in America AAA is for American Automobile Association but many companies who want to appear first in the phone book directory choose this as their name. it used to work for web directories as well. it can also be used to draw a picture of pretty mountains... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

i have my standart modeling tools assigned to mouse buttons in combination with "shift", "strg" and "alt" (the mouse buttons no.3-5 have assigned the function keys "F3", and "F8" and "F10" assigned) I can select them without thinking. It's more like finger gestures that happen automatically. The resulting combinations are at the moment: F3..........................pointer/select F3+shift.................push/pull F3+ctrl...................mirror selection (plugin) F3+alt....................line F8..........................move F8+shift.................rotate F8+ctrl..................scale F8+alt...................rectangle F3+shift+ctrl..........tape measure F3+shift+alt...........circle F8+shift+ctrl..........fredo scale - box scaling F8+ctrl+alt............follow me F3+shift+ctrl+alt....paint bucket F8+shift+ctrl+alt....offset and some keyboard only: ^............................reverse face X............................toggle x-ray Q............................remove all materials H............................toggle hidden geometry G............................make group G+shift...................make component v............................field of view z............................zoom extends T+shift+ctrl............uv-frontface to backface T+shift+alt.............uv-backface to frontface T+shift+ctrl+alt......delete backside material and some standart shortcuts like shift+ctrl+v............paste in place T............................top view . . .

My experience is that HQ renders take a long time to cook. Vue does not give you free render nodes if you wanted to distribute rendering to other computers. Vray does allow you to render on up to 10 machines for no extra cost. I guess it depends on how much of work is landscape related. If you are mainly rendering interior and exterior architecture, my personal advice is that Vray is the best plugin for this.

You can try something like this free good one BBFlash Back Express I have not seen your file because I suppose that is not in SU6 format ?

Yes. Coping a molding profile like that is faster with Solid tools. If I had a lot of molding to cope, I would probably do it once, convert the coped molding to a component and then use that one piece of molding for any other pieces that need coping using Make Unique and resizing as needed with Move. I have run into a few cases where Solid tools "breaks" a solid component/group and leaves it unsolid. I reported it and it was confirmed as a bug so hopefully a fix is on the way. I'll cross my fingers that they add the option to leave things as components, though.

Took a detailed look at the model. WOW, you did that on your lunch break! It's your own office isn't it?-)

@gaieus said: Me oops,. i meant who uses free version...

@unknownuser said: It sounds like my best bet is to just adjust how I'm used to working. For example, when I have a window, say, on a 45 degree wall I would sometimes copy it out and turn it 45 degrees so it lined up with the world axis. Then I could go in and edit it based on the world axis and later delete the extra component. -Brodie Yeah that axis change in SU-V8 really irks me. I was drawing an ancient (circa 1907) V8 aircraft engine with a very complex cylinder construction, where all the push rods and valve rockers were exposed. It was at about 50 degrees tilt each bank. I created a dummy cylinder component (just a rough sized cylinder) and copied it 7 times in the correct locations and angles. Then I made a copy and set its angle straight in some remote location on its own development layer. All my construction work was done on the development copy, while any interference adjustments were made on any cylinder on the full engine. Did the same thing on a radial engine. Worked like a charm.

First, always get rid of any symetrical pattern, all that is symetrical can be cut in 2 and reassembled later ...

Excellent! That's what we're here for!

Interesting method by TIG. I will have to try that. In any case, I just bought the sMustard script, along with something they have that repairs the dxf. Thanks for your helpful reply, mitcorb.

I do a lot of sketchy edge image exports at 3000 pixels wide. They do take longer than at lower resolution but I've never had them take 10 minutes. I haven't paid attention to the number of edges I've got but I suppose with that many, it might take longer. Try a little experiment with a model that seems to hang. Hide about half or more of the components/groups and do an export. Does it complete the task? I wonder if there is some sort of time out that would stop the export or cause it to hang.

No - neither the Ansi ä or the Multi-byte ä can be used in a DC attribute name. I got off track a bit on this post. The to_ansi() function is useful when dealing with Umlauts and/or accents which are converted from ANSI/Extender ASCII to Multi-Byte automatically by Ruby or SketchUp. But still doesn't solve the original problem. I will be interested to see if it help with Web Dialogs or other problems.

@martin-art said: I just wanted to post an update on the licensing situation in Shaderlight. For Shaderlight 1.2 we incorporated a new licensing system which has made the installation process much more straight forward for our community. However, we discovered that a limitation of this new system was that we were unable to allow multiple activations on a license code or have the ability to transfer the license to another machine. We have been working to resolve this and importantly maintain the straight forward licensing. Our development team concentrated on allowing multiple activations on a single code, new commercial Shaderlight activation codes can be used twice so you will be ok to activate your Shaderlight license on your office and home computer. The licensing of Shaderlight allows you to have Shaderlight installed on 2 machines, but only use 1 at a time. Customers that have an existing Shaderlight license will need to contact support@artvps.com and their license code will be modified. Martin That sounds great Martin. Thanks very much!

Model Info > Animation fiddle with the scene transitions times etc...

In addition to what's been said already... IF you have applied a texture material directly onto a group or component-instance then that textures material is displayed for any internal faces using the default material [consistently oriented], BUT you cannot affect the material's texture placement on a face by face basis even by editing the container and selecting a face, because that face would still have the default material ! You must apply a textured material directly onto a face for you to be able to use the right-click context-menu Texture tools to modify it individually for each face... THEN you will be able to rotate the texture individually on a face as desired... Tip: once you have just two versions of the textured material adjusted as desired [let's say vertical and horizontal grain] then you need not continue to edit every texture to make it horizontal. Simply use the Material Browser's eyedropper tool to sample a horizontal version of the material - it becomes the active material - and then paint using that on all of the surfaces you want to have the horizontal version - it's a much quicker method than using the Texture tool on every one in turn...

If you infer from an edge, you'll get a guideline...which is infinite in length, but which should not be visible through solid surfaces. If you infer from a point, you'll get a short dotted line of whatever length you measured, terminating in a construction point. Again, not visible through solid surfaces. These processes are the same whether you're inferring from raw geometry or geometry inside a group/component. If you get anything else, it's most likely a graphics card issue.

Thanks, all of you for your input.

Thanks Rich for the explanation. Now I know what I'm looking at. I rarely see a version 8 model when I'm searching. Mostly 5,6,and 7. I usually just get the highest version on the list and so far I have no problems with any downloads.

Fololow me and keep does not rotate but in some cases it does not keep the heigt constant. 1001 Bits tools does but it's $ but does have a 30 day trial period