Another vote here for "carbonite". Very cheap for the amount of storage you can get and its been a life saver for me on a couple of occasions. Also a handy feature is that you can remotely access all your backed up files no matter where you are in the world. Handy when you realise you left that all important client presentation back at home when your a thousand miles away!! Data recovery specialists seem to be a licence to print money. I've never known anyone that has been able to recover data from a wiped/trashed hard drive. All you ever get is a large bill!

@jean lemire said: The apparent jerkyness of a movement is irrelevant as long as the object being moved end up at the intended position. However, this jerkiness can be minimized if SU has less geometry to show. In other words, try to minimize the workload on the GPU (Graphic Processor) by using less demanding rendering mode like shadedinstead of shaded with textures, no shadows, no fancy edge styles, etc. You can memorize rendering setups with scenes. For example, using Styles, create a minimalist rendering mode for work that you will use when modeling including moving and then create another mode that have all the bells and wistles. Create two scenes, each one using one of these styles. Disable, however, the camera position memorisation for these scenes to avoid loosing a crefully orbitted, panned and zoomed view. Once that is done, you simply click on the minimalist scene tab to work. Your model will the respond fluidly. when ready to see it in its full glory, click on the other scene tab. Note that with a relatively simple model, you shall not experience such jerkyness unless your graphic card is not very strong or you have disabled fast feedback or hardware acceleration or both in the Open GL preferences. Thank you sire for the reply . i'm using the thinline mode with no colour..[purple and white faces mode] i have disabled only hardware acceleration because when i make a selection window, the monitor goes black with lots of coloured rectangle pieces scattered over it. i still have to find a graphic card driver update. i have a gigabyte brand motherboard, they still haven't released new updates

The biggest problem, I think, are the save/load times associated with SU and large files. They become unbearable for me long before I have any major crashing issues. 3ds Max has comparably incredibly fast save times, I suspect Rhino is similar. -Brodie

hi, 'SketchUp Web Exporter' available from the SU download site. or there are tweaked versions/alternatives kicking around, do a forum search. john

Ahh... that would be why then - I have extruded the face up to create a 3D shape. Thanks for your quick reply!

Using my "special psychic powers" I'd say that you perhaps have three or more lines meeting at a common 'node'. You are selecting two lines and trying to weld them into a curve... but of course the other unselected line[s] instantly breaks the curve where it's touching [just like what happens if you draw a line onto an arc, it 'splits' the arc!] = failure !! Remember that you can only 'weld' a 'curve' from a set of edges that are continuously joined end-to-end, and which have no other edges touching them [except perhaps at the very ends of this potential 'curve']...

@involute said: Large files is the price. And potentially holes in the model.

As with other items that appear in the Context menu, Explode only shows in the list of commands for shortcuts, when you have selected something on which Explode can be used.

Found it, used it, it worked Thanks

Allrightallright - for the Windows people: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=42469

Yeah. I did a google search for "spirix.rb" and found the web page. I printed the complete instructions and explanations for further study. Evidently this author has a sense of humor and he has a nice collection in the warehouse. I wish he would place a date on that web page to somehow indicate when he updates so as to give it some feeling of activity. He has three categories under construction with a completion date back in 2010. I would commend him for his talents and generosity, if I could. I don't have much presence on other websites, needless to say.

yea, that's what i though. and that is what im doing now. is there ANYTHING i can do to improve performance? why is this lag happening anyway? running out of RAM? if its not video card. is it ram? cpu? both? i know its a 32 but program and can only utilize 4gb. but what if i up the cpu? thanks for the info

@alan fraser said: They ought to sort themselves automatically, as they are created. If not, try clicking the (faint) arrow on the layer name tab a couple of times. This has pretty much the same effect as when you change the sort order in a Windows folder. It seems like layer 0 is immutable and always stays at the top, though wow!! thanks

@dave r said: I don't think you can. I suppose you could rearrange them by editing their names. That only works in the materials list, not in Entity Info. Entity Info seems strictly sorted (and remains static) in order of initial application from Materials into the model. If you import a component or model from some other library, their colors are added to the list unless they have exactly the same name and color/shade (RGB) and that is why a lot of duplications exist. In one model that used a lot of imported components I ended up with 7 "blacks", all RGB=0,0,0 but the names were slightly different; ie: "00black, black-2, <black>" etc. I haven't played much with textures/colors to see if I have any control over that.

are you on the chaosgroup website? If not, you should be - as you can read any of Fernando's (user name fpedrogo) posts and you will come away knowing more. You really should watch some of his tutorials, valerostudio has pointed them out already. edit: added user name

If you are running a tool that is very intensive then Sketchup can become unresponsive, and the screen 'whites-out'. It's likely it's still processing. The Task Manager window should show its memory usage fluctuating as it processes. If you want to kill it you can, but it might be near to the end of processing. Many scripts have show a status-bar 'progressbar' or a counter [10% or 1/1000 etc]. Unfortunately this will stop changing when unresponsiveness kicks in. Unfortunately Sketchup's timing seems to increase almost exponentially so 1000 operations don't take 10 times longer than 100, more like 100 times ! If you seem to be having problems open the Ruby Console before running the tool in question and see if there are any error messages, this might will indicate a failure - a Bugsplat! is a sure sign of disaster !

@hellnbak said: mere coincidence

Yes it moves the face created by the offset using a transform with results in an autofold creating the bevel.

You can be surprised just how powerful SU is when other tools are added to the equation. Blender/SU workflow is pretty quick once you get the hang of it. Michalizissou is a good example of someone using other apps to compliment SU. I've a video on YouTube showing mapping in UVLayout using Whaat's UV exporter.