Othoap, As a woodworker who drew by hand for more than 20 years, I can testify that what Chris Fuller say's is abosolutely dead on. "Stop thinking about shapes as primitives that must be manipulated through dialog windows and think about shapes as objects made up of lines, as if you were drawing them with a pencil. Its a bit of a mindset shift coming into SU from most other modelers." Sketchup was the first program I tried that drew the way is most natural to me. Is it perfect? No. But it's a super program that after using for 18 months I'm still learning new things every day. And I could not have done it without the help of the good folks on this forum. Always get quick and in my case patient walking through of whatever problem I've had. If you're using it professionally, become proficient at the basics before you run into a deadline, or you'll surly become dishearted at the program. The # of tutorials out there coupled with plugins make Sketchup a winner in my book.

IMO, there is little value with running your own app. in a browser. If however, an occasional user could access SU pro as a server app for pennies, then running SU Pro in a browser could be an attraction.

i have the same problem.

You have Piranesi which is a real "3D Photoshop" The link seems to be closed just now: http://www.piranesi.co.uk/ (hope it's only temporary ) so I send a You Tube link as example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO2KKD5rJTo&feature=channel_page Fotosketcher is only for PC EDIT: Bad news: searching the Piranesi link to send it here, I found that Informatix editor of Piranesi has some real problems: http://www.informatixsoftware.com/forums/showthread.php/3122-Informatix-Inc.-Japan-Statement

Does the order of Ctrl and Shift in the Shortcuts window matter in practice? Along with the V they get played more like a three-note chord on a piano than playing the individual notes in succession.

Make that rectangle into a component which glues to "any" face (and cuts a hole, too, to avoid Z-fighting). Make sure to set the component axes so that the red and green axes are lying on the face. Now whenever you pull one from the component browser, it will try to self-align itself to any face you snap it to. You may still rotate the component on the face but that should not be an issue. See attached file. CompGlue.skp

Maybe you are thinking of the ability to import and export keyboard shortcuts?

Thanks Chris! I know you are busy.

That mesh looks really good. Even with a lot less guide points. And hey, you didn't even have to bang your head against the wall. Man, 400,000+ points. That makes my head hurt.

Hi Milo You might want to try posting on a forum like http://www.nicepapertoys.com/, but please keep us informed, I'd be interested to know the answer also. Cheers

Don't do it. Google themselves even say so. Depending on the distance from the origin, and simply speaking, the accuracy of the lines themselves can actually become inaccurate due to the software running out of decimal points from the origin. It's not as bad in SketchUp but all programs suffer this and some tend to be better at it than others. I know that Maya is shocking at this when you have drawings kms away from the origin.

@tig said: @glro said: @dedmin said: http://rhin.crai.archi.fr/rubylibrarydepot/plugin_details.php?id=198 the text written by this plugin shows one line for each instance of a component it doesn't make the total for each component You never asked for that your plugin "ComponentReporter++.rb" produces 3 text files: *_CR-Component+Report.csv *_CR-Instances+Report.csv *_CR-Parentage+Report.csv With the included example: "essai_CR-Component+Report.csv": DEFN-NAME,COUNT,DESCRIPTION,GUID Composant#1,1,,29b53a7c-2e6c-40b9-9f78-41e4abc0a62f Composant#2,1,,2306d93d-9156-46c9-bf4a-5a4e8a2f5e38 Composant#3,4,,c969203b-e788-468f-b495-5936ea9bdd48 As you can see, Composant#1 and Composant#2 are counted once only, when in reality, they appear 4 times in the model; the problem comes from the fact they are nested within Composant#3 If Composant#3 instances are exploded, Composant#1 and Composant#2 are counted 4 times, and it is what i am looking for. But would be possible to get this result without exploding anything, using the information in your file "essai_CR-Parentage+Report.csv": 'essai_CR'<Model>,''Composant#3<Instance>, 'essai_CR'<Model>,''Composant#3<Instance>, 'essai_CR'<Model>,''Composant#3<Instance>, 'essai_CR'<Model>,''Composant#3<Instance>, 'essai_CR'<Model>,'Composant#3'<Definition>,''Composant#1<Instance>, 'essai_CR'<Model>,'Composant#3'<Definition>,''Composant#1<Instance>, 'essai_CR'<Model>,'Composant#3'<Definition>,''Composant#1<Instance>, 'essai_CR'<Model>,'Composant#3'<Definition>,''Composant#1<Instance>, 'essai_CR'<Model>,'Composant#3'<Definition>,''Composant#2<Instance>, 'essai_CR'<Model>,'Composant#3'<Definition>,''Composant#2<Instance>, 'essai_CR'<Model>,'Composant#3'<Definition>,''Composant#2<Instance>, 'essai_CR'<Model>,'Composant#3'<Definition>,''Composant#2<Instance>, By counting the last definition instance of each line, and produce the result in a file like "essai_CR-Component+Report.csv"? This is what sketchup does in the statistics windows, when you ask to developp for the component hierarchy, and it was my first question... nested components example

John Carmack (Quake series, Doom series, and the upcoming Rage engine) chose to use openGL rather than Direct-X -- that's saying something. Also, Call Of Duty series and Far Cry are notable games/series using openGL. OpenGL appeals to me (as an end-user only, I know nothing about programming) because it's free, non-proprietary, and is managed by the Khronos Group who also manages openCL. And openCL seems much more significant, at this point, than openGL -- using the graphics card to significantly speed up general computation. At this point it's CUDA (which is arguably better, at the moment) or openCL -- free and works on everything or proprietary and only works on Nvidia hardware. I realize this is a convoluted and indirect reason to like openGL, but I want the software to succeed that's not owned by a private company that gets to dictate what hardware we have to buy and who can use the software. Besides, have you seen smallluxgpu (openGL rendering program)? Tell me that's not awesome.

I had some issues with SU8 being very slow. But after a complete uninstall and re installation again it was fast and snappy again.

I'm not bothered, and as long as it gets the job done I'll use any version that's put in front of me (as long as my plugin's work too! ).

But if the folders are deleted or renamed the menu doesn't work.

Thank you. I guess I'll settle for that. You certainly can't be worse than I am. I have wood in my shop that has petrified before I could get round to using it.

Unfortunately SU's shadow engine does not recognise transparent areas in images thus they will always cast a rectangular shadow unless you really cut them around (thus adding more geometry though the use of billboard entourage would be to avoid this) or you can completely turn off casing shadows of these entities and use a single component for all to cast shadow. If you download Alan's tree from here and turn hidden geometry on, you will discover three, horizontal components inside. They are painted with a completely transparent png image (but as per above, this transparency is not recognised by SU therefore will cast shadows). True that they will also add extra geometry to your model but you only need one shadow caster component in the whole model (you can even put it on a separate layer and only turn it on when needed) so overall file size should not go too high. As for the pivot point; when creating the Face me component, there is a button in the dialog to "set component axes". Use that to set it into the middle of the tree trunk and it will pivot around that.

The fence is great just what dynamic is good for.

What do you mean by more 'efficient' exactly? Both locations are on your hard drive so they're exactly the same. Only difference I can see is that SU knows where to find the ones in your Components folder whereas you'll have to point it to look in another location if they aren't there. Same with textures. Regarding the speed of SU, the only time that the amount of components/textures will affect performance is when you open a components/materials folder that has a lot of stuff in it - ie. it may take a few seconds to load. Other than that, it won't affect your orbiting around a model or the size of the model so long as they only exist in your component/material folders. Once you start putting a component/material in your scene then the file size will increase accordingly. -brodie