It sounds like the style you are using has guides turned off. Go to View and tick Guides. After that check the thumbnail for the style you are using and see if it has circular arrows on it. If it does, click on the thumbnail.

Some tricks that can help you! Joint Push Pull by Fredo6 for have thickness of one surface(s) (press TAB for have Options) Axes tools for that components are middle inside the form! Components onto faces by Chris Fullmer [image: aw8O_trick01.jpg] PS Boolean in Pro version is that! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAS1EVOvDMo

Sorry Rich, missed this, yes latest release of 2013. Now I have the toolbar found I am basically OK, just got to fit the extra mats into kerkythea and I shall take it for a strole around the block.

@imabzeous said: and i am using many plugins but they were working fine with it and suddenly this happen. and besides i installed sketchup 2013 with no plugin in it but still sketchup crashes whenever i tried to import vismat material. This is a key issue for loads, they want your money to subscribe, but wont look into GPU/CPU HD4000 I have to build large office layouts, many rooms and floor's walk through's and more, and the layer system needs to be looked at more effective and faster, i.e. right click object move to 1 of 10 layers, Funny how people will just roll over for a few shinny buttons....

Yes the GPU is the "Graphics Processing Unit". I'm not sure if it is really uasable for you for production rendering because v-ray RT still doesn't support all features (like displacement) and is limited by the GPU RAM. But this is a general thing. Concerning distributed rendering only on the render nodes i'm not sure if it is possible to select only the nodes or if the "manager" is always involved. But in this case you could maybe decrease the threads for v-ray on your workstation. If you don't need v-ray RT over network now you could buy a small card now and add a faster card later (the next generation of nvidia cards next year will support unified memory addressing to enable the GPU to access the system RAM!) One thing to keep in mind is that buying a render node will not speed up your daily modeling and testing workflow - unless you always have your node running also for short tests. One other point to improve your laptop performance could be to replace the HDD by a SSD. (this wouldn't cut your render times, but could be a general speedup)

Yup that helps, thanks Frank. I'll look into it.

@adorno said: Looks very pretty and more organised. But I don't suppose work is being done on Kerkythea anymore? Apart from Thea There have not been a KT release for a while, but KT is still usable and free

I bet you have a new monitor, or have changed your setup around recently. If that is the case and Carsten's suggestion doesn't work, try changing the position of your monitor, the model info window is probably hiding off screen.

There are millions of images available that you can then use as textures fro SUP material/SKM files https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=padded+upholstery+texture&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=X74dUuGjKaKV0AXLtYHQBA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1440&bih=763 Here's a quick example [poor since its tiling is off]... Quilted#4_DimGray_25.skm [image: etlb_33_1.jpg]

http://sketchucation.com/resources/tutorials/37-beginner/24-how-to-make-a-spiral-stair

Thanks again...

Just installed this update. It seems to have fixed my worst problem, splats on scene updates! Thank you!

Okay, I figured it out. In a test file, I got a the camera to orbit a small piece of equipment exactly like I wanted. The key was being able to position the camera...AND aim it at a common fixed point. I knew you could position the camera and create a scene, but I was not aware that you could click, then drag the view of the camera to a fixed point. That was the piece I was missing. Once I figured that out, everything fell into place. No plugins were necessary, as was mentioned. Thanks for the help, and if you were trying to get me to see the point above and I just missed it, my apologies.

@rich o brien said: Before you Edit > Delete Guides copy or cut the Grid to your clipboard. Then Edit > Delete Guides followed by Paste in Place That works! Thanks

Windowizer at Smustard Free and Commercial 1001bits ...

Thanks Tig - I think the file types changed during a bugsplat and I re-set them and it seems to be (mostly) working.

Frank, I'm glad you got things to work. I always like to suggest native tools and if they work, great. If you need additional stuff, plugins Like Chris Fullmer's are great. As to your question, the standard views are standard for the default orientation of the axes. They don't get changed when you change the model axes The reason they work for you when you have a component open for editing is because the orientation is then based upon the component axes. The orientation of the component axes is driven by the alignment of the component to the model axes. So, when you have the component open for editing, the standard front view would have you looking at the model with the solid green axis running away from you.

Restarting work with SU ... No suggestions out there in SUland? Joel

It's like that for awhile. Since launch, with only a few heads added.

Based on your sample, I would say the best way to do this is just use SketchUp and Photoshop Extended. You can export your animation with the applied style you have right our of SketchUp as MP4 movie format. You could also export as a series of images or as a and open the movie file in Photoshop Extended and edit it there. Another option is to export the animation as a series of layers and overlay them in Photoshop. PS Extended allows you to do this and you can achieve some incredible results along with filters and adjustment layers.