Chris, I would encourage you to persue it if you have the time. For a solution to be useful for time planning purposes it needs to integegrate with legacy project management software otherwise you potential target market will not be interrested, however 'fresh' your solution may be. Project planners will not be interrested in maintaining two data sets and will not discard traditional devices such as PERT and GANTT in favour of 4D, no matter how intuitive your data input may be. @unknownuser said: I think then you agree this Synchro "solution" is half-hearted You are putting words in my mouth. I cannot comment on the merrits of Synchro without looking at it in depth, but what I do know is that the system would have gone through years of development and could hardly be described as a 'half-hearted' solution. .

Jean, thank you. That is really neat. I have another way too. See here AnotherWay.skp

FYI> If you plan to render models from SketchUp you'll have more options if you're on a PC system. Other than that, it's all a matter of what you prefer.

sorry this post has nothing to do with this, just wanted the 10,000th post =p

Scott, thanks. It just occured to me from something you said before, that I have a very important tip for you. It is much easier if you do this backwards. That is: Start Scene 1 with the entire model completed and showing. Think through wich pieces are going be "built" before the viewers eyes and make groups or components of each of those. Be careful not to nest things inside one another if the inside component appears after the outside one ( obvious I know but hard to keep track of when you formulating this ahead of time.) So you may end up grouping this in ways that are not the most effiicient for modelling purposes. Once you have all the pieces that you are going to have built before your eyes, go ahead, still in the first scene, to place every single section cut that you will need. So place the one at end that will hide the group when it is active and also place the one that will show the item when it is active. In every single group, make the plane that shows the item to be the active plane ( remember you are doing this backwards so this would be the last step where everything is visible) Once you have all the planes set in all the groups, create your scene tab. Now add a scene. Now edit your group that will have the last item to be built and change the active slice so that it causes the item to disappear and update the scene. Add scene, edit the next group or component that would be the second last to be built and change the active slice again to one that would hide the geometry)and update the scene. Add a scene etc. Do this all the way to the end till the very last scene has the very last group or component disappear. I'm sure you have guessed why this is a good way to do this. If you start in the opposite direction building one group at a time and placing section slices as you build, every time you add a new scene and add section slices to that one, you will need to go back to all of your previous scenes and hide the newly placed sections that will appear in those and update each of the scenes. Much easier to start backwards and change one section at a time as you add the scenes. Each previous scene will already have it right. NOW, move all the scene tabs so that the first one is the last, and the second one is the second last etc. Now it will start from nothing and build itself.

No need to double-post I have responded on SketchUp, Podium, Vectorworks and general value for money in your other thread.

Hardware wise you should be in good shape. As you seem to be gathering, you were probably good on both accounts before you upped your graphics card. Here's some stuff I've learned. Speed First step is, as Toby said, to check and make sure Hardware Acceleration is turned on. Then below that you'll have some settings w/ different color quality options and levels of Anti-Aliasing. For best performance pick the lowest AA setting (x0). For best appearance choose the highest (this number depends on your graphics card AND your graphics card driver). If you don't notice much difference between hardware accel. off and on, you probably have a driver issue. Speaking of your driver, download the latest one from nVidia. If you think it should be doing better, though, sometimes you may want to test out some older ones or find someone on the forums w/ your graphics card and find out what driver they're happy w/. Generally speaking your CPU handles the model's geometry, while your GPU handles the textures and shadows. Of those shadows should be the MUCH bigger hit to your GPU so turn them off until you need them. Textures ON shouldn't slow things down much. Even w/ huge models you can go to wireframe mode and should be able to orbit around very quickly. FILE SIZE Note that this is different from speed but there tends to be some confusion so I want to mention it. Plus your file size seems very large. For comparisson I just did a 6 story hospital w/ a good deal of exterior detail (windows, lots of textured surfaces, finned sunshades, etc.), along w/ about 4 blocks of site showing building massings, 3d trees, people, cars, etc. and my file is just under 5,500kb. If your model isn't very very large, there is probably some stuff you can do to greatly reduce the size. If you have a bunch of the exact same object, say a window, make 1 window a component and use that component for all the other windows. This will greatly decrease file size, but note that it will NOT increase speed. Your computer still has to render all of the geometry from all the windows on your screen. SU stores all your textures in the skp file AND will downsize all textures that are larger than 1024x1024 down to that size. So using a 3000x3000 png is a huge waste of space. Downsize all large textures at least to 1024x1024 if not smaller and make them jpgs for the smaller file size. Purge! You're not using that stuff so use the purge command to get rid of it. A couple of times I've ran into cases where everything is purged but I still have way to large of a file size. So I copy my whole model and paste it into a fresh drawing and this has done the trick. Hope this helps! Let us know how it turns out. -Brodie

Thanks John!

Taff, I moved the ruby file out of the plugins folder, and I don't get the error message anymore...and the warehouse still works. thanks steve

Go to: http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDepot/Ruby/em_geo_page.htm and download angle_between.rb Put the plugin in your Plugins folder Regards, Bob

Never mind, there seem to be so many inconsistencies with different keyboard layouts, units and templates. It must be hidden somewhere along these things.

Mind Hazza that if you use different styles in the same model, this is not an "annoying message" but a pretty useful dialog box where you can set different things.

thank you ....

I appreciate your responses. I am preparing some models to show some teachers how SU might be used in the classroom to teach and engage students. I agree with the comments about the size of the model and how it is hard to view anyway. I think notations that relate the size of the solar system to things students can relate to would probably be more effective. Sean

My favourite is Ulead Mediastudio. It's the first software of this kind I've found quite intuitive and now I use it just as habit. It is not better or worse of many other programs. I could make a long video (45 mintes) assembling a plethora of small clips (more than 50) with all kinds of transitions and post effects. The trial version is fully functional and expires after one month. If you don't have particular needs, Ulead Videostudio is a cheaper solution: it comes boundled with many cheap hardware pieces. You may get it with a pci firewire card, or usb card found for less of $5,00 on some internet auction.

I am currently having the same problem. Suddenly, today out of nowhere, I get the bug splat everytime I try to drape something. Including draping one rectangle onto another. Your file crashed my Sketchup. I've been dealing with this this morning. I have uninstalled and reinstalled SU. Still have the problem. I have the most recent version. I do not understand what's causing the problem.

Thank you very much Voder With best regards PRSS

Dave, got it, thanks. Just followed your steps and all is now crystal. Also, used the 'offset' parameter(for the first time)to make a group of the roundover, saves a bit of time on the clean up. [image: XCUc_Clipboard01.jpg]

Mut, I'll keep that one in mind. Thanks

another great tool to deform and twist shapes is the FFD tool (Free Form Deformator) easy to use and with great results. only make sure, that your faces are subdivided enough before you use it. (I used it to make the shack in this image more skew)