Thanks everyone, this seems to have been resolved.

Okay actually the lines are many many segments......they are one polyline in CAD so not sure why they came in that way. I discovered if I use simplfy contours but instead of the default 10, i use 1, its almost perfect but not still problems in some sreas with the tin not touching the contours. the computer freezes if I try to use sandbox without simplfy first

Kept scanning and just skipped the very top, I guess. Thanks!

Sadly, burkhard's expreience sums up our own. We got one in at work for our software development team to look into - after a few hours playing with the provided examples, it went into a drawer, never to be seen again, without so much as a line of 'integration code' being written. Even in the videos, you can see how slowly everyone does everything. It looks like it ought to be intuitive, but everyone's opinion here was the same - you seem to need to develop some kind of special motor skills that don't come very naturally (hopefully before your arms drop off from fatigue!). The idea is really sweet, but the actual experience of every single one of us was "gimme my mouse back!". One has to wonder wonder just just how much practice the demonstrator's had, and how many takes it took to make their marketing videos! As you say "pushing the boundaries", and surely the technology will improve. However, consider this... 'Gestural' technology is not as new as all that. The Theremin (wave your hands in the air musical instrument) is getting on for a century old. Moog had a good stab at popularising it, it was used by many composers (lots of cool sci-fi movie soundtracks especially!), and they're cheap as chips to make. Yet, theremin players are rare as hen's teeth - and ones that can play in tune and expressively rarer still!

@pipingguy said: OK - here is my understanding: To modify a color in a custom collection: Tools menu > Paint Bucket. Display the secondary pane by clicking the icon directly below the exit button. In the secondary pane, scroll thru the drop-down list and choose the custom library. In the primary pane, scroll thru the drop-down list and choose the “In Model” library. Or, if you're lazy, click on the little house icon to the left of the drop down list. @pipingguy said: In the secondary pane, right-click the color icon that you want to adjust and pick ‘Add to model’. Said color icon now appears in the Model Library; click it and then click the Edit tab. Adjust color and/or transparency……also rename if you wish. Click the Select tab Drag the color icon back into the Custom Library and choose ‘overwrite’ when prompted. No need to do anything else. You can exit SketchUp without even needing to save the drawing. The modified color will appear in the Custom Library when you re-start the program. Note- if you change color transparency, do not expect the color icon, when it’s displayed in the custom library, to show the two-tone diagonal slash as normally shown in non-custom palettes. That's pretty much it. I'd never saved a color with transparency before so never noticed but you're right about the thumbnail. Maybe there's a way to change that, though.

So add details by hand!

And in 2015 You can customise your toolbars so you don't need to have all the buttons you only use rarely. Not to mention sets, part of the sketchucation tools which let's you load tools selectively.

Thanks for that INFO.

@pilou said: By Fredo6 Again, thanks for sharing.......still another approach.

@john2 said: Yes I know sir, I was discussing the possiblity for making a plugin which helps mediocre SketchUp people like me. It sounds like you'd rather stay a "mediocre SketchUp" person, as you describe yourself, and hope someone will make a plugin to overcome that for you.

@tallbridgeguy said: Hi, is there an easy way to place 3d text so it faces forward (toward the viewer like normal text on a page)in the current view? I have different scenes at different view angles and I would like to place 3d text in each view without having to place it and then try to guess the angle to rotate it to get it straight in my scene. (Like typing over an image?) Thanks! s Plugin had a coding error and had been removed.

@krisidious said: 5k? Are you insane? You thin this is insane? My way to the toilet is longer than 5k mm ...

@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...