I would make the section of track and rail a component. This gives you the opportunity to save it a library for future use and it will help to keep file size down. You could make similar components for other sections of track to make building more track easier. You might also find it useful to adjust the location of the component's axes to make inserting components from the library easier. I used Marian's track component as an example. If you grab a copy of it from the In Model component library, you find you can drop it exactly in line with the track already laid down. track.skp

Your a superstar! Thanks TIG

If you are working over a [slow] network or perhaps on a memory-stick etc the time-out in the saves can dump a SKB in an alternative location - like ../Plugins/... When a SKB is made there's some file shuffling with the names and file-types so a temp name is used. Hence the odd names like '2.skb'...

Thank you Dave, that is really good advice. This is somewhat similar to Creator, but a little different in the means of making the group and sub group. Your advice is very good. I have been doing most of this, but I didn't know I could wrap it all together to make the nested version. Thanks again...

@didier bur said: Hmmm, does'nt work on SU8 here. It seems it needs a serious cleanup and rework any progress on this? thanks!

I wonder what will happen with the use of a third dimension... Nice little DUH?!

@unknownuser said: @jgb said: The "paperless office" has about as much chance of success as the paperless toilet! This is why most offices cannot do it. They think like this. You just have to change your attitude and approach. You're probably still writing checks ... I just wonder how long it will be before the last part reads: "You're probably still drafting drawings". Thanks for the info about the site office btw.

The Export to 2D DWG and 3D DWG in SU returns two different results as pbacot said. 2D DWG - all elements are moved to AC Layer 0 3D DWG - all elements follow SU layering names. The 2D Export is not creating the desired effect, but it has to be some reason why the 2D DWG Export looks like 2D DXF Export. Many years ago I used to export 3D DWG files into *.wmf and 'Import' them back through AC's Insert > Windows Metafile... to get 2D representation of roofs, elevations or sections and apply colours or hatch. Step 1 From SU Export to 3D DWG > and open in AC Step 2 In AC Export to *.WMF Step 3 In AC Insert > Windows Metafile... (AC's top menu) Change the view to get plans or elevations. Use AC command HIDE to hide elements in the background and then export to *.WMF Unearthed, I don't know if the 2D is good enough for you. One thing's for sure, it keeps the SU layering in the AC 2D drawing PS. Windows Metafile - was the useful vector based format for Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw and few other graphical packages, which worked better than the DXF or DWG vectors when imported. Regards

Thank you jenujacob and TIG. This has really solved my problem - that is by welding - though I knew all the other techniques which TIG has kindly narrated. Thanks again to both of you. jenujacob ! Nice to hear from you after a long, long, time! With best regards PRSS

Yes a mipmapping is similar to what I am looking at. But I want to be able to define the switching range of the mipmap. The human eye identifies differences at different distances, so I want to be able to identify the switch in that change. Openflight files have the ability to have different LODs, which user defined switch ranges. To my knowledge, SketchUp does not support LODs or switch ranges, therefore, I was thinking of using texture "mipmaps" as a means to accomplish part of this.

A draw call is a function used by a program to instruct the GPU to draw something. In games this is done once per frame, normally lots and lots of draw calls per frame (sort-of roughly analogous to your monitors refresh rate). In general you have one draw call per texture file used per object, but it may be more than that if you specify particular material types, ahh, check that, let's call it "qualities" so we SU folks are clear it's something different from SU materials, to influence the appearance of the texture. Such "qualities" might be gloss, brightness, various types of finish, like metal, rubber, wood, etc., and then whether there is an alpha channel present of not (transparency) So given one model, 4 texture files, 2 of which have an area of transparency, 3 of which have areas where those "qualities" apply, the draw calls would be 4 for the four texture file as applied to a basic appearance, 2 for the transparencies, 3 for the "qualities, for a total of 9 drawcalls. For a game, that's 9 per frame for the one model. In a complex game there might be a couple of hundred models in view so that may add up to several hundred or even a couple of thousand draw calls, depending on complexity. Because there is hardware involved each draw call is a CPU interrupt -- hello, this is long distance from America for Mr. Floyd... is Mr. Floyd there?. In addition to letting the GPU know it is supposed to do something, a game will also provide the mesh for each object that is to be drawn, which is all of the xyz data that forms the vertexes of the model as well as the UV mesh which tells the GPU how to align the artwork. For each model for each frame. In my experience it starts to get hard to keep frame rate equal to or above the monitor refresh rate when the draw call count exceeded 500 per frame. On the front side of the glass sits the game player, who, quite naturally, does not want to see any slow-downs/speed ups. The net effect is to place a burden on model builders and artists to make their stuff so it requires the fewest draw calls possible. SU is not particularly good at this but at least has the benefit that things can be done very quickly and so it can have a proper place for both prototyping ideas and doing fairly basic game models.

Thanks everybody. The Xline tool works fine for this job. I have attached a screen shot of the pic. with best regards PRSS [image: water lines - dashed lines with xline tool]

Thanks Charly, I will take a look at ThomThoms Cleanup tool. Here the part is located. This just shows the exterior layouts of the aircraft before I work on the internal structure. Thanks, Larry [image: Capture5.JPG]

No collada thomthom, it will never work right under blender to SU workflow. Thank you, anyway. Importing heavy meshes into SU is never an easy to do task. Even the 64 k limit of 3ds format is more than reasonable for the SU viewport engine. Much easier to export all SU scene as obj to blender and set up a scene there. (tig's exporter)

Yep, you're right! I should have thought about that.. I had some troubles with lines lines not showing up and difficulties creating new faces.. But I just see that there's newer version, i have ver. 2.0 installed.. -> Installed the new one- works perfectly! Thanks again, where would i be without your (and the other's) plugins! Great!

Hi, cotty: Thanks for that

That with a bump map would look quality!

Thank you all for your help. I just ended up recreating what I lost over the last few days... Still not sure how it happened?

From my Windows System Info, it appears that the Nvidea has 1.5GB Again, not necessarily all that you need. However, what you need is tempered by what you feel you can afford. May I suggest you also do maybe a googlesearch "comparison of graphics cards" which is what I did well in advance of purchasing the system I have. I do not do very much rendering. I do not do any Nonlinear Editing- which is what video folks do in post processing (and these systems apparently require a lot of horsepower). However, I find in conjunction with the Studio XPS W7 I7-930 and 8G System Ram, my Sketchup experience has significantly improved from my old XP machine which had another Nvidea card.

TIG, I'll keep answering your question on Octane forum.