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

@themaskedunit said: damn, one would think that for as supposedly innovative program as this, there would be an easier way to make a curved plane... ah, well thanks That's the problem...there's no such thing as a curved plane. A curve is curved, a plane is flat. What you are requiring is a series of planes arranged to form a curve. The easiest way of achieving this is something similar to the demo by James. You are likely to end up with more than you need, then simply delete the excess. [image: N6eR_curved_plane.jpg]

Thanks, Alan. Lots more to explore. I can do the vectors from dingbats in Paint Shop Pro (old version of Corel) and see where to go from there in reducing faces. As to the push/pull, I'm still having some problems with the shapes I've tried, but it's got to be relatively easy once I get the hang of it. For some reason I'm having problems getting the dingbat to the surface of the model at the size it should be unless I use an interim rectangle. Yes, I do understand alignment and the spacer. Saved the dingbat component in the component menu, but it "forgot" what size I wanted it to be. Two things I've learned. The first is that the font doesn't have to be installed for SU to use it. That's great. Second is that a couple of the fonts I've tried flat out won't work with SU. Appreciate your advice. "In case all else fails, follow directions." I'm trying.

Thanks Daniel

thanks guys, i know it was easy!

Oh thanks a lot! I've done it correctly! Bye

Could you post a pic of the problem? cheers.

If youve got the subd and smooth plugin, you can get a similar effect (a model that is very triangulated) simply using the subdivide feature a few times.

remus thanx for the tip... indeed i was working in mm. but it wasnt that small. i was trying to make a wooden table which has plywood tiles of 500mm x 100mm. but i scaled it and than made the arc without the cut thanks again. ps im working on a imac 24" with leopard. i got this mac on my work just a couple weeks, im not really sure i like it. native im a graphic designer and used to work on amc a couple years a ago. I loved the mac always for it steady system, but this system sucks a bit!!! SU suddenly quits aswell with other programs. i read that tiger is much more stable

Thanks for all the help everyone! Not sure how to make things out of the TIN or use the ruby script, might try doing it with the tutorial on the horn first. I'll see how things go

Pilou and Wo3Dan, Creating hide/unhide shortcuts will help me a lot I guess. Thanks again for your detailed answers.

Well, I tried completing it. Not that good as I hoped but not that bad either. It's untextured but here are pictures. The spoiler was the best part of the car. I made that before the car. [image: 7quC_side-front-view.png] [image: MVA9_spoiler.png] [image: nLmY_Side-view.png]

ridix, Yes, SketchUp can print 1:1. I do it all the time for my shop drawings. If printing 1:1 requires a paper size larger than you have in your printer (or your printer can handle) then you have to select "All" in the "Tiled Sheet Print Range" and it will print it on multiple pages which you can then tape together.

If you do an automatic conversion of the eps to dwg in Corel, you are likely to end up with any bezier curves being converted into thousands of tiny straight line segments...all of which will end up as a face if extruded into 3D. This will bring your system to its knees. It's far better to do a controlled conversion of curves to straight lines, having just enough segments to keep the curves looking reasonably smooth, but no more than that. I've explained the process here. for both Illustrator and Corel. BTW, converting to dxf tends to bring the shape into SU looking like a cookie cutter...extending into 3D, but with no faces. Dwg is a better option. You'll probably need to ungroup/explode the import before you can work on it.

You can preselect the follow me path if you want, just select the path, click the follow me tool and click the face. As for keeping your geometry clean, dont forget to use lots of groups and components in your model, they help immensely in keeping your model clean.

Thank you very much - i had moved my axis so reseting it worked!

No problem

Thanks again. Though I do wish I could model it.

If you apply the texture to a group or component the the texture will be applied the all the faces of the group. In order to apply the texture to one face only you must double click the group to put it into edit mode and then apply the texture to the specific face. [image: 2sbF_texture-1.jpg] [image: jFeb_texture-2.jpg]

Ah, building a ship, ain't you! I love this stuff, really! You'd probably need a 3D grid then. Go to Didier's Ruby Library Depot and get 3d_grid.rb. You can even create a nice, custom grid then some scenes with Standard viewsand save your (empty) model as a Template so you can start with it when launching SU.