Thanks Fraser, your reply was quite educative.

great thank you gain

Of course I did not mean that you said "cheap" that way (you did not say cheap at all, I know). In fact, Kerkythea is a great application and beats many commercial renderers, too. If you use png transparency, it can also render that so you do not need to create a separate clipping mask. What image format is that logo in?

thank you dean

Wind-borne...genius my friend. Thanks, I totally overlooked tuning the shortcuts in OSX.

great.... this looks like exactly what i was after - much appreciated!

Thank you Dave, I've sent you the file. In the end it could be a corruption, possibly of both styles I wanted to save. Interested in what you think. I have found that I CAN save styles that came with SU into a new collection by the methods described,just not my created styles. Catch up with you soon. Peter [Update: Dave saved the Styles into files for me. In the process I figured out that SU8 was accessing the SU6 Styles folder. I threw out the SU6 support folders and things started acting normally. Thanks Dave!]

Very nicely done.

Yes, exactly. I used shorter pieces of animation with the combination of stills (for the transition effects) in this video (demonstrating "phases" of a Roman excavation site). Used only Windows Movie Maker for it. [flash=600,500:159ufj09]http://www.youtube.com/v/bKsEpF1Neh0[/flash:159ufj09]

Doh indeed. You wrote what you did but it was so illogical that my mind also skipped it and was wondering about some completely different solution.

I'd forgotten about that plugin. thanks for reminding me. I think a keyboard shortcut for that would be a handy thing.

Very nice work.

@dave r said: Joel, I would definitely like to see what you're working on. After all, it's a boat, isn't it? Who wouldn't be interested. What's the hull to be made of? Cold molded oak with mahogany exterior veneer. One inch thick. Most of the structural members (carlin, stem, rudder stock (etc) are laminated oak. They are deliberately oversized. This is very much a WIP. I am currently working on the helmsman's station (in particular the compass) and rudder gear, so those parts are very incomplete. As is the engine drawing and propeller. The masts, cabin floor, headliner and cockpit floors are in transparent and are only interim position, till other mechanical and structural considerations are defined. You can hide them by turning off layer D0. The deck (layer 1.30) is turned off so you can see the insides. Many layers have no content yet, and many more layers are known, yet to be defined. I had to RAR the file as it was just over the 4mb upload limit. If that's a problem let me know and I will ZIP it or split it as needed. The ballast keel is oversized and will be resized once the center of bouyancy is calculated. Right now the hull displaces almost 43,000 lbs, and a lead ballast keel would weigh almost 41,000 lbs. It should be about 1/2 that and would most likely be iron, not lead. I planned a cabin to sleep 4 in comfort and 6 max. My experience is 6 for 1, maybe 2 nights, 4 for a longer trip is best. The engine is a 40hp 3 cyl Yanmar Diesel. It is probably a bit underpowered, but the next up 4 cyl Yanmar is about 55 hp, and might be just right. I have not yet done the calcs. My old boat (40 years ago) was a 53 foot Yawl with a P Class racing hull. Originally a tall sloop, it was too tired for racing (built in 1911), but its 25 hp engine was more than adequate, when it worked. I sailed a full summer with only a 5 hp outboard jury-rigged to a sideboard. It moved that sleek hull like stink. This hull is not anywhere near as fine, but I wanted more interior space. The old boat had the interior of a 30 footer. The old boat suffered a badly broken carlin in a storm, and was far too expensive for me to fix. The wood stick for the carlin alone was almost $2,000. So I sold it as is, for a bit more than what I bought it. It had about 3-4X the value in the lead keel, bronze antique parts and the bronze screws in it. I still miss it. (Note: I had to compress the file in RAR format as it was just over the 4mb upload limit. If that's a problem, let me know and I'll ZIP it or split it as needed.) 55 ft Schooner design (WIP) RAR Compressed format

Thanks

Pilou == Frenchie so he uses obscure names like 'Eclate-Deplace' which means something lie 'explode-move'

explanation?...or working link?

Graphics drivers and OpenGL settings are commonly the cause of shadow problems. Since this isn't a bug, i'm going to move this into the SketchUp Discussions. Perhaps someone else will find it useful.

I looked it up and TrueSpace is still available for free, but the company was bought and dissected by Microsoft so they are not working on it anymore. It has Blender level capabilities, just their shared model system doesn't look that good. From the youtube videos it seems like every change takes 5-20 seconds between performing an action an that action affecting the model, surely this is a secure system but that is in no way usable (could just be a bad video). But I'll still check how that all works, thank you for bringing it up.

OK, I have found my problem. I didn't have the hard drive connected by USB 2, I had used the firewire connection, which I though would be faster. So here are my results. Firewire, 1m, 3.3 sec to save, original file, original connection that I was complaining about in my first post. Another HD using USB 2, same file, 13.3 sec The HD in step 1, using USB 2, same file, 14.2 sec. Note, difference here could be my finger time using the I-Phone stop watch. So something is not working correctly on my Firewire connection. Finding this problem will give me something to do later today to try and find the problem. Anyway thanks to all for your response. Ken

It might be a plugin clash, and until you've tested as Dave suggests we won't know... but I can't envisage any 3rd party code that might do this - so I suspect it's a Sketchup/OpenGL/graphics-card issue - have you tried reinstalling/repairing Sketchup ?