By the way hanthu, HERE is a wonderful, and quite remarkable series of videos exploring the 4th dimension and related dimensional tensors. Not sure if they still offer the 720P versions for download anymore, but they are still beautiful to watch.

Yes, that practically automates that "stretching" function. I have also used this rounding method - although learnt from my experiences and if I use it again, will only use at the very end next time. Here are some images: https://picasaweb.google.com/116030646877186188585/Bazilika I even made custom materials for the pillars so that after rounding the pillars and wrapping the material around the pillars, the two ends of the material matched seamlessly. Now imagine when you need to modify something in such a model. I really hated my colleague sometimes.

Are you using the default blue-gray background color? I find that the green protractors and lines are particularly difficult to see against it. I have my background set to white and that works for me.

Hi Simon, When importing a dwg/dxf file, do not miss the import options (bottom right of the file browsing window when importing). There you need to set the correct unit the original file was modelled in. [image: dwgdxf.png] Also, when you are at it, some dwg/dxf files contain geographical data. Best is to uncheck "Preserve drawing origin" below the units settings as SU may import the cad file many kilometres/miles from the origin thus causing serious head-aches with clipping and other issues.

AH YES!!!!! Thank you, this had me going in circles......

There's a plugin that will create a cut list and export a file that can be read in CutList Plus which does the optimization. Look here.

Thanks Alan, Those are great suggestions. I too had thought about the coplaner thing and the perimeter break and tried to correct them but it didn't work so I thought something else might be wrong. I will try your other good suggestions. Thanks again, Rick

@dave r said: I see where you're coming from although I would think that if a file was included there wouldn't be a need to provide a link to it. i agree with you. I am not saying this was not my fault, i am merely adding a note, so that others would not get frustrated and give up on this useful plugin. I am stubborn and would not quit till i got it to work. This was clearly me not reading between the lines. I know now, how some of these programs work. My thought was that if i needed a new car, i would not have to go look for an engine, even if the dealer made a mention that cars needed a certain engine to work. I would have thought that was included in the price. Again, i am not trying to be difficult. I apologize if it appears like i am. Not my intention at all.

Based on these photos only tgi3d calibration tool reports a relative dimensional uncertainty of around 5 percent (not acceptable for most applications). (Need more features and/or more photos of the same set up to get more accurate dimensions). You can look at the calibrated scene yourself. [image: H9Vz_image_igloo.png] therm.skp

@unknownuser said: Thank you TIG. Now it works fine. But what are the lot of lines in the second and third picture you posted and how can it happen, that one texture is showing wrong? Did I done something bad? When you export a SKP it's likely that many of the faces will have more than three sides. Many third-party applications that will be importing the exported data expect it to be 'triangulated'. Many, like renderers, do not show the edges so this triangulation is unseen in their output. If you re-import the OBJ file back into a SKP it will include all of the additional lines needed to triangulate the faces. These can be removed manually or if part of a mesh 'smoothed' or erased as coplanar-edges... Because of the expectation of triangular faces by such apps the OBJexporter [and many other similar tools] triangulate the faces in the SKP as they are exported. In your case you have only a few faces, but there are thousands of edges. Therefore to make a face out of triangles requires a lot of lines adding to the geometry - not an issue when used in a renderer but when used back into a SKP it needs 'fixing'... An OBJ file [and several other exporter file formats] can only include texture data that is UVmapped in '2d' - positioned/rotated/scaled etc - this is because it can use just 3 UVmapping values. However, a texture in a SKP can be sheared/skewed etc in '3d' so that it is 'distorted' - and then its UVmapping has 4 values to describe how it is 'twisted' ! BUT the OBJ file format cannot include for this, so instead we have to spot the 'distortion' and make an extra 'distorted image' file and then define that for that face's texture, with a basic UVmapping set [this is because the 'distortion' is in the texture's file itself, rather than how it is changed by the face's UVmapping data in the OBJ file]. So how we detect the texture's 'distortion' becomes critical... Your 'problem texture' probably resulted when you adjusted it to align along that face - you must have added a slight 'shear/skew' to it in '3d', rather than the usual '2d' 'flat' mapping used for rotations etc. Thus the v1.9 exporter considered that texture to be 'distorted' and therefore it then exported a virtually identical image-file to use just for that face. Its UVmapping then failed as there was no appreciable 'real' distortion to compensate for. When I recoded the distortion-checker in v2.0 I reduced its "sensitivity" - so now when it sees that 'problem texture' it regards it as NOT being distorted... and therefore it uses the usual base-image file and the required distortion-free UVmapping that works just fine... I think I now have a reasonable compromise between making a distorted image-file - needed IF the image has been 'intentionally' skewed/sheared etc - and the alternative of using the base-image even when very slight [unintentional] distortions are detected [and which are so slight that the UVmapping can be assumed to be '2d' not '3d' anyway]

Oh, btw, I've started adding support for Fredo's update checker for my plugins. So that's one way to get some of the versions.

Thats great Mike, thanks very much for the input. Will take a look at the links. Thanks again.

The fbx works If a clean interior model is made – real world scale and its mapped – in the case of walls – 1 or two metre squared it will import nicely into Armada and have all the features - same with furniture. Beware of the Ambient and diffuse settings ramp them up to white and the specular down to black – - the box I sampled showed very dark. Also set all the pivot point coordinates to 0,0,0 or the model will be off set – and you may not even see them in the virtual As I said earlier I need somebody to show the sketch up community how its done – We are now developing an online version of Armada [WebGL ] that looks very promising. So a user can say commission a sketch up modeller to knock something up that can be uploaded to the users web site and the public can immediately traverse it - in the case of a gallery that is – assets also. [image: 76856617.jpg] @gaieus said: Yes, that would've been my other step now - to soften edges (although inside SketchUp, with such sharp edges as 90 degrees it would look weird). The 3DS exporter has an option to weld vertices - but on the cost of not keeping the UV co-ordinates.

I believe Blender can export to a variety of 3D file types like fbx, 3ds or dae (kmz?). Any of these can be imported into SketchUp.

Redinhawaii Your example needs NO Plugins at all to punch a simple hole through an object! Make sure that the 'punching-face' is in the same 'context' as the object that's to be punched, and therefore it is 'on' the 'front' face of the object. Then just PushPull the 'punching-face' though the block to make the desired hole, stopping the extrusion on the back-face by a pick or by 'sensing' the inference to the back face-plane [z-fighting]. If the back-face of the block is NOT parallel with the front-face [although it does look like it is is your example!] then make the extrusion so it stops beyond the back-face, then select the new faces made in the extrusion and use 'intersect' [context-menu] to cut that extrusion at the plane of the back-face; then erase the unwanted parts or the extrusion. Done. NO PLUGINS NEEDED AT ALL. You can do everything you have asked about... manually AND more easily than with a 'tool'... [This was a heart-felt message from Plugin Developer ! Please learn the basics...]

So 'never-paste-in-place' if you might want to reload SKPs later IS the lesson hard learnt... I had erroneously assumed that you were using import [or modeling a component in the site-plan with a 'svae_as'], so that the origin stayed true between the files...

Indeed there is a big difference between (unexploded) image entities and faces textured with an image material. Not every renderer can render image entities and even if one can, it is still better to explode it as image entities may take forever to antialias (see Twilight for instance).

I was hoping for a way to improve the modeling, not the line work, in sort of the same way that many plugins will allow you to adjust the raster image before exporting. I find that no matter how much I play with the rudimentary lighting controls , I get unsatisfactory images that I must totally recolor to get anything slightly realistic.

Thanks aerilius for the fast answer and the info. I didn't have time to find out more about this topic but tried to export a big Modell into jpg with high resolution and was impressed by the result... Many times faster under win 7 than under lion???

Thank you, thank you, thank you.