Why I am using a laptop exclusively is a kind of long story but the bottom line is that I am a retired guy who does some part time modeling (less than 10hrs/month) for a company that builds car washes. It is their laptop which is a gaming machine with plenty of memory and a 17" screen. I do most of the work sitting in the kitchen and do not have an external monitor sitting in here for me to work with. If I had a dedicated work environment I would definitely use an external monitor. They recruited me and got me started using SketchUp. I do not have an engineering background and although I like computer graphics, I do not consider myself an artist in any stretch of anyone's imagination. However, all of that said, I am enjoying learning how to use SketchUp and am trying to expand my knowledge base. I like the concept of the trays because they allow me to at least semi organize my work environment the way it is most convenient for me. I tried having the trays docked on the right but the constant flying in and out and having to try to catch the tray sometimes and having it disappear at the wrong time because of mouse movement kind of gets to me. I organized them as follows: Objects - this try combines Entity Info, Materials, and Soften Edges since these are the most used facilities when developing components or working on model layouts. I also use the Entity Info to assign items in the layout to a Layer for later controlling what is visible in a given scene. Components - I put this try by itself because I have build around 200 components (pieces of car wash equipment) that I then use in the layout for a car wash. Scenes/Layers- I combined these two because I use scenes in every layout to show different views of the car wash layout. A couple of those scenes show dimensions and text that tells what each piece of equipment is and is location in feet along the conveyor. By combining the Scenes/Layers into a single tray can easily manage which layers are visible in a scene without jumping back and forth to different trays. Outliner - The only thing in this tray is the outliner. This gives me quick access to the outliner and managing the organization of the layout. I do not use this tray very often but it does give me access to the facility. Styles - I have a pretty standard style that I use for all of my car wash layouts so I do not mess with them very often. I have also added things like shadows, fog, & match photo combined on this tray because I rarely these function. Help - Again, I rarely use this tray but it is there if I need it. Here is an image of my current tray configuration: [image: yxwM_SU-Trays.PNG] I do have this one docked on the right side of the screen and is always there. I have found this to be more convenient for me and the way I work.

@pmolson said: ....... To each his own. I offered some (to some an awkward) solution. But like I said, I don't see this as an option for me since SketchUp gives me the 3D view in real time in perspective. I hardly use parallel projection mode when modeling. To OP: b.t.w. even isometric view is possible combined with the other views, front etc. If you correctly set up a copy instance.

Wings3D ManifoldLab MeshMixer

If SketchUp opens as in your first post, it means you probably saved it as the default template at some point previously. If Zoom Extents doesn't change it, very likely there is some small line segment or other entity way over in the lower left corner. Open SketchUp, turn on Hidden Geometry in the View menu, and drag a right to left selection box around the left half of the drawing window space. Hit Delete. Hit Zoom Extents. Do you zoom in on the man?

@shannakae said: Hi all, I am an Interior Design consultants in Dubai, stager and realtor. One of the services I provide is a 2d floorplan of houses to help market them for sale or for quick interior design presentations. I have been using programs like floorplanner online for this but have found that it is pretty time consuming and not very customizable (specifically kitchen layouts). Since I already use Sketchup for 3d models and rendering my interior design projects, I have started to create my 2d floorplans in sketchup. There are some great advantages to doing this. First,it is very easy to create materials like wood flooring, carpet, etc... Second, creating kitchens is much easier as I am not limited to the library of cabinets etc... that many of the floorplaner type software have... Third, if i deiced that I want to make it into a 3d space it is fairly simple... My question is if anyone out there is doing something similar and does anyone know where i might be able to get my hands on a library of 2d furniture, accessories etc...? Also, anyone have a good tut or advise of how I can create doors and window easily ie, drop them into the 2d walls (having to draw each line then offset with the ruler then erasing is quite cumbersome, especially when i need to widen the window or move the door location... see attached floorplan for example) Thanks for any feedback and help! Maybe I need to create a library? but would rather not have to start from scratch... In the attached floorplan I used 3d furniture pieces, but it can get to be a bit of a pain working between 3d and 2d and I would really like to be able to work with 2d pieces when working in a 2d space... Layout is perfect for you. You should spend some time creating your own content that can be used repeatably.

For import the kml files to sketchup use to the plugin "ae_KMLTools_2.0.0-beta.rbz" See the netx link http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323%26amp;t=38009

Hi Dave R I have attached one of the affected models but stripped out all the interior furniture etc as this project hasn't reached the pubic domain yet. I found the offending colour (material23) and for the life of me I don't know where this came from, I removed it from the in model colours on the original and the default colours reverted back to normal, I have left the default faces as they were in the attached copy. I tried dragging a colour from the in model colours onto the back face default colour in an unopened group and this changed them to that colour - so I think this is what I had done accidently before. Regards & Thanks for your comments. Tertiary scene stripped interior.skp

@ntxdave said: Building them as part of the base product would probably on raise the price.[/list] So, what else would you expect to get with the next updates? More Layout features or bigger icons? And the price has already been raised significantly since Trimble's takeover. Speaking of features i really would like to understand why the development of dynamic components has been abandoned right after the release in SU7 (?) years ago. The interface and functionality is just laughable compared to other solutions and i think there would be many possibilities if this would be improved in the right way.

@driven said: [attachment=0:2der91j6]<!-- ia0 -->option_dropdown.png<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:2der91j6] I have not seen this window before. Can someone tell me where in the menu structure it can be found? Thanks, Randy

At the end in theory you must have something like this! [image: jrCd_split.jpg]

Thankyou so much. That did exactly what i wanted it to.

Another way would be the deactivation in the style settings.

If can have groups instead of some components it will also be faster. So, for big models "good" modeling practices (I know Dave will kill me now... ) it's better to start off by groups and not components. (Before you kill me Dave) Rich O'Brien made a tree model with all leaves as components and it worked slower... Now I can't find it and I can't be sure if the leaves were pure geometry or groups...

[image: 4DJX_rendera.jpg] Here's an image where you can see that the 4-layer extrusions are easy to do in the flatter areas (e.g. on top of the shell) but they don't work well where there is a lot of curvature. The problem is mainly that you need to extrude along a path with quite variable orientation of the normals.

Sorry, my bad... however if Trimble would want to make it available they would have it there right?

Which version did you go with Joe?

Wow, sounds like an marriage!!

No. There's no plugin to do that. I'm not even sure that it can be done with a plugin. You could create that look by combining a couple of image exports, though. Profiles are displayed around each component or group so if you wanted to show them around the outside only using a single export, you could explode all the components and groups in the model. I'd prefer the two image exports myself.

thx guy's So triangulation was the magic word Both plugins worked. I personally think that toposhaper worked better. It had more options and I'm a big fan of Libfredo plugins.

@Box - Can you see the bright red glow on my face....that short video is what I needed to get me started. I really appreciate it............... OK - Here is a start...... [image: wcQJ_QFT-Glass.png] Wow, the file size it huge. Need to make sure you always have the low poly version available