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.

Brodie, a dae file is a simple text file and cannot contain the image textures (only colour references). You must have overlooked something. Generally the dae file is outside the material folder though (but probably this would depend on the exporter itself).

hi, thanks for all the answers. i managed to get the result i wanted using this UV Toolkit plugin. TIG: yes, i also thought that painting the group will apply the material to both front and back faces. sadly, this wasn't the case. maybe it could have been a problem with the geometry? my model was actually first generated by script in rhinoceros, and then i exported to 3DS to import it into sketchup for VRay rendering. also, this was a group of groups inside a component, so that my have also been the issue dsarchs: yes, i read about that, but since i do all my renderings in vray directly from sketchup...

Not in SU 8. If you have SU 7 however, it always imports what is on screen in GE so if you have a "historic" imagery loaded, you can import that. It's B&W though so you will need to export the colour image from GE and reload the B&W one with it in SU.

Thank you... the first one does all that I need. Very much appreciated.

I took Driven's advice and reached the SU folks. They confirmed the direction of this thread: "As you may know, network licenses of SketchUp Pro no longer revert to the free version when you have exceeded the use of your allotted amount of network seats. Each situation is different and there are always different ways of satisfying each individual need. You have the option of adding additional network seats which would give you more room -- as well as more users -- to operate on your existing network. You may also be interested in converted your two-seat network license into two individual licenses; individual licenses allow you to run multiple instances of SketchUp Pro on the same machine without receiving the error message you're receiving now."