You can select once all plant-components in the scene, made in SketchUp, then in the material editor (Basic mode) check and mark "Use color map" them by double-clicking in one window (invert mask, if necessary), then on the context menu RMB or in Edit menu select "Replace by (keep proportions)" with Alpha Plane, then in the menu "Orientation" enter 90 degrees (Pitch). Then the only piece mark that it is Billboard, Adjust plane proportions and Keep vertical should marked too, it is possible in a single window, not closing after each point. It turns very quickly, I also use a lot of plants in my work [image: 8381b5e0de4bt.jpg]

@chango70 said: Is there a daylight analysis tool (which will be very useful for Architects)? http://www.light-up.co.uk/index.php?t=gallery&p=6

I have played around with the settings and think the ones that most achieve a SketchUp 'lookalike' are 'Cad Optimized Lights' which I think is the default and 'Shaded Illustration'. I attach some screen shots of where the settings are along with a sample, Corner Cubby. Mike Corner Cubby.pdf [image: jfqk_CadOptimizedLights.jpg] [image: xOWN_ShadedIllustration.jpg]

@adamb said: And lets not forget LightUp which will do realtime Insolation analysis based on Geolocation and give Kwh/m^2/day for tracking and non-tracking surfaces. Adam I was thinking about LightUp for this purpose Adam. I wonder should you consider going down the 'Energy' road with LightUp as it would appear that you would have the foundations laid! Its all above my head unless its put forward in a simple and straight forward package which Open Studio would not appear to be If you need guinea pigs for such a development process I am sure that the architects and engineers here would be more than willing to work with you. For me, while pretty pictures are nice, getting the Green element right is far more important Mike

Sometimes the path that a mac saves to will default to a recently used folder. Try a spotlight search of your file name, and will probably show you the folder it is defaulting to. I change my paths with a great little program call Onyx. But I'm sure a mac user on the forum can give you the OSX method.

cheers for the help guys! i defintely feel a lot more clued up on it now! i guess i would be right in saying that there isn't really one use for it, it's one of those all in one programs. would you agree solo? uv unwrapping and exporting in different formats is defintely very cool, maybe i'll research little bits of this softwware at a time! i did e-mail right hemisphere (the people who wrote deep exploration) asking what it's primay function is, when they get back to me i shall let you all know what they say! pav

@pixero said: Unity (and others) may not look as good but at least they have the possibility to make a presentation available thru a webpage or an exe that can be put on a cd. I couldn´t agree more. I actually got kind of carried away discussing something that actually has more to do with game modding than with presentation itself.

Hi B uttlamo, With su 6, you can always go to Google's official site and download the pro version: http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60107 If you don't have a license for it, it will gracefully downgrade to the functionalities of the free version and from then on function like free after the 8 hours of trial working time.

I have only tried it once but I had great results! I exported my model as Collada .dae

Cheers I will look into it.

We have released new versions of IRender nXt which fix this problem. Thanks for your help Chris.

oh nice! it makes them very fast too ok, i think i have enough new info to experiment with for a little while.. i'm sure i'll have some more questions in the future thanks so much for the help so far!

Another solution : Use Twilight for render the Mover animation! You will have a perfect quality but maybe a longer timer to render By Ecuadorian

Tx Sheik, I understand the plugin works with PC's but I have found no one yet who used Maxwell on a Mac. I thought there were a few more. Maybe the recession hit the Mac crowd harder ... There was a guy who wrote MXM reporter as a plugin and also run into to a coding problem with the path to the MXM library. He solved it somehow. I am afraid at NL they have other priorities right now. I have several different system and they all have exactly the same problem using autoMXM with the new plugin. If you test it with small files its not a problem but slightly larger files take forever to export were the previous plugin exports within seconds. Francois

Do you need to pay for the exporter or is there a trail version?

If you apply materials in Sketchup (even just colors) then export to artlantis. Then while in artlantis you will be able to select by material. If you do not add any materials in Sketchup then it is a pain to add them in artlantis. Scott

The Mac version of Podium 1.7.1 beta is ready. It's available in the Registered User area. Happy rendering

Thea Render technology previews is updated with a sneak peak at the material system. http://www.thearender.com/forum -> Technology Preview (registration required).

As far as i know there is no easy method for getting polygon models (SU geometry) to NURBS models (solidworks geometry.)

Thanks Chris, Sorry for coming back so late. Problem was with zip file creating extra folder with file name. Extra folder creates errors! However, still having problem with Projectsketch_loader error is showing. I have the Projectsketch_loader.rb in the Plugins folder [image: HGRs_error.jpg]