Obviously I meant a gluing component that way; placing its axes (i.e. gluing plane) where it should be to glue properly. OP also wrote: @baileyboi said: ...they would then slide along any axis that you hadnt fixed... Translated to SU-lingo, that is typically a glued component which you can move on the plane wherever you want but cannot get it off the plane incidentally.

Hi Cotty. it was just a simple block model, the outline extruded and further extrusions to create the roof, so I just decided to place the window opes and noticed when removed the rectangles that the inner face of the block model was gone. I just thought it might be a quicker way to model rather than pulling up the external walls, it's not causing any grief I was just wondering is this usual with sketchup, thanks for your reply

I was really more curious about why than getting a fix. I edited the "solid" version with the open face, by deleting 1 line of the round hole and redrawing that 1 line. The face re-formed and the object is now a proper solid.

It's not a SU problem. And, I've never heard of Windows coming out of sleep without user intervention (unless you've got wake-on-lan, etc turned on). Something you're doing or not doing is causing this issue. I'm not sure why you seem to have been resistant to closing SU at the end of the day. That would have explicitly forced you to save or discard your work.

You could try pasting a camera into the .dae [edit it with Notepad++ or similar plain-text editor] <camera name="eyepoint"> <optics> <technique_common> <perspective> <yfov>45</yfov> <aspect_ratio>1.33333</aspect_ratio> <znear>0.1</znear> <zfar>1000.0</zfar> </perspective> </technique_common> </optics> </camera> add the value for the Sketchup.active_model.active_view.camera.fov add aspect_ratio as Sketchup.active_model.active_view.camera.aspect_ratio IF it's set, BUT if it's not [==0.0] then use say 1.33333 ? Then add znear and zfar set the view limits in 'current units'. Paste the code inside the main .dae files code here near the end [?this_is_a_guess?] </scene> HERE </COLLADA> I don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing but it might work ???

[image: CB.jpg]

Works like a champ - like it should. Thanks

@edson said: pathcopy.rb by rick wilson does the same thing. Hi Edson, i know that one too. from Dave R tutorial or something. on making a lawn chair or deckchair. i think the pathcopy.rb have a little flaw that it might leave some components unaligned to the path. component stringer by the exhibit shows that it has the ability even to modify the alignment. don't know for sure.

@mwm: In my workflow I group/component everything that is a physically distinct object for the most part. I feel like it makes the model behave more like a real world object and is easier to edit. I do not use any geometry that is not in a group or component because it always seems to create way too many problems when I move or alter things. I use components for anything that is identical or symmetrical so I only need to modify one of them or one side of it. In this case each stud is unique so I use groups. This way if I duplicate a stud and alter one of them later they both don't change. I use layers for assemblies that are related (wall framing, roof framing, wall skin, windows and doors etc) I use sections seldomly since SU doesn't render solids I find them to be of limited use for my work. In this case I am modeling the walls due to the complexity of the angles involved. I have a 5 man crew at the moment and If I can give them a plan with the angles and lengths called out it makes the work much quicker. I am in Taos

Would it be possible to create a plugin that would "bake" the locations of all the textures in a group or other selection?

I did find that I could overcome it by just getting bigger and bigger with the angles. ie. specifying 352 degrees say, then 380 degrees, then 420 degrees etc. It seems to work. But I actually used a suggestion Aerilius made, which was to get to 359, then do a change to 0 with a duration of 0 so it spun anticlockwise infinitely fast, then carried on with 20 degrees, 80 degrees etc. That also works. But it is all a fudge. Surely there is some way of forcing the rotation to the desired direction.

Great! Will give it a try. Thanks

Create some scene-tabs with different times, and then animate then ?

We call them running dimensions. RD. I like them a lot. Would be good to have in layout maybe someday but there are tons of other things I would like to see first.

I can honestly say that thomthoms solid inspector plugin turned SU from a program that I used to use sometimes into a program that I now use almost daily.

I've never seen anything quite like that before. Could you post the model or a potion of it to see if I can reproduce it? -Brodie

@tig said: Learn to 'select by fence', noting the different results from right>left and left>right corner drags. I read your post a few times and I get it now Thank you for helping me

thanks a lot i will try

Dave, the way you do detailed threads is pretty much how I do them. You probably use Dynamic Comps, but I only use SU-Free so mine are a far less flexible. However filesize is not my concern. Entity count is. I hate the way SU slows down when my total model lines count gets near a million. I use judicious layer visibility but even that sometimes does not help much. Small bolt holes are drawn 12 sided, large holes are standard 24 sides. In an airplane structure, sections of parts that are low stressed, like "I" beam webs, typically have large holes in them simply to reduce the weight of material. Hole size, placement and spacing is calculated not to impair strength or stiffness. In my models they are there more-so for a realistic look, as I do not calculate their existence. Like I said, I am not making shop drawings. I've attached an extract of my big airplanes cargo floor support structure to demo how I can reduce the entity count of (2) components that are used repeatedly in the model. Normally I do not show most bolts in my structural drawings, but here I had too, as I needed to present a higher level of realism for this model. For the majority of holes, large or small, I do not push through the hole to the opposite face. For a 24 sided hole that creates 96 entities per hole, 24 faces and 72 lines. I just draw 2 circles, and paint the "hole" with transparent white, for a total of 50 entities, 48 lines and 2 faces. 1/2 the detailed way. And it maintains solidity, although I have to calculate for the "extra volume" of the fake hole. I also paint both side of any face the same, so looking in a hole doesn't look weird. That also eliminates backside shine through at the edges. For holes that are threaded, I used to draw extra circles down the hole to look like threads, and that alone kicked the entity count way way up. So now, instead of transparent color, I use a dark gray. No extra entities. Same for bolts.How to reduce entity count, yet look the same.

Or to put it another way, the wheel zoom rate is proportional to the apparent distance from you (camera) to the object directly under the cursor (even if not selected). So the closer you are the "slower" the zoom. And that also accounts for the so-called "Hyper-Pan" or "Hyper-Zoom" when your cursor lands on empty space during repeated zooms or pans. The best recourse after a very slow zoom or when in deep space is to "View Extents" which will ballpark you to your object. "Previous View" is only good for the last 3 or 4 positions before cycling back. Another trick is to create a temporary scene before zooming in if you are going to be in close for multiple operations, and need to get back out to a common viewpoint multiple times.