Thank you TIG for your help. I was using the SCF Powerbar (I am not sure of the exact version, but it was listed as the most recent). I have downloaded the Component Spray v 1.4.3 and it works great. Thanks again.

I see you have a solution and you have the pro version. You could also have done this by creating a tube, dragging copies into place, size them and then use the solid tools to create the intersections or even use the old school method of intersect with model and clean up. Just saying as there seems to be a trend around here to look for plugin solutions before thinking about using the native SU tools.

That projector Valerostudio linked to is just a light, a mirror and a lens. The original artwork needs to be printed on paper so it'll project whatever you printed.

TIG that works excellently. Maybe it seems a small thing but it should make working in this project much better. Gives a perfectly aligned scene for LO. THANKS! Peter

Majid, the general advice is not to change the active layer (with the round "radio buttons") to anything but keep it Layer0. You can, of course change the visibility of layers (with the square "checkboxes") any time... Now when you add a new layer, it automatically becomes visible in each scene. This is how SU works by default. Jim has a plugin though which adds a layer that's hidden by default: http://sketchuptips.blogspot.hu/2007/08/add-hidden-layer.html

I found only these notes in the SketchUp manual about pre-processing photos: Do not crop photos. Match Photo currently requires that the point you aimed the camera at is located in the center of the image (also called the center of projection). Although it may seem possible to use a cropped image, typically vertical lines will not align well across a cropped image and the results will be unsatisfactory. Do not warp photos. Images which have been manually warped using an image processing program, or specialized camera, are not supported by Match Photo. Remove barrel distortion or issues where straight lines are bent away from the center of the image. Barrel distortion typically occurs on wide angle lens cameras. Use a third-party product to eliminate barrel distortion from images prior to using them within Match Photo. All cameras have a little bit of this distortion and it is typically worse around the edges of the image. Point 1 is the most repeated advice about Match Photo. Point 2, about warped photos, would seem to me to exclude using ShiftN. I can imagine using ShiftN to apply photo textures, but I presume its distortion of the photos will make them unsuitable for Match Photo. Point 3 is what I assume Thomthom was referring to by "lens distortion". This lens appears to be excellent in that respect. It is extremely hard to find any evidence of barrel distortion. But, as I reported earlier, I appear to have non-square pixels, the images as displayed are all a bit narrower than the model. If anyone has any experience with how to accurately test that aspect of a camera lens, I would appreciate any suggestions. I will probably be working out my own tests this coming weekend. I presume I will need a way to accurately identify the position of the center of the lens while the camera is on a tripod pointed at a flat surface that is exactly perpendicular to the camera's line of sight. Theory is easy. Construction still awaits a design. A brute-force approach would be to simply try different values for the adjustment until I find one that seems pretty good. But since it can take up to an hour of fussing and fiddling to reach what I consider my best compromise, that approach is guaranteed to take a few hours. Again, brilliant ideas are always welcome. Thanks, August

That's the thing though. The color is correct when 2D exported or when using Print Screen. It's just an orange cast when viewing the model in realtime. It's really not too much of a problem it just a bit annoying. I was satisfied with the secondary color of my ship until I saw the color shift. I went ahead and approximated the actual color I wanted in Photoshop the replaced the value in SketchUp with that so now at least when exported it now looks right.

Well, it seems to be working now, new colors are going directly to the right folder, and are showing up in SU. Not sure how this came about though. After much fuss and googling, managed to change security permissions back to where they were, which should have meant that the new colors were going to the App folder as they were originally, but like I said, they are going to the folder in the SU program and show up in SU. I really hate it when a problem gets solved but I don't know what solved it. Oh well. Thanks again.

Thanks guys, really appriceate the feedback your a big help. I plan on using SU a lot this year and really want to get the most out of the program. @ TIG... your a legend... I dont know where I'd be without section cut face... Well done dude!

@dave r said: Assuming you've applied the material image to the face and not to a component or group, you can adjust the position of the material as well as its orientation. Right click on the face and choose Texture>Position. You'll get some push pins that can be adjusted or you can click on the material and drag the image around to determine where the edges fall. You might have a look at this for some ideas. In the case of your texture image, the lighting isn't even so you'll still have the fade from light to dark repeating up the wall. Excellent, thanks for that. You guys never disappoint 'You never stop learning'

@gaieus said: Please, report it to Aaron in his topic of BuildEdgePlan Beta here: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=46470 He'd definitely like to iron out all possible conflicts with SU and/or other plugins. Got it in the main topic! Thanks for the catch!

Hi folks. See this SU file for ideas: Finding the center of exploded curve.skp

Thanks everyone It's relief to know it means no harm and may even be useful! Thanks again Cal

Make the common room shell Copy it twice Make one into the existing Make one into the proposed Group/Component each one Put each one on a separate layer COPY each so that they are on top of each other. Set up camera views/anims of/within the overlapped models and save the scene(s) as CAMERA ONLY SWITCH OFF the Proposed layer Export the scene(s) SWITCH ON the Proposed and OFF the Existing Export the scene(s) By making a copy of the existing and proposed component'd rooms you can continue to build/modify them and the overlapping ones will update accordingly. I do this all the time. Another way of using this method is to make all the individual component'd floors of a building and its roof, have them layed out NEXT to each other for ease of working on them but to ALSO have a copy of each stacked on top of each other as the building will appear. [image: kSAH_xx.jpg] As you can see I have Ground, First, Second, Third and roof all neatly layed out 40m apart co i can easily copy stuff between floors (Kitchens, furniture etc) but I also have them stacked for generating sections, testing service runs etc.

"That second tool is insane" If that got implemented in Sketchup, it would take all the "fun" out of building a model.

thanks guys for the info.. actually the main prob is i do not have the contour dwg, thats so hard to draw it by my own.. i just use drape tools on sandbox and adjust it..it works.. for the instant road, it will be more cool if i have the contour dwg. btw, thanks for the help! appreciate it!

OK, fixed it. I found that I was not signed in.... Re-install will do that to you I guess! [image: 18hI_2012-08-14_0955.png]

What about the import to Photoshop link, providing one has Photoshop.

I don't understand what you are describing regarding your your track getting "dis-membered" but I guess you figured it out. You're welcome for the help. That's what the forum is for.

No worries, I found animations very temperamental.