Yes, I know about painting a group and the "windshield phenomenon" (the default faces will take color and the colored faces will not), but I did not know that the group acquires its own default color. You learn something every day!

thanks Jean. lots of great advice. every time i think ive come to the end of sketchup's capability another door opens

Hi Kris Standard beachfront wood pile systems use 12" diam driven wood pilings about 12'to 16' max o.c. with 12x12 pile caps. The pile caps are connected to the pilings with drift pins and the system is cross braced both ways in all bays with 2x12 members. Seismic and wind loads are transmitted to this platform per engineering calcs and location requirements. The attached photo of one of my projects on the beach in Malibu should help fill in the blanks. Feel free to PM me if you need any more info. Cheers Dave [image: usWc_stader-3AA.png]

Hi All I used TIG's explanation and it worked a treat The cut marks didn't line up perfect so I measured the pieces together and then taped them together Thanks again Dean

Hi folks. See this SU file for ideas. Simultaneous views of a model.skp

There's a wealth of built-in inference/snaps and modifier-keys too. BUT these are not 'scriptable' or editable. Shortcut keys to common tools are very powerful and in many ways better thanA CAD - in SUp a single 'L' >>> Line, versus 'L+space/enter' for ACAD or 'LL' for Revit. You need to practice using them in varying circumstances - ans get to understand that SUp is not ACAD - it's different, and more suited to 3d modeling work. The pulled out direction line is colored RGB if on axis and holding Shift locks it, or the arrow keys pre-lock directionality to the axes. A magenta line is parallel or perpendicular to a line over which you have just hovered. An arc/circle center is the snap if you have just hovered over one. Picked points assume vertex, on-edge, edge-middle etc depending what's under the cursor. Modifier keys used with other tools change them to copy [M+Ctrl or R+Ctrl]; auto-fold [M+alt]; or hide lines [E+shift] or soften [E+Ctrl] etc etc...

@calypsoart said: I'm working on a project that has a lot of metal and truss work. I may have put in too much detail, and the model is bogging down my machine. I'd like to reduce the load. I was wondering if there is some way to remove all instances of a component. E.g I put in rivets for the joints in the steelwork. In reality, these are invisible for most views unless zoomed way in. I could remove these rivets/components and it would not be noticed. Is there a plugin that might remove or allow me to swap out a complex component for a simpler one? Component swapping is built-in - no need for a plugin. Select the component and right-click. Select Save As... from the menu and save it a place where you'll find it (like where your scene is?). Then you could "rebuild" your rivet to a single line (that could even be invisible), or some simple shape. If/when you later find out that you need the rivets again, you just select one of the stand-ins, right-click and Reload... it. But before you do, save your simple rivet as Rivet_simple or something, so it is easy to get it back later. Very convenient when building complex scenes - like with hundreds of 3D trees, cars, rivets or similar.. Just model very simple components and Reload more complex versions later when needed.

I was actualling going to suggest Flash...but you're already aware of it; and it's not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of drafting applications. Unfortunately, I can't think of any others; and thinking about how such programs function, such a feature would be mostly hugely counter-productive. I don't imagine any CAD programs would oblige; and sticking with the more artistic packages, Illustrator and CorelDraw certainly won't do it either. I'm not sure of some of the 'B list' like Serif Draw.

Post removed, I solved the problem myself

Take extra attention to the crease tool Especially when in the video, he is creasing that tip vertex (endpoint) of that pyramid.

Thank you to all of you..I'm sorry I got a little sideways..

@TIG: It may not be the size of his file. I had the MySQL Too many connections 1040 event last night, so it may have been something to do with that. Then again, maybe not.

Aah, got it. Thanks.

A friend's SU model and Kerky render: http://www.orbangabor.hu/hogomb/

@unknownuser said: You can get it here... http://78.47.159.221/CatchUp_5_2011_10.pdf You can get all editions here... http://sketchucation.com/catchup/ Thanks for the link, it appears to have been a firefox issue: I had just upgraded from 3.6 to 8, so a lot of my plug ins and extensions weren't updated yet.

@thomthom said: @gr8fzy1 said: A while back I discovered that I could turn off the anti-aliased textures and doing so seemed to let my computer run a little faster. Odd... goes against what Google recommends for better performance: http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=161352 @unknownuser said: Enable 'Use Anti-Aliased Textures' (Window > Model Info > Rendering) Thanks, the Window>Model Info>Rendering drop menu was what I was looking for. My computer isn't all that powerful, and besides, it says that if I experience blurry textures or strange display effects to uncheck the box. And my textures do blur into almost gray blobs if I have my modeled angled on screen too sharply.

I see... maybe I try the 2D graphic export.....

Thanks andybot, good advice.

All great tips. Thanks loads.

ArcGIS creates the model in the kml file, not a separate collada file (I think). If that is the case, try this plugin: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=38009