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 ?

Ah, ok. Thank you M. Thomthom!

XP is a dead end road. W7 needs ~1gb working memory instead of the ~512mb of XP, nothing one should care of on a 4gb+ system. if you wanna use XP64 anyhow, check that drivers for every piece of hardware you are using are avail before buying it... @rock1 said: ...save disk space... who cares? Norbert

Adding custom feeds to Gmail 'Web Clips'

Hi Mike, I looked at the skp file. Let me itemize the issues. i) Face orientation. Try to make the faces oriented consistently. whitish is front bluish is back. It is not a show stopper (you can create the same textures for both front and back, but then the left-right sidednes of the texture becomes confusing. Please look at my attached file with the faces monochrome option to see what I did. ii) For the model that you have, you should better make two textures as you noted. When you try to make a single spherical projected texture the distortions become too large. You can look at the attached skp file to see how I textured the two sides separately. And then note that I left window sides etc out, because they force the mapping to be distorted too much. For this shape unwrap method does not work well. iii) The methodology. Tgi3D provides an initial mapping with a default texture (if the faces are not already textured). The next step is to edit the default texture to the desired texture, using an image editor. Since the image editor can not change the mapping your edits need to follow the mapping of the default texture. That is, say if the window is mapped to a particular rectangle in your texture image you need to place your window image inside that rectangle. In the attached skp file you will find two materials corresponding to two sides of the lander dome. The texture image you have provided of course does not have the correct placement. Now you have to basically cut paste rotate scale distort etc from your texture image into the texture images that tgi3d provided initially. you can PM me for your further questions if you want. regards Dropship send2.skp

Thanks for your input. Align axis, CRTL + move did it Finshed...

an iMac with shared video solution? SU needs a fully OpenGL v1.5 compliant video subsystem, preferrably a dedicated one not using the working memory of the system. run the MacOS update ("Apple Menu > Software Update") for getting the latest video driver for your system. hth, Norbert

hi guys, I've been trying the Kerkythea for mac (as some of you suggested), but i just cant seem to find it in my app folder. other people on the site are having the same problem. do you know anywhere else i can download it from? if not....what else could i use that better than kerkythea. thanks

Yes, no problem, as long as their SU version is 7 or more. If they have a version less than 7, you could save as a lower version before sending...

Hi Charly Thanks a million for that. You just saved me a whole night work. I have been playing with the rails to loft, instead of the lattice, I have done as instructed and it worked like magic. Thanks

No, I'm retired, but having just faced a hard drive melt down, I need incentive (any kind of award) to mess with my registry.

Dave, I thought about that but I am laying this out for the laser cutter and I am using standard wood sizes for a lot of the parts. If I did it at full scale and then reduced it down to 35% the wood sizes will also change and I would not be using 1/4" and 1/8" wood for the parts. Thanks, Larry

And that is exactly why PhotoScan is such a wonderful plugin/tool for such buildings like those in Trondheim (and other stuff) There is no way you can make any even slightly accurate model from one single photo without making some assumptions, like that some corners are square. With two or more photos you can calculate a points 3D position in 3D space and don't need to make any assumptions about the objects/buildings. In SU it is pretty easy to place any model into a background photo if you surround it with a helper cube with square corners that can be used for the position and perspective aligning.

@mac1 said: Try a different program to see if it is SU or Blender. Somebody suggested the German LTplus_SketchUP plug-in to export from SU to DXF and that worked importing into 3DC-Pro, albeit the objects textures not showing. It's in the 3DC court now. Thanks for all your advice ! O t t o

Hi, have a look at this: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/sketchup/thread?tid=74deeae241b00f82&hl=en In general, the purpose of 3d warehouse is sharing and the ToS imply that what you want to do is allowed. For a detailed and correct interpretation of the [url=http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/3dwh/tos.html:12hwmeqr]Terms of Service[/url:12hwmeqr], you would need an attorney. Best is always to ask each modeler to be sure if he is ok with redistribution (you can contact the owner by clicking on the model page on the envelope icon next to the author's name).

Thanks thomthom - the clipping bug was driving me nuts - I spent ages looking for what it was. And now I've moved back to origin everthing's fine.

Old but still relevant? I need to look into Fredoscale, didn't know it worked like that. As for the OP the current method I use is to create a template window component to a known size e.g. 2' x 2', then make a "unique" copy which i then edit by "Moving" the sides & head ideally to a known dimension, but it can also be pulled to inference with the opening lines if editing in place. This also works with any sub divisions that can be moved individually.