@fredo6 said: ThruPaint does not provide continous textures across different groups. Actually, the best is to use the native Projected mode of the Paint tool, which, I believe use an absolute origin for texture positioning. Fredo One think that does work across different (nested) groups with native tools is to reposition the texture and drag each red pin to a one mutual location (endpoint of a basic edge or guidepoint in plane! of faces) further down and to the left of all included geometry (thus all the basic and grouped (nested) faces that need to be painted correctly). So all these faces would then have their red pin located at the same [X,Y,Z] location. For me it worked in you model. Tedious to do though and I had to reset one texture of a nested face. Probably a plugin would be able to dig trough the (nested) geometry to do all the faces in a certain plain with the same defined/selected material. This would exclude other faces, painted with other material. But hé, unfortunately I can't do Ruby scripting.

@dave r said: Did you try clearing the Safari caches? and additionally - if this does not work - the 'Cookies' too.

Actually I don't usually turn transparency on at all. Either I want the background if there is one or it doesn't come into play at all because the background is white. When combining images using Multiply, the white background acts as transparent anyway.

If you are disciplined enough you can turn of your auto-save. Before you do, check to see that it is actually the file save slowing you down. It is going to happen if you have complicated geometry and many texture images. Opening another SU session will either crash your box or slow you down to dead stop.

this is an old explanation about observers, but still relevant... @unknownuser said: Observer is one of a set of new Ruby classes provided as part of SketchUp 6.0. "The Ruby Observer Mechanism is designed to allow Ruby scripts to be notified when objects change in the SketchUp application or model. For example, you can create an observer class that "listens" to when SketchUp quits and then performs some action." "Create a Ruby class of a specific observer type, such as AppObserver, override the desired methods, such as onQuit, and add an instance of the observer to the applicable objects in your Ruby script (using the add_observer method for that object). Refer to individual observer interfaces for further information." There are 16 observers, to run routines when various things happen to the model, entities, etc. A lot of plugins use observers to speed up their response time when in use, others monitor your every action and 'take notes'... If a plugin is watching for new materials, new geometry or new layers, etc... it can really slow down any imports... some have 'on save model' observers that check for changes each time you save or autosave your model... if you do a search for 'Sketchup Observers' you'll find lots of posts about issues of clashing and failing... john

Absolutely no offence taken - it was indeed in my (mis)understanding of what I was seeing. It is now much clearer, and your clarification just sets out very well what I clumsily sort-of-worked-out by experiment and observation in a variety of cases. I think I was further confused when Chris's plugin seemed to be getting the same unexpected results as I was, and by a rotation I was doing of a view.draw_polyline about the reported face.normal which seemed to be visually wrong - it was actually rotating the polyline in the face plane, about an axis apparently NOT visually normal to it! However, since the only thing that was really bothering me was that when I tried to do a view.draw_line for the normal, it was in the wrong direction, I now understand why, and have fixed it. Thanks again for your helpful comments. Has anyone ever done a Tutorial about programming Ruby Tools in SU? I haven't found one, and have done almost all my learning from reading the sample code for CLineTool, and reading and re-reading the API documentation, which is very thin on real world examples and sample outputs. It's been hard work, though ultimately I've got something that now works for rectangular profiles. Next challenge - to extend it to arbitrary profiles of mouldings. A bit like a simpler version of the Profile Builder plugin from Dale Martin and SMustard - indeed, perhaps in comparison just a poor thing, but mine own, as one of Shakespeare's characters says.

Displaying layered transparencies is a bit harder (more calculations) for render engines. Have you tried changing the style settings to transparency - nicer ?

SDmitch slection tool is just the thing I need.. The S4U's selection tool is way too good... Couldnt believe I missed them, could have saved me lots of precious time. Thanks Box & Unearthed...

nice idea Shep

Excellent! Seasons greetings to you, too.

Well I ended up exported XML in Twilight and then altered the material.

this can be done with the standard sketchup system too... you can split a model into components and then have a folder where the components are stored. you'll need to be strict with checkout of the components or have them assigned to certain individuals though. then the large project model can have the components updated to show revisions or changes. Though I'm sure the plugins will help greatly in this arena.

Search this forum for the voxelize plugin. It's also in the PluginStore.

Get the pro version of SketchUp and do it in LayOut. It would be ideal for that. Or use different image exports from SU and put them together in an image editor. If you're going to stick to doing it directly in SketchUp, it sounds like you've already worked out the solution.

Hi everyone. My problem is about Export to Autocad. I draw my project in Sketchup and I export to Autocad with 2d. When I use in Sketchup, Export>2d>Autocad lots of line seems. Can you help me pls? [image: wAU2_1.jpg] [image: 8RtI_2.jpg] There is my sketchup file.

Nice! Thank you! This will come in handy for sure.

Thanks Mac1, I´ve already solved the issue with adblock. This site became much slower now though for some reason.

I agree with steve that your best option is to upgrade SU to v15... if you really want to go back on the os, I would go no further then Mavericks... One thing you could try is un-install the faulty SU and move a copy of the working version from the other mac... it may work... john

Thanks! Starting to understand how this works now.

Sometimes we overlook the simplest means. Thank you.