@box said: Fire wall, anti virus, windows updates, adblocker, popup blocker, internet security options, adaware virus,caches, cookies, so many possible reasons......mostly related to PC maintenance/house keeping. Difficult in any language. Have you any advice about the most common problems?

Thank you I've managed to open the file by renaming it, and I've purged it and checked for any problems (there weren't any) its a 27mb file and its still abit slow and whenever i put shadows on it crashes, is there any way around this? all repeated objects are already components.

Walter Use SU version 2014 and get SU2Atl plugin from ATL. This will NOT work in SU 2015) (found in "older" section of ATL downloads)

1: ToggleUnits http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=81391#p81391 you only need to assign a shortcut to the the precision +- pair...

Thanks DaveR all good now Andrew

Awesome -- Zorro (now that I understand how to use it!) did the trick. TIG's method is a bit more elegant - but a lot more work!

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/vray-material-to-standard-material I use for SU this method to convert model from evermotion http://blog.turbosquid.com/2013/08/29/converting-max-vray-materials-to-standard-materials/

@pbacot said: JQL. In use in real projects though, components are complex window and doors models etc. I've done this sort of thing many times, trying to find faces to apply different function too. Intersect with objects that lie right on a face (not intersecting planes) is pretty poor, and complicated by the elements in components, requiring a lot of work, sometimes with finicky face division. A clean opening is wanted. One can always work on a copy of the face. Leaving the original. Not sure even with a plugin there'd be an answer, but believe me, it's not easy. I've done all sorts of intersecting, and it's often faster to draw, cut, and hack your way to a useable face. I spend a lot of time on Board and Batten wall designs. Best is being able to use a good texture, or having a BIM solution that puts geometry on the face and updates itself. Pbacot, No doubt about any of that. Any way, for the specific question this answer might be the best around. I work daily with hole cutting components myself, with as complex geometry as construction documents need and know this intersect with selection works. Any other method is welcome but tracing around windows is not a good method as windows might have complex geometry, that might be either coplanar or not to facade face and wich might make it impossible to trace every single window. BIM is just too much if the need is this basic. A good texture, wich is what I use, it's not actual geometry. Avoiding hole cutting components is a workflow breaker in this particular case. Working on a copy of the face, leaving the original is after all what I've done, what I did was that I created a temporary copy and grouped it outside. I offered a simple enough solution...

@pbacot said: I guess my experience is colored because I use my own CAD drawings and I don't generally have problems in accuracy. But I have seen where the accuracy of an import can be undetectably off--until it causes problems in working the model (closing faces etc.) later on. fwiw, when i realized the accuracy issue, it was when i was first learning rhino using a template with feet as the units and a tolerance of .001 unit (so, lower tolerance than sketchup's 1/1000th inch).. i brought it into sketchup and for a minute, thought sketchup was more accurate than rhino since everything wasn't exactly in place in sketchup (out of whack enough to get a 'don't panic- there's a problem.. should i fix it?' message.. which eventually led me to realize the tolerances in rhino were adjustable. but 1/1000th unit is a good to high tolerance setting for most situations so if the original cad app was drawn in feet, it's likely their tolerance wasn't set tighter than .001 feet.. so that's probably the most notable scenario to look out for. on the flipside, if the original modeler was using millimeters or centimeters at .001, you won't have any accuracy problems when bringing that into sketchup. [but even then, this is assuming the cad model went through some trimming/splitting/boolean operations in the original application which is when these tolerance issues will readily show up]

Thank you everyone, I suspect it could be a graphics card problem. I have tried installing latest drivers but this makes AutoCAD impossible to use. The card I have is expensive but out of guarantee. Will save up for a new card. Regards, Andrew

Have been hunting for this - so hard to animate wheels on a vehicle and render it. Simfonia animation does this loopable rotation but doesn't play nice with renderers. Have we had any progress in this sphere since this thread began? I'm in need of loopable animation now.

@driven said: 1: maybe split up? http://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=SplitUp 3? so you want move to default to move copy? 1 : nope thats not the effect im looking for i think i might stick with ( Projections + Knife Tool ) i can form grid to this tool or turn the tool for making equal space loop cut 2: it was similar function to blender where you just select an object and instantly duplicate it by hitting a 1 command then it activate the move tool where you want to place it in Sketch up i need to hit CTRL + C then CTRL + V and and repeat CTRL +V for duplicate 2 hotkeys were performed

A further note: if you change your shortcuts, SketchUp does not generally save the changes to the properties file until you close SketchUp (at least on Mac). As a result, the sketchUcation tool TIG mentions (which reads the file) won't see the changes until you close and restart SketchUp.

That's a stumper because I don't think it will be easy to do in sections and put together aftewards. Instant Terrain by Valiarchitect might give a finer grid but I don't know if it can show more accurate detail. I couldn't say without seeing the file, but you do realize that contours are only approximations themselves. They don't represent reality and your model doesn't either. For example, parts that (I suspect) are absolutely flat in your model are not coming out perfectly flat in the results, but is it still reasonably close and usable for your modeling? I've suggested to Fredo that the grid be set by dimension and always orientated to the x-y axis. Then one could do smaller portions and join them more easily, with the grid lining up. I have no idea if that is a reasonable request.

@box said: To be honest Hellnbak, if you have really decided you want to use SU8 then I think the easiest way to restore SU8 as the default is to uninstall 2015 and reboot so that SU8 is recognised and works. Then reinstall 2015 making sure during the installation to tell it not to be the default. From memory it does give you that option during the install process. You can rename the .exe to force things to work but it can get confusing. But I'm fairly certain that 2015 respects the default choice during install. I remember that when I installed it I chose not to have it as default and kept 2014, then when I wanted it to be default I had problems so just reinstalled and made the choice. One of the other new additions (I think) is the ability to right click on a file and choose which version you want to open it with, directly in the context menu. I think you misunderstood. I'm not primarily using SU8. I use 2015 for almost all of my modeling (still loving it, by the way). but for some things (such as being able to edit textures using my old trusty Microsoft Picture It Pro 9 when I don't need the advanced features (and much longer loading time) of PS)), I use SU8. So I save all of my models as SU8 to give me the option of opening them in either version. @rexworthy said: I have had this problem as well. I like using 2014 but everything opens with 2015 instead. What you need to do is right click on the file. Go to properties then click "Change" where the Opens with option is. Browse to find the 2015 location (Program Files\Sketchup) rename the start up file and add a 1 after it so it becomes "Sketchup1" Now locate the sketchup 8 folder (Program Files (x86)\Google\Google Sketchup click the Sketchup application. Hit open then OK and Apply. From now on any skp file should open with Sketchup 8. Hope this helps dave Well, I just discovered that even with my new installations of everything on a fresh hard drive I still have this problem. And I made sure to install SU8 first, hoping that might take care of it, but no such luck. So I took your advice and renamed the Sketchup.exe file to Sketchup 8, and that seems to have put the smile back on my (incredibly handsome) face For some reason, when I do open a model in SU8 I get this message [image: WjWI_2015-01-10_110613.png] but I consider that a small price to pay for getting things to work the way I need them to. Now BOTH versions have a nag screen It looks like the weather has calmed down and the roads are actually useable so I'm gonna leave the house for the first time in three days. There is absolutely no reason for me to stay in Michigan other than inertia, so why am I still here????

@hellnbak said: ......., and since I never had the plugin installed before I would really like to know how that feature got turned on in the first place....... Even if you never had 'Solar North' installed on your computer, you could stiil be stuck with that orange line in your model. That is when downloading a model with the line activated (and maybe rotated to the new solar north). It may sound silly but yes, that's the way it happens. The way to get rid of it is to have someone re-upload the same model without orange solar north for you to download, or to install the plugin yourself. p.s. I found this out myself some 6 years ago, not knowing that there was the possibility to set/adjust north. I had just begun with SketchUp. Someone "gave" me a model to work on.

I don't fully understand your question but I'm guessing that when you move the model, outliner is updating and the names of the reloaded models are updated to their new names. When you reload a component and it has nested components that have been edited on the external model, sketchup will assing new names to them when reloading. This is to prevent that these specific components might be switched on other parts of the model, possibly ruining it. Unfortunately, the opposite behaviour could be prefereable sometimes but that is a feature of sketchup, not a bug. The advice I have for you is to not depend on the #n on definition name numbers for organizing your model. If you want to tag tag the model (for instance), it's better to use Component Name, Rather than Definition Name, though it's probably more dificult. A great plugin to do that is Rename By Layer (wich also renames by selection or by other options) Again, I'm only guessing here so I hope I've helped...

Hi, did you manage to solve your issue? I am facing a similar dilemma and hoping to find a solution. Thanks!

I don't know if there was a joke related to that or not. I suppose it could be confusing to some that components have definition names and instance names.

Sorry for giving you news you didn't want but I'm happy if it saves you time. I'm not sure if it will have an impact but you might experiment with Transparency Quality settings in the Face seetings under Styles>Edit.