@tig said: Try group.entities.add_instance(other_group.entities.parent, other_group.transformation*group.transformation) other_group.entities.parent.instances[1].material=other_group.material other_group.entities.parent.instances[1].layer=other_group.layer### you can also copy over other attributes of 'other_group' if appropriate other_group.erase! 'other_group' is 'cloned' into 'group.entities' and the original erased - here we also copy its material and layer... Thanks for this. Was useful. Of course, assigning names (variables) to each instance, makes copying layer straightforward; group2.layer = group1.layer

What I usually do is click on the photomatched scene. Then click add new scene. Orbit scene a bit and then click on the newly added scene. The background image will have disappeared. Now switch between the photomatched scene and the copy to see if they align. Hope this helps.

OBJ is another 3d data file. In Pro you can export in that format. There's an OBJ importer available... http://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=obj_importer It has the option to flip the YZ axes as well as choosing units etc... It's slow, but free. There's also a paid importer by Fluid, that is faster. http://www.fluidinteractive.com/products/sketchup-extensions/fluidimporter/

@dave r said: I finally had a chance to look at the location in Google Eart. It appears the buildings were drawn in SketchUp after all. But the link provided to the model in GE is no longer valid. since they stopped accepting SketchUp models some time ago, it would indicate the model is old. I tried searching the 3D Warehouse for the listed authors but they don't seem to have a presence there. Contact google and maybe you'll have some luck. Thanks, I will try it.

sounds like a reversed faces scenario... are all faces showing the 'front' face? john

SketchUp have problems creating faces that are smaller than one square millimeter. It has no problem Showing already created small faces though. The solution is to make a component and copy it and resizing the copy. After that you model in the enlarged copy and you will se the correct result in the original component. At last years SketchUp basecamp in London Felix Heuman & Anders Lyhagen showed how they created classic architecture in extreme detail. They worked with columns that were 1 km high to get the level of detail they wanted. http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=179%26amp;t=62983#p576780

Okay, now the situation is that I found an old setup of sketchup 2016 (version 16.0.19912 - 64 bit). I installed it and it ran fine. My plugins folder was renamed as "plugins_latest". Okay so far so good. I renamed the folder back to plugins, and sketchup still started. I closed it and restarted it again. Then it crashed with the same "amd driver has crashed and recovered error" Now I renamed my plugins folder back to "plugins_latest". Now sketchup as usual created a new default plugins folder and now its running fine. I also did registry cleaning with CCleaner. I think the culprit is some plugin that crashes sketchup. What should I do now?

Thanks Box, you are a genius. Unticking 'use maximum texture size' worked perfectly. I'll get my Graphics Card updated as well. It's a work computer and tech support is slow.

A "trick" I use when I have to have high poly models in SU is to set the view to wireframe select all edges and hide them. It makes it a bit faster since SU doesn't have to draw every edge in the viewport.

@box said: Another option, depending on the finished result you are after. Use a texture instead of the geometry and apply it to a U-shaped face.

cotty I used the scale tool

Try this from Sketchup school https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcOrlX5wgLE

Thanks to both of you. I did check those after your recommendations and appreciate the suggestion as this is something I will now be more aware of in the future. It turns out there was a guideline I could not see that off the screen and this is one part of the problem. The other part of the problem was SketchUp itself misbehaving and not properly unhiding everything nor purging unused properly. Even select all was not showing the offending objects. Outliner finally worked properly and I was able to erase the unused. After 5 tries doing all of the above steps, the model was finally purged of unused and imported cleanly. Thanks again for the help.

@box said: Dave, he gave you the link directly to it in his post. Yes, that is what I used to get the plugin.

Two parts video from winning with sketchup on YouTube, regarding box and rich answer that I just watched today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWjVrL0oetQ

I'd start here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice The 'fair' ones are... Platonic solids, the five regular polyhedra: 4, 6, 8, 12, 20 sides then the less 'fair' ones... Catalan solids, the duals of the 13 Archimedean solids: 12, 24, 30, 48, 60, 120 sides Bipyramids, the duals of the infinite set of prisms, with triangle faces: any even number above 4, and usually divisible by 4 so that a face will face up Trapezohedrons, the duals of the infinite set of antiprisms, with kite faces: any even number above 4 Disphenoids, an infinite set of tetrahedra made from congruent non-regular triangles: 4 sides So you need to determine the shape of the 'fairest' facets for any number of facets you propose... Once you have done that there's som Math to determine their angles and so on... Here's some more info on 'irregular but fair' dice... http://mathoverflow.net/questions/46684/fair-but-irregular-polyhedral-dice

@pbacot said: Thanks Mitch! Anyway I do like to have the wrappers the default color--and I still want to keep the texture which has been applied on the faces as well. So color by layer and purging the texture don't necessarily help. I think the component color is added by the plugin which made the components--it also textured the faces--which is what I want. This may be happening every time I use the plugin and I notice some problem with UV --I wanted to eliminate this factor for sorting this out in the futer. Removing the 'wrapper' color should have no effect on any texture that has been applied to the faces inside the component.

I've always drawn to the correct scale, and for any complex operations such as intersecting curved shapes (which always seems to confuse SU at small scale) I just make a duplicate component and scale it up by 100 times, before editing the larger component. All the changes are correctly duplicated in the correct scale model. The oversized model can then be deleted. Just saves having to scale back down again which I find is not always 100% accurate, dimension-wise.

@smuncky said: We did a trial run at the office on 2016 and found it, as you put it, sticky as well. The same models that were fine in 2015 felt 'slower' in 2016. I found that opening some files was slower as well and thought that it might be due to the new tray system, but unfortunately, there's no real way to confirm. I went to that setting for the nVidia graphics card, and i'm showing 'Google Sketchup' and not 'Trimble Sketchup'. Could that be the problem? Glad it's not just me then! I also see 'Google Sketchup' in the nVidia settings. Tried uninstalling previous versions but no change.... Anyway having tweaked some settings this doesn't seem to have improved things that I can tell. On a related note, since playing around with the settings my SU has lost its nice straight lines, I mean they were almost flawless before, whereas now they are jagged. Despite restoring the default nVidia settings I cannot get back to my lovely crisp lines. Any expert advice on this would be most appreciated... I feel i've opened a can of worms here!

Nice