578", 2,048282", 11,828312" Here you can see that A and C don’t share the same green value hence aren’t even on red axis. How to fix this side is easy but how much that influences the rest of the geometry depends strongly on how accurate the rest is. Redrawing the arc you should do only after fixing the position of the 4 vertices (here: moving C AND D) Hope this helps, Wo3Dan p.s. Why is correction important. When not, you will constantly get conficting situations for the inferencing engine 'gets confused' about inferencing with almost on axis endpoints and the corresponding axis itself