@d12dozr said: ...or just the native polygon tool, set it to 4 sides... The only problem with this is that you only have the option to chose the centre point and the a corner [circumscribed]. What we need is the ability to select the centre point and then an offset perpendicular to an edge.

That is one of my most important dreams! I'm always in trouble with texturing meshes

On the odd chance you don't need all of Tom's selection tools, you can get Instances from Smustard.

Thanks Gaieus for remembering my work. Unfortunately I got a bit disillusioned with trying to make the new version of the machine compatible with Macs, but now I have picked myself up and restarted making a new version from scratch (step by step method). These machines will enable their owners to build hierarchies of scenes (what I understand this thread is about) as well as collections of components (to allow them to appear in many different scenes without layer and outliner complications and restrictions).

@thomthom said: Bulk select layers..? Doh!

Hi Chris. The map in the image is a model I downloaded from the Sketchup warehouse. I'm attaching it to this post. By the way, you have some great video tutorials at youtube, I was watching them before reading your reply. @chris fullmer said: Sure, it might be able to be done. Changing the shadows when the cursor moves is probably do-able. Mapping the coordinates of the map to the altitude/latitude and timezone is another matter, and probably rather time consuming. It could be an interesting project though if someone really wanted to tackle it. And actually I think that your first example might be able to work. Do you have a nice model with a map built into like the one in your images? It might be easier to play around with if the map was supplied. Chris LANDJE-PIK (THE GAME).skp

I have a .zip file installer/uninstaller for SketchUp (Windows.) Let me work on it over this weekend and see if I can make it safe for release (or at least testing.) Something like this depends on plug-in authors building the .zip in a certain way. Luckily, every file I have tested is created properly . What I mean is that when a .zip is extracted, the contents should be as they would appear in the Plugins folder: my_plugin.zip my_plugin.rb my_plugin_folder What about existing files, you may ask? As it is, plug-ins must use unique file and folder names, so I figure it's OK to over-write existing files and folder when installing. And safe to delete them when un-installed. The exception is when a file is shared and installed by separate plug-ins. In this case, removing the shared file will break the other plug-ins that may use it.

:+1: :+1:

What would be even more interesting would be to import a preview texture of the environment map as an environment sphere in SU and use that as a gizmo to extract the rotation you need to position as you want in your render. Then click on the sun position.

Or until next month perhaps try Extrusion Tools - EEbyRails ?

The greatest 'Ruby minds' [and me] have tried to resolve this - so far unsuccessfully... I hope Google are listening...

I know the data is 'surveyed'... but the survey accuracy is probably +/- several mm - you couldn't expect anything better. Many of these buildings are almost 'square' - several of the sides are at right-angles or parallel as you'd expect, but a few are 'just off' and clearly shouldn't be - I mean by 3-8mm in alignments - which is nothing in terms of their measured accuracy, BUT when applied to a top face that might then become an un-roof-able 'crooked star' it really matters - when you build a hip roof in the real world and all slopes should be say 30 degrees if one is 30.001 degrees no one will notice. I've been thinking about this - an 'orthogonalizer' tool that'd look at a form and adjusts any slight unevenness would be possible - you could set the 'accuracy' tolerance - e.g. adjust parallel edges that have 'lines' less than perhaps 10mm apart, adjust near parallel edges with 'lines' that are perhaps less than 1 degree apart, align co-vertexed near-parallel edges with 'lines' that are within 1 degree apart or make square co-vertexed near-perpendicular edges with 'lines' that are between 89 and 91 degrees apart [these 'ranges' could be customizable] - all other edges would stay as they are since you might have skewed building by design, rather than by survey or drawing inaccuracies... You'd select the form and run the tool and it would fix it - you'd not notice the difference... The new tool is on the bottom of the long list... Or I could build in some 'orthogonaliztion' into the roof tool and duplicate the top face slightly adjusted ? Alternatively I could completely change the way the roof tool makes hipped roofs and allow some 'slope tweaking' to make it work - unfortunately THAT is now very complex mathematics/geometry... and my brain hurts thinking about it already...

no point.. since even a simple six sided cube is reporting '18 Ngons' tho, if I add 3 Ngons... it reports '21 Ngons' ! for some reason it's reporting 18 instead of 0.... Edit Found the problem. it's checking all the entities in the scene. example : a new scene automatically has 18 Ngons = the default human figure. even deleting him, he registers in the Ngon check.. do a purge and remove him totally, it reports correctly...

TIG and Jim Well I found the script. It is in the "cd_power_extension_m.rb", lines 200 and 212, however, this script is encrypted. I like some of the menu choice in the Power Tool bar, so I guess I will need to live with it. However, I don't like all the choices, so maybe I will get rid of this script sometime in the future. On another note, TIG, thanks for the program to search for text, it works well. And yes, I have Vista, and was wondering why I couldn't find the text in the script with a search. Pray tell what good is Vista search? And to Jim, will, I looked in the Tools directory and found more that I wanted to. Found another 5 programs/scripts that were not listed as your original lists. So I changed their extension. Now I will find out if any are really needed. yaml.rb, syck.so, rational.rb, date.rb and 3SkengltExtension.rb. I know what the last one is used for, however, I have decided that I don't need this script, so I won't be loading it again. To all thanks for the help. Ken

Hi Ken, That could be very useful indeed. As you may have noted I have edited the title to offer a little more about what is being suggested. Mike

@tig said: path = File.dirname(__FILE__) does what you think That's actually quite filled with issues. If your script said load '../relative/path/filename.rb' then File.dirname(__FILE__) is ../relative/path/. Better to use File.expand_path( File.dirname(__FILE__) ). That gets the full path and, on PC, drive letter.

As an alternative to 'flatten'... you might try to group all edges etc and then make a large flat surface below them, use the Sandbox tool and Stamp the group onto this flat surface ?

Reclub: The screw script seemed to work (a bit quirky though). I did one revolution, made it into a component, and then made adjacent duplicates. Jeff: I'm not sure how you used Extrude Edges by Rail. Could you diagram your method? Thanks, John

Hi "yourself", How about this alignment tool: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=11224

OK, well I couldn't get any of it to work. All the plugins seemed to be installed correctly in the proper subfolders, etc. So, I uninstalled SU 7.1 Pro. Moved the contents of the Plugins folder to a temp folder, including all the zip files that were there. Reinstalled SU 7 Pro. Did the update to 7.1. Moved the zip files back to the plugins folder. Extracted LibFredo6 3.4c first, then the other Fredo6 plugins that I wanted/needed. It all works just fine now. Dunno what happened. "Take it from the top" seems to be the trick.