View > Hidden Geometry OFF. Double-click surface to select the surface and the edges BUT NOT the 'smoothed-edges'. Use Make Group to add it to a new group - it will be automatically be made a copy because the originals are needed by the surface. Edit the Group. View > Hidden Geometry ON. View > Component Edit > Hide Rest of Model You can now see what you are doing. To make the base I did two meshes and then combined them. Draw a line across to make two halves. Select it and Divide into say 10, immediately use Weld.rb to weld it into a 'curve' of 10 segments. This is the 'profile' Draw two short edges away from the apex of each end. Select the outline's edges from one of these to the 'profile' [~1/4], use Weld again to make it a 'curve' - this will be a Rail. Repeat this for the other three pieces of the outline. You now have a straight curve - the profile - and four 'rail' curves - we'll now process these two at a time. Use EEbyRails, pick the profile-curve then two 'rails' on the same side, finish by picking the 'profile' again [i.e. there's no 'melding-profile' for this type of surface!], answer the questions with 'No' unless the mesh faces 'up' - if it does 'reverse' the faces. You now have a mesh of ~half of the bottom face. Repeat to make the other half. Select the two groups and explode them. You now have the bottom-group, explode that and it will heal with the main [original] surface. Select All and group it, so Slicer has something to work on... Note: your surface is quite small so I recommend you first scale up the group x 8, make the slices at 1", then scale everything down by x 0.125... Sketchup has problems with making very small faces BUT they exist no problem when scaled smaller...

@mitcorb said: I note that you have posted in the VRay subforum. I do not have any experience in VRay. Perhaps a moderator would want to relocate this to the appropriate subforum? Thank you very much for the explanation! and the link too! Yeah I noticed I placed this in the wrong section..doh

in my racing simulator rFactor, there is some type of formula or script that runs during the game, and when we have a wreck it morphs the models. in the settings of the game or actually the game files themselves, there is variables where you choose different vertices and then determine how far they can be moved in a wreck and in what directions. wonder if a similar plugin could be made?

I've noticed that tools are sometimes grayed out on my toolbars, but when I click them, they activate right away. So why are they grayed out in the first place? Most tools do not display grayed out. I'm not using any plugins, btw, just the free SketchUp.

I thought perhaps Geosketch from Cogent3d.com would have some relevance. This is what I mentioned, but couldn't remember. Another part of the name is TacForge. It is not a simple tracer.

Glad that worked. I don't think I ever discovered which one came that way. If I remember correctly, sketchup.rb used to live in the Plugins folder but it was moved to Tools in V6 or 7. I suppose the plugin was from before the move and having it included was no big deal then because it would either not get installed or would overwrite the original file.

@aerilius said: @jgb said: cannot boot any PC after WinXP destroyed the boot sector It doesn't boot the Windows XP CD (repair cd)? If the boot sector is not physically destroyed, there could have been a chance to try to type the word "fixmbr" into the recovery console. I was following the MS procedure to "Replace Motherboard" when I got BSOD as WinXP was finishing the "repair". Then I fixed that BSOD, but WinXP continued to get BSOD every reboot for various driver issues, until I gave up. It will now NOT allow me to reinstall as it always wants to complete the repair, which it can't. The "new" HD has Win-XP Pro on it and I am clearing it out of the old users non-essential stuff then I will start pulling my old stuff over to it. I suspect I will have to re-install most of it, and other issues are delaying me or just making life miserable.... but the new PC runs like stink. Except I am a bit disappointed with the NVIDIA GPU. My old 256mb ATI card of 7 years ago produced a much crisper image in SU than the newer 500mb NVIDIA, even at max resolution and with the best setting for anti-alias. But I can live with it.

Thanks for your quick help!

Cheers, Massimo!

Except in cases where the clean up after a conventional intersect operation would take a long time, I prefer to use Intersect. The example I used with the Google guys was a table drawn with separate parts like I always draw them. I would make a leg component, copy and flip it for the other three legs. Then draw the aprons and stretchers between them. Once the model look right, I'll go back and insert the joinery. I could draw the tenons on the ends of the aprons and use Subtract to cut the adjoining mortise. Of course that converts the leg to a group and the mortises are not cut on the other legs. If I want to maintain the related nature of the legs, I have to make the group back into a component with a new name and then replace the other leg components with the new name. If I want to use the original name I'll purge the In Model components library and then rename the new leg component to the original name. Or, I could open one leg component for editing, trace the base of the tenon with the Rectangle tool, push the inside in and have mortises in all four legs.

I think what most people have been trying to politely say in most of your threads is, If you try learning the basics first you will do so much better. Trying to use a plug in before you understand how to do something manually will only slow you down in the future.

TIG Texture Tools You owe it to yourself to get that one Brodie. Saves a ton of time. Especially for tweaking wood grains.

The Googlers say most numbers/statistics in 3dwh are made from the Search Index. I don't know the technical reasons but I think it's similar like the Google Web Search index which is never up-to-date and complete. For example, alos the number of models per user fluctuates. @hellnbak said: it should be required to be broken up into smaller independent companies. Do you think about a certain (imaginary) company called "@Next" ?

@jean lemire said: Hi folks. If after searching the help, you are still unable to find it, use Menu Window --> Preferences --> Extensions. Use the check boxes to enable the utilities. While at it, why not enable all of them. After that, close SU and restart to make sure that all extensions will load completely. You do this only once, normally. With the extensions enabled, the contextual menu for an object, will show, as the last choice, "Point at center" for circles, polygons and arcs. Just ideas. Cool!! thanksman

I just cleaned up some toolbars I don't use.... I have a bunch of plugins that don't have toolbars that I really wish did though. [image: A8b4Yl.jpg] [image: bml2il.jpg]

Check the direction of your faces. Ensure that you got the front side of the faces in the correct direction.

Thanks for your help! I knew it had to be in there somewhere. Mark P.

Sorry, just found Boo's tutorial , will have to try and work out how to use subdivide and smooth !

[image: wrTW_pataan.jpg] Call it dumb luck, but I came across this post: http://groups.google.com/group/Sketchup-Pro/browse_thread/thread/ca7d0ba921af4611 Then I tried opening ArcScene, selected the tin surface, then added the face elevation with graduated color ramp from the symbology properties, and exported it in 3d vrml (.wrl). I then imported it in Blender 3d and exported it as collada (.dae). I don't know much about Blender 3d and I can't figure out how to display the imported data but just the same, I when I imported it to SketchUp, the surface was there together with the colors. Not as clean as the surveyor's version, but it is almost there. pataan.rar

Just did a test on a sphere with 15K faces, rendered in Twilight on High with a porcelain template applied. Rendered by it's self with one sketchup open -- 48 sec. Same sphere copied to a second sketchup and both rendering simultaneously - both finished in 1 min 20 seconds. Twilight showed both sessions using all 8 cores in my machine. Whether rendering one scene or both, cpu was maxed out. Not sure, but on a lower spec'd machine, perhaps turning down the priority setting when trying to render two sessions simultaneously could help prevent a bottleneck in the ram. (My specs are i7 960 CPU, 12 GB of ram, Nvidia GTX 560ti GPU, running on an Asus Rampage III extreme mobo.)