I am out of a job too but luckily going back to uni in September. Right I am taking the opportunity to learn Rhino and Grasshopper. Maybe you could take a course in something you've always wanted to learn? Just a suggestion.

Bob, you are welcome. Dylan, hope you will model it , also the germans had something interesting on rails in WWII, here it is: [image: 280mm-kanone-5-e-leopold.gif]

I really like the intuitive way of drawing in Sketchup. Microsoft tries to copy it for their own program, but I haven't ever found something similar for linux. There seems to be no way to do 3d on linux (assumed that I do not want/not have the time to learn blender). My following thought might be absurd or insane: What if Sketchup would have always been open source? How would we feel in modeling or suggesting new ideas or reporting bugs to be fixed? Graphic cards to be supported and so on... Currently, Google does not put much resources into developing SU, which forces us to include everything with slow/sluggish plugins (for additional features, plugins are ok, but not for missing basic functions). There are not much progresses for the main application, it is intended that Sketchup is extended by the community. I'm myself very skeptical about this and don't know if it would be really preferable, but maybe one time, they will clean up there profile (SU is no web app)...

Shawn Tennant worked on turning his PSP into a render engine, running Linux, and then be able to turn many of them into a render farm. I think he succeeded to some extent. I used to have about 4 machines hooked up at home as a mini render farm. It is remarkably useful. Its nice to be able to send a render of to other machines and keep working without the render hogging all resources. Chris

There is an option within microsoft for office 2007 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D951911-3E7E-4AE6-B059-A2E79ED87041&displaylang=en agrazdi

Here is a video of how he made it...These two videos even made it into the Sketchupdate! http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2009/07/he-made-music-video-with-sketchup.html [flash=480,295:1tht3y39]http://www.youtube.com/v/FIwf7Wzrn4k&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0[/flash:1tht3y39]

Still in the process of scanning all the albums, scrapbooks and loose photos my parents have collected in their 70 plus years, I'll tell ya that fiddling with the photos on the bed so Photoshop Elements 5 could recognize the gaps (and you must leave decent gaps) so it can separate the pictures out of a scan bed full was too much hassle. Not enough contrast on the edges of photos, like those with light skies, made this an impossible job for Elements to handle. My HP 6210 all-in-one printer/fax/copier/scanner helps me sit and scan as many as two hundred photos in a day (long day though), a scan bed full at a time without restarting the software. It'll stay open for me to continue adding more pictures and when I finish the batch on the glass, I just hit new scan and repeat selecting each photo by double clicking in the center of the photo usually or use the box to narrow down to one photo like using a crop tool and move that box to the next photo when done capturing it. When done with a batch, the software will save them all in a format I choose in a numbered sequence. Even if you run some software that causes a crash while scanning, the files scanned in the middle of a batch are in a temp folder in bmp format to recover manually. Worked great for the over 4,000 photos I've scanned so far. Next come slides and 8mm films... Thank goodness for audio books as they keep me from getting bored while my hands do the loading, unloading and pushing buttons.

Hows this? Select the capture method, dig the window, and save to file. [image: 2mFz_temp.jpg]

When they start to edit and make changes they will see very quickly why those groups and components would have been good to use. I am really quite pleased that things seem to be going so well. The councellors had no knowledge of SketchUp before the camp and I spent only 10 hours training them directly on the camp materials. They totally got it. I needed the one on one training at first to see where there may be problems and this first run of the camp will allow me to do some tweaking of the program. Then I will just record the training sessions and make that available to the next licensees. I pleased as punch!

Congratulations Rich. This is where you find out that all those things that you took for granted…like going out to the pictures or a restaurant without having to make detailed prior arrangements, go out the window. This is where you find out that staring at the little bundle of humanity that you made, for hours on end, is more entertaining than watching TV. Enjoy every minute of it…especially the first year or so when he actually stays where you put him.

@sepo said: Hey Chris ....more like several hundred thousands. I saw them in Frankfurt 2 years ago about licensing. The price tag was just under 1 mill Euroes. Wow...those are incredible figures. Must be that by that time they didn't think about targeting an architecture audience yet.

@mike lucey said: My first little baby I have written a few 'demos' for that machine... Those times... I sometimes download the emulator on PC with a lot of old games . Actually I have had a Timex 2048 48kb, later extended to 80kb and finally to 128kb. I was using a tape recorder which was allowing to write ca. 300kb on each side of 60min tape , which gives 600kb per tape and stunning transfer of ca 170 bytes per second [image: 8dhy_timex2048.jpg]

It's simple to do vizier if your mouse software allows it. Both Microsoft and Logitech have this feature, but not every model mouse seems to support it. You would generally set a Keystroke.

@alan fraser said: In that case, why don't you try pre-triangulating the model prior to obj export? THere are rubies to do that, or you could export to 3ds then bring it back in.. I did not know about the pre-triangulating rubies. I'll see what happens.

Thanks very much Tomasz you always give good links, but this one is superb. @solo said: This is what the worlds school systems need to show the youth, I agree. We must share it.

I must say Im a bit disappointed. Geez. . .and All this time i just thought it was powered by The sheer force of my charisma.

this is great Coen, lots of interesting stuff. Thanks a lot I can get lost in sites like these... How do you find sites like these? Thanks David

Hi Gaius, As you said, the main issue for me is to present "best practices" in my contribution. That's why I wanted to present my article to the community before finish it, but I think it'll be difficult...I don't have much time to work on it, and holydays are coming...so people'll be less present here. But, I'll try !! Edit : And I forgot the most important, the article is in french...so it might be difficult for non speaker to help !! Bye and thanks.

Thanks for the help

I'm thinking about building a rig with Win 98 so I can play syndicate wars on it.