Well, as I do not use Maxwell, I cannot really tell what's going on. The above example is mainly for native SketchUp as SU does not render image transparency when it comes to shadows. Maybe Maxwell cannot render alpha transparency either and would need clipmaps when rendering. But in any case, if renderers can use image transparency for clipping, the above solution only works if they can either render double sided materials (or what) like in V-ray or they can ad shadow to a completely transparent material (like Thea).

If you have applied materials to the backs of faces models the wrong way round there are also tools like 'FixReversedFaceMaterials' [do a search] - that tool finds all faces in a selection that have a material on the back but not the front, it then reverses them and swaps the material from back to from keeping the UV mapping so any textures appear exactly the same as they were before, but now all faces are hopefully correctly oriented and 'materialed'... Sometimes simply reversing faces to be consistently oriented won't work without lots of subsequent reapplication of textured materials and UV mapping adjustments - this does it in one step...

ha, that did the trick thanks.

I believe that SketchUp exports images at the resolution of your monitor, say 72 or 96 dpi (dots per inch). You printer setting may be, say 300 dpi. So the print will be 96/300, or .32 times smaller then what you see on the screen. SketchUp was never designed to export or print scaled drawings. I think it is possible to match a exported image to a printer, but you have to calculate the print (not paper) size in dpi, then export the image at (in my case) 300/96=3.125 times the SketchUp window size. Say my SketchUp display is 1100x900 dpi (you can get this with the print functions), then I must export the image at 1100X3.125 by 900X3.125. SketchUp has some export limits I do not recall off hand. If all you want to do is print from SketchUp a image as large as you can on your printer, set the printer properties to "scale to fit". This will typically be a low resolution image. To get around that, export a large image to a file, open the file with the default viewer, and print "scale to fit". In any case, always print with a preview, that way you can see if the result is what you want.

I have used Global Mapper quite a bit to generate contours for import to SU. The largest I have done was about 2000 acres. You may want to play with the contour interval to speed up SU. I generated a terrain model with 2' contours on 2000 ac. SU ran all night. When It was complete, I had to zoom WAY back (really far). Good Luck, sounds like a cool project.

Thanks for the ideas. I'll look into all of them and see if there is a tweak or two I need to make.

Jim, I'm not trying to be arugmentative. I'm trying to find out where you find it impossible to get the actual dimension. Perhaps to help you out with it. I have done a lot of dimensioning in LO and while I've had some gripes with it, it has always given me the actual dimension between the two points I select. Would you show an example--upload the SU and LO files--so we can see when it fails?

1 Step. Before Illustrator. *)Layout > AutoCad joining linies together, making different line weights. !B

Thanks, Gaieus: Your illustration is icing on the cake that Dave served.

Got it! Thx bro! Alot!

Alternatives for the Cpoint insertion: Didier Bur's Projections Tool? ThomThom's Guide Tools?

I sometimes have problems too. I wrote them off to not restarting (Mac) often enough, because that often helps. Jim

PM me your ballsed up code and I try to fix it...

There are some cool, new features of SU 8 Pro (like solid tools and a bunch of improvements in LO for instance) so if you want to try them, I suggest installing it. Do not touch SU 7. Just download SU 8 (Pro if you want to try) and install it side by side version 7. I have 6, 7 and 8 installed (and use them all occasionally). You can even run two, different versions at the same time. Then if you like 8 Pro, you can upgrade - and yes, I also think it's about $ 95.

I am on a windows 7 64bit machine and I opened 4 sessions at the same time and got NO expired warning and no lag. Scott

@unknownuser said: @jgb said: As for a mesh tool, I think Curviloft does me just fine. In fact it creates too fine a mesh, and I spend a fair bit of time reducing lines. But that is still way faster than my old way of tweaking a manual mesh. The density of the mesh is primarily driven by: the number of vertices on the contour (Curviloft respect all of them) the sampling factor you may apply (usually it is to get a more dense mesh) It may be worth working out the contours to minimize the number of vertices and then perform the Skinning operation. Fredo Thanks Fredo, After I first played with Curviloft (CL) I realized it followed all my verticies, but added more so I now create my initial control curves with a reduced segment count that looks crappy raw, but nice and smooth after CL does its magic. However, CL introduces a significantly higher vertex count in the mesh, sometimes dividing a controlling segment into 4 or 5 bits, with some very tiny. It is those very small segments that I have to eliminate, yet still keep a smooth mesh. But even so, that is far less work than tweaking a manual mesh. In my 3 problems above (Cargo door fairings for my big freighter airplane), I created a segment size of about 24 inches on average, figuring on CL dividing those segments in 2 or 3, but I got quite a few segments that were less than 1 inch. At the scale of my model (308 feet long), that was way too fine. Is there any way within CL's control parameters to adjust the "sampling factor"? I would like CL to divide a control segment in 2 or 3 vertices as a norm. Then I can control the smoothness with my initial arc and spline segment count. Also, how does the "angle value" figure into the control? Mine is set at 40 deg, but I have not played with it yet. And, while I still have your attention, is there any way to default the start location of the popup control toolbar? It always starts at top left, but in my case that area is hidden by my Components Window. Then I have to temporarily move the Comp Window so I can move the CL toolbar down to the lower left of screen. I would prefer that as the default start position. Charly2008. Thanks, but as I inferred before, when I was made aware of the gaps by Rich, I fixed them and had no problem forming the curves, exactly as you did. Now I am more careful in creating my control curves and have done a few far more complex skins since without problems.

Arghhhh!!!!! Stupid guy, it's written in the doc!!!!! Thanks a lot Regards, Alain

I've had pretty good luck going from Revit -> SU actually using this method http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3271&p=15926&hilit=revit+layers#p15926 I used it recently on a 3 story hospital rendering and animation. I brought in the building, site, mechanical, and structural elements. I can't imagine anything much more complex unless you had 3d furniture and such coming in from revit as well, which I didn't. The plugins mentioned in the above tutorial made it very easy to apply the appropriate materials. I only skimmed TIG's responses but as I recall the components worked decently - that is to say, it did actually create components rather than just having everything in groups which could be a nightmare. So changing one window element might not change every window element but it will probably change a fair number of them. Most of the hassle comes in cleaning up the model which will likely be far more complex than you need - but that's neither Revit, nor SU's fault. -Brodie

Cheers Csaba.

I get those numbered SKB's when working on a new file for a while without saving with a real name.