Yes, there is always glue. I am definitely expecting to shore up these joints with glue if necessary. I'm not an engineer, so I'm not sure if glue alone is a superior method of joinery with ABS. Do you think so? I would expect that a dowel that was then glued would work better. The snap idea came out of the possibilities of the material - really it seems like a component that could just be added to the edge of a wall or end of a protrusion, on which one could add another part. Both sketchup and 3d printing seem unusually appropriate tools for this kind of a feature. No connector? Just drop one on there before printing! Also, I am trying to figure out the best way to use these materials and their potential. Since a print taking up most of the 6x6x8" bed is taking on the order of 30 hours; I kind of want to utilize the parts to their highest potential. Has anyone seen anything like this out there in downloadable components? Anyone have further advice - would glue alone be superior? Or can anyone critique my designs? Thanks!

Soap Skin Bubble is hosted on the author's website but there isn't a version of it that will work on 2013 yet. At least there wasn't the other day. The author claims to be working on an update but who knows when it will come. You can create complex surfaces with TIG's Extrusion tools and Fredo's Curviloft, though. Also Artisan and Vertex Tools.

Liking the new avatar TT - congrats on the new job!

@jiminy-billy-bob said: You can also change the default material color in the "styles" window. Thanks for the reminder. That tip will also come in useful going back and forth between the two programs.

@dave r said: Sorry, I didn't realize the problem was that you couldn't find the toolbar. I thought the plugin wasn't working. I'd have suggested that you pull out the toolbar if I'd known. I didn't even realize that WAS the problem.

Alright, thanks!

@chris fullmer said: This might not be completely relevant, but Chris Dizon from Trimble wrote a station point importer that is pretty cool. http://extensions.sketchup.com/en/content/total-station-point-importer Chris Thanks Chris! It's interesting that you post this because I was just this week in Pittsburgh meeting with a Trimble guy. He was at a local distributor giving them a class and he agreed to meet with me to discuss Trimble total station purchase options. We talked extensively about Sketchup integration and he said "Chris just wrote a point importer that's really nice." I said "Fullmer?" he looked confused and said "Umm, no. Chris". I decided him explaing his Chris and I explaining mine was not worth it, so I said "Well send me a link to it." Which he forgot to do. We are trying to decide between a Field Link which uses Sketcchup and CAD or an LM80 which doesn't but has a really easy point entry interface. If I can use Sketchup in the same way I used to use LM80 then it's a lot easier decision which to buy. what I need to do is a two step process. Take points shot with an RTS and develop new points based on the shot points. I.E. "From point 3 turn 90 degrees (based on a line that is drawn from point 4 to point 5) then move 4 feet and make a new point. Step Two: Load those points, that were both shot and created, into an RTS to be staked out. So I am rambling. I'm sorry. Thanks for your information I heard about it but didn't know where to find it. Thanks!

Could you post some example files? Or at least screen shots of the before and after?

Good to hear it's working!

In the end it turned out that there was a mass of dust that had basically become compressed into a block of felt, obstructing the cooling vents in such a way as to be -very- difficult to see save from just the right angle. So, mystery solved. Thanks guys!

Ok So my system is a bit better but still not performing good and I now have to restart every 30 mins or so instead of 10. I wiped all sketchup 8 and 13 files. Reinstalled 13. Then added the sketucation plugin mananger and like 3 or 4 plugins that I need. Simple stuff like center point, dxf export, and something else. Complexity of the file does have some bearing on it. A simple file just lasts longer before it starts to get jerky on the zoom and then slowly degrade to unusable. Doesn't matter if I'm using it or not. I can just leave it open and come back to have it almost locked up. The rest of my system doesn't have any problems. Just sketchup. I swapped the graphics card back to the better one and the issues is on both of them. Direct Diag doesn't show any issues. Everything is active and I don't have any problems with anything but sketchup. As for my memory, 500mb is labeled as free. I have 3gb and have maxed out my windows 7 32 bit system. Windows 7 will just eat all the memory that is left so I technically have like 2 gb free with windows eating it all for transitions and other crap that it will dynamically stop using as my programs need it. Driver is up to date. I've tried rolling it back and it doesn't change. SU 8 had the same issue. That is what prompted me to upgrade in the first place. So far, I'm not impressed with SU 2013. It's also the free version. I have not run a memory test but scheduled windows to do one the next time I reboot. Resetting the workspace from within the preferences menu fixes it once or twice but then it gets all weird and requires a full reboot. Other then a known issue with the video driver crashing during flash video, My system runs fine and doesn't have any heating problems any more. Games run fine for hours. The only program that is screwy is sketchup. Could it be the sketucation plugin? I didn't have problems before that was installed. It's the only thing I can think that changed around the time that the problem started and it has been in every instance that I have tried. It was stable for a bit without any plugins but I can't do actual work without my dxf exporter so I generally only tested it for a bit then installed sketucation and the dxf exporter. I might try a fresh install without that plugin.

All, thanks for the posts/links. I will look into them.

Selecting problem areas and intersecting faces with models might get you part way there.

If you have the Maxwell plugin, working with proxies is the way to go. Its also very simple. Nothing complicated, just place a component that is linked to a .mxs proxy. See the manual of the plugin. I have done much larger files with proxies, impossible to do any other way. I could render 50 trees (700 Mb each) without much problems sraight from Sketchup. In Sketechup the trees represent just a simple volume. The way we work now is to use Sketchup as a placement tool for Maxwell proxies. The SU files are very responsive and easy to work with. No matter how complicated. What you do is model in Sketchup parts of your model and export those parts to .mxs You can assemble those parts later on in SU. You can put textures on your model parts either in Sketchup or Maxwell Studio. But we never use many materials in one Sketchup masterfile since this slows down Sketchup a lot. After we done the parts and have set up the .mxs proxy we delete the materials in Sketchup since they are no longer needed for these parts. That is one of the great advantages. Very small SU files. I have done office interiors with flowers, tables, seats etc that could never have been done in a single SU file unless these files would have grown into +Gigabytes monsters. Have a look here, http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=52418 Proxies is how we work these days and how everybody will work in the future (with SU). Francois

Maybe Fredo Scale by Fredo 6 is your friend ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPbb8PPGtVg

I'm glad that helped. You'll find it is helpful for other reasons than just orbiting. Drawing with the the default axis orientation and solid blue up will make shadows correct and make your standard views more useful. If your model has a front, place it so it runs along the red axis direction and those standard views will all click into place.

@polzultov said: Hey guys, Patrick at Trimble sent me a phone number to call since I wasn't able to proceed to the payment page for 2013... and now the number is listed as non-working. Any ideas? 303-546-1100 didn't work on a few tries... Of course the more I read here about the new release the more suspect I become... Edit- Got an email back from P saying to call the number... let's see what happens tomorrow. That's good to hear

thank you. i'm sorry that was such an easy one. i googled to no avail. i'm guilty, after a few years of playing with sketchup, of not sitting myself down to a top to bottom investigation of all the menu items and their purposes. i've learned as i go and sometimes the easy stuff just eludes me.

That's the one. I owe you for that Massimo.

Just changed the heading to 'SketchUp Troubleshoot [Plugin set up advice]' to make it more searchable Mike