Hi David, Sorry to hear your first experience with a z-corp machine left a bit to be desired. However, the level of detail on the model is very nice. Was the model for a healthcare clinic? Seams can be tricky to work with...with a bit of work you can get pretty solid surfaces where the edges touch. Yet, they can take a bit of time. Here's a few photos of before and after. Also, thought you might get a kick out of this small bathroom and room layout we did for a client that builds temporary housing plans using SketchUp. Amazing what can come out of 3D Warehouse and eventually a 3d printer. How did the model work for your client meeting? Jake Sweet Onion Creations [image: Jz6V_sanding_section.jpg] [image: i5kd_FinalMassingModel.jpg] [image: p7FU_Room_closeup.jpg]

I used to sometimes render with Carrara 3, an I recently installed v. 5 from a disk bundled with a magazine, but I really havent't had time to play with it. As I used it only for rendering, I found then that it was easiest for me to export the model from SU as a single object, and I just tried and found that the approach would probably work still. The properties of the materials are there still to be tweaked in the "Texture room" even if they are all contained within the same object. Anssi

Thanks for the quick replied solo, I'll try and I'll update the results

I have worked for many years in the simulation industry and worked with MultiGen Creator. This 3D modeling tool had a very nice option called “Isolate select”. If you are working on a complex model or scenery and having difficulty with speed or parts that are blocking your view when going around it than this option is very useful. Just select the part you need to work on and type “I” and a new workspace opens, it is also possible to switch between the two workspaces. Henri

@bigstick said: I have just updated to the latest OSX 10.5.6 and yup, the graphics problems are still in evidence. heard this too, but for ATI Radeons... Norbert

Ope, another one: http://anydwg.com/dwf-to-dwg-home.html Chris

@ella-garden said: Dear SU users,If there are here people using SU for landscape design, let know. It is interesting to exchange experience in designing with SU. Probably, it will be is useful. Ilia. A lot of us landscape architects actually use sketchup. You can check us out further at the land8lounge.

Did you make your resolution bigger or smaller? What if you reset it? If they appear,just undock them somewhere in the middle, resize again and start docking them back where they fit.

Try renaming (at least temporarily) the sketchup executable, then set it as a default. I tried and it worked. Hope this helps.

I was looking at doing something similar to this on our site.. There is an opensource flash library called 'Papervision 3D' which has support for collada files.. so in theory you could create a flash widget which would load a collada version of the 3d model and let you zoom and pan around it at will Obviously this would only work for smaller models, but that is the focus of our site. Maybe sometime soon!

Brian, The best I've been able to do, thus far, is static representations of select direct/reflected rays, using transparent colors: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=c63b8d66ebe146e5b2174b2fd0759d18 [image: j02I_Collector.jpg] As Gaieus wrote, the sun-tracking feature of SketchUp is perfect for this kind of study. You can demonstrate hour/date changes, as well as the effect of changing the latitude/longitude for different locales. Regards, Taff

http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=3220 Or just look here and make the choice that is right for you. Scott

perfect solution, jakob. thanks a lot.

Gotcha. Well, I'm sure DC's should help you out then. A couple other things that come to mind. Make sure your textures aren't too large. The wood textures for the cabinets, for example. As of SU 6 the max you could display was 1024x1024. SU 7 has some sort of high res option in preferences which I'm guessing ups that, though. Anyway, SU will save a copy of the image you use as a texture. So the worst thing you could do is use a 4000x4000 pixel image as a wood texture because you won't see it to the full resolution for one thing, and for another SU will save that whole huge file. Specifics for components... Components could actually help you out quite a bit unless you get into custom stuff a lot w/ your kitchen cabinets. I use to do kitchen design at Menards (like Lowes or Home Depot but only in the Midwest). We had a program where you'd basically pull off specific cabinets and place them in. That could easily be done in SU by just making a library of your standard base and wall cabinet sizes, then just pull them off of your components pull down. I'm getting all sorts of DC ideas too, although I haven't gotten into DC creation yet. You could almost just have a half dozen DC's (base cabinet, wall, drawer base, sink base, tall utility, etc.) that you could stretch and snap to your typical sizes (12, 15, 18, 21, 24...). And then you could use the interact tool to cycle between different knob and door styles and even finishes. Heck you could even use it to toggle the doors open and closed! Lots of possibilities, but now I've gotten way past file size. Basically the benefit would be that all of your doors (of like size) would be the same component, your hinges would be the same component, knobs, drawers, etc. -Brodie

maxell, as far as your graphics problems go, you might want to check the settings on your computer; just because it is new doesn't mean it was set up correctly at the factory. A few years ago I got a new computer at work, with a top notch NVidia card, but SU worked worse than on my old computer (same graphics issues) - I had to go through the NVidia control panel and reset a lot of settings, and now no probs.

Okay, cool. I wasn't sure I was explaining it clearly enough.

inferencing push/pull and ummm...is this forum a tool? if not... then I guess the pick tool has been particularly helpful. edit: ok I thought about it some more... inferencing intersect selected push/pull

Podium (http://www.suplugins.com/) is easier to use than IDX or Kerkythea, and has better quality than IDX. The evaluation version has only 1 limitation, and that is that output size is limited to 500x500.

Well, that's my "surely not"...don't want to think such is intentional :~(

@craigd said: FYI - that guy is clueless and is sounding the alarm of fear To paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davis "he would say that wouldn't he"