Just to add one more tip for anyone stumbling across this later on...I've occasionally had a weird issue where even purge won't take care of a massive file size. It's been awhile but I think it tends to occur when you sometimes when you delete big chunks of a model as I recall. Anyway, the end-all be-all purge is to turn on all your layers, copy everything and paste into a fresh drawing. This has helped me a couple times in the past. -Brodie

I tried reverse faces, but that just gives me whatever texture was on the reverse side. I've tried to keep the faces the right way.

@gaieus said: Hi Andrew, Jim has a plugin that adds a layer which is hidden on all scenes by default: http://sketchuptips.blogspot.com/2007/08/add-hidden-layer.html As Gaieus says... Jim's script lets you make a new layer that is NOT visible on any scenes/pages. You need to switch it on in the desire scene/page(s) and 'update' that/those scene/page(s) to suit... .

Great stuff, thanks.

@vortex said: shade i don't want use adobe pdf viewer, too cumbersome for me, and this not works with foxit reader. but good to know this possibility. Maybe if we all take a minute to nag Foxit, they might respond. I'd be willing to pay for a small, fast PDF viewer over using the free, but huge and slow Adobe reader.

Ray, you are going to need a UV unwrapper like Ultimate Unwrap 3D. You are probably also going to need your model completely made of triangles, No problem if exported to 3ds. UU 3D is only 50 or 60 bucks, depending on the version. Frankly, SU Pro ought to have incorporated these features long ago. http://www.unwrap3d.com/

Did you use the internal pdf export function of sketchup, or do you use some external pdf creator? I have encountered some problems too when used pdf export function of sketchup. If I remeber well, archicad installs a virtual printer to save file as pdf. You may try to "print" it as pdf, instead as exporting it. If it doesn't work, try some other pdf creator, there are some free programs too. I personally work well with cute pdf. but beware! If you print it as pdf, the standard sketchup's output is a bitmap image saved as pdf. This means, you are not able to edit the edges as vector entities. If you want to export the lines as vectors you have to chek the use high accuracy HLR option in the print preview panel. This allows you to preserve the line thickness too, but you can't export faces, texture and shadows, only the lines. You will be able to edit the lines in illustrator, but you have to redraw the surfaces and fillings. The result is precise and you shall not loose parts of your drawing; moreover, you can watch the preview, before saving it as pdf. /matteo [image: ULqm_print-preview.jpg]

Now I remember I encountered the some problem about 2 years ago when exporting some hi-res images for print. It happened that some surfaces come out triangulated, with a wrong oriented texture. I believe it was a memory problem. There is a resolution limit, when exporting a picture, that depends from the amount of your memory. When you reach this limit, sketchup is not more able to export an image. My opinion/experience is that when you get near to this limit, the output may be somehow weird. A workaround I've found was to move slightly the camera and retry to export the image. Sometimes it worked. Other times a "broken" face come out good, but some other face was weird. In most cases I had either to reduce the resolution of the image output, or edit it in photoshop to correct such strange output. /matteo

I've never seen a good explanation for how to remove a lightsource like that. I want to try that out. Thanks modelhead, Chris

For me export quirks like incomplete files etc. often happen when I try to export to a network drive, and exporting to the desktop or a local folder then helps. Anssi

I go to window from the top menu, then shadow settings in the drop down menu, it opens a menu file, there is a checkbox for display shadows, we uncheck that box as instructed, under it is time and date sliders, under that is light and dark sliders, then we have written, display, under that check boxes for on faces, on ground , from edges. And nothing else, this is version 5 of sketchup, either Im on the wrong thing, or in my version the setting is some other place, or it is in version 6 only. mine is this [image: Shadow-settings.jpg] not this [image: dczk5s33_38f666cdcj.jpg] EDIT I found it, its in Display settings for versions of SU older than 6

There's a few choices here...some quite cheap. http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2005/05/24/screen_sharing_tools_the_best.htm

@sketch3d.de said: ...problem can regularly be avoided by using a video card with a driver optimized for and supporting the full OpenGL stack as e.g. the nVidia CAD series 'Quadro FX' instead of gaming cards optimized for speed only ... and slow low-end solutions.... Norbert, Regarding the Quadro FX cards, nVidia even has a "partner certified driver" for SketchUp. (The driver is currently available only for XP.) I was pleasantly surprised the other day, when I installed new Quadro driver Note that, when your system reports that a newer, updated driver is NOT available, you should question from whence that message comes. Apparently, Microsoft is providing this assessment. How do they know? If I check Windows Update, it says no newer driver is available, yet nVidia had one. I suspect that Microsoft will always be behind on it's driver update notifications. Do yourself a favor, and actively search for one on your own. (I have the mobile version of the Quadro FX, and couldn't be happier with this new driver.) I'm sorry that I can't report that will help Vista users, including Verrou. However, the adviceNorbert provided, regarding 'fast feedback,' is typically the most-effective fix for cursor and marquee-selection problems (XP and Vista, alike.) Turning off 'fast feedback' doesn't slow down SketchUp as much as disabling 'hardware acceleration.' Hopefully, the feedback setting alone should resolve Verrou's problem. Taff

.3ds file export has the option to weld vertices, but this will lose pretty much all smoothing groups and material placement. Or you can choose to keep material placement, but thill will make SU not weld any vertices. So its often not helpful. I think some people use .obj export maybe? Chris

@plot-paris said: and while we are at it: what is the easiest method of showing the framerate of SketchUp? is the time.test-thing command the best way or is there something like a small digit in the top right corner that shows the current framerate? At the Ruby Console, you can type this mouthful: 1.0 / Sketchup.active_model.active_view.average_refresh_time to get frames per second

@unknownuser said: What is your video card? Its an Nvidia Geforce 9800 GX2. Is this one that severely affects the bug? All my drivers are up to date. @unknownuser said: You could also try turning off (unticking) Fast Feedback from the Preferences>OpenGL pane. I'll check on this one and see if its ticked or not. I appreciate everyones help.

Dear Dave, Sounds like an interesting method. Would you like to do a brief tut as I'm not sure I understand the technique. Thanks, Bob

cool. now at last I know what it does! I allways knew that something happens. but it didn't really soom extends or anything and I was to lazy (stupid) to figure it out. "center clicked point" makes perfect sense. thanks watkins for pointing out!

Two ideas come to mind. The first is to create the center line for the roof support tube and use TubeAlongPath.rb to create a second tube that has a larger radius to meet the sail. The problem of course is that you don't want the resulting faces too close to the tube component because at some viewing distance you'll get the Z fighting flicker. You could hide the faces of the tube under the fabric to prevent this. Another thought would be to draw the edges of the fabric directly in the tube component. Then the exposed parts of the tube would get painted tube color and the rest to look like the fabric. I guess it depends upon what you have to do with the parts later.

thanx guys. thanx hazza