Thanks, Paul. I do have Pro. Just not too familiar with it. But it sounds like the best way. The best alternative is suppose is as you suggest- get the area I want covering as much of the monitor screen as possible and then fiddle with it. Thanks, much. Dave

Hi ThomThom DUH! I will slap my self now hahaha thanks anyway TT, I'll put this in the DUH thread ultimatez

Thanks for all the advice. I have a couple photos I will bring my model into. The videos and text links were extremely helpful. Regards, John

You should work full-size in Sketchup. It doesn't "draw to scale". Set you empty SKP model - Model Info > Units - to say 'meters'. Import the site-plan image and place it down flat. Use the Tapemeasure tool and pick two points on this image that you know to be a given distance a part - perhaps a road width or a building-frontage width - let's say it's 30m. The VCB will show a dimension [it won't be 30m unless you are the luckiest guy in the world! but that's not important], immediately type in the correct dimension as 30m and press <enter>, a dialog asks if you want to rescale the model, say 'yes'. Group it and lock the group so you don't accidentally change it. The image is now scaled to the right size, so drawing things over it at their true size will be in the correct relationships/proportions. Now you can draw over it to add new roads and block-building forms, entering the sizes in meters as you want... Group or make components of these parts so they don't 'stick-together' when moving/rotating... You can set some scene tabs of 3d perpsectives or 2d plan [no-perspective] etc with shadows on as desired. Export these as images - you can scale a plan later - once your model is more complete...

@rv1974 said: @Fredo: I swear you was the real target of the topic starter! Gotcha! Actually, I was referring to the interactive method to edit curves shown in the Russian demo. For the Ramp question, there are approximate solutions. Attached is a small standalone plugin showing the concept (indeed, it would deserve a GUI to pick the contours, play with parameters, propose to skin with curviloft, etc...) - maybe I will integrate the function in Curviloft [image: FubM_RampShearing.gif] The plugin is realsed in the Plugin section of the forum: see http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=29230#p254673 To use the plugin CurviShear Select one or several curves (it has to be real Sketchup Curves) Contextual menu (or plugin menu) Curve Shearing Dialog box to enter the base height, the maximum height and Group option. New curve(s) are generated The plugin also works with a single curve. When you have more than 2 curves, the ordering is unfortunately dependent on the SU selection order. IMPORTANT: For the time being, the Direction for Shearing is the Z AXIS. So you curves should preferrably be in the Horizontal plane. Fredo

@thomthom said: And the flutes could be made into CutOut components for easy reuse and quick editing. Another good idea

I get the same thing sometimes. Not only with circles. All kinds of shapes. My solution is usually to draw a line over one of the edges of the shape that needs to be cut out.. this usually solves the problem. if it doesn't, I draw a line from one side to the other, crossing the new face. sometimes this does solve the problem, sometimes it doesn't...

A nice trick I like to use is the following, but mathematically not exactly the same as the above options. It's very fast though, and versatile. Activate pencil tool Hold mouse over rectangle (or any other desired face) until it says 'on face' from then on, hold shift. draw any desired shape, aligning with points or lines already in the drawing (NB: aligning with a line is not the same thing as aligning with a point!) after finishing the shape, release shift.

looks like he is a hitch hiker... got his free ride and disappeared.

@gaieus said: Even easier (than to applying on both sides) to import such an image as "Image" (not texture), scale it to your needs then right click > Explode (or leave it as an image entity). My Duh! moment...thanks Gaieus!

Thanks Tig, that helps a lot. now i got it. ...What can i say... thx guys Cookieschredder

What I ended up doing was adding a new face to a group, by retracing the lines of the group. I ended up pulling the new face out a tiny bit to keep the new layer from "flaring" or reacting with the original face, when orbiting/moving it works for now.

lso worth mentioning that "Hidden line" face style will not be shaded (when sun is turned off). This is good to know when you need to export some 2d thing for post-precessing (like creating alpha masks and such). Also it does not use the default material but the beckground colour.

Of course no problem with the wrong place - I just didn1t understand. And welcome to SCF by the way. I saw that you were directed here in the SU Help Forums, too - now found TIG so you should be able to sort this out with him.

It worked, thanks for all the help it is much appreciated!

Thomthom has a plugin called UV Toolkit that can do wonders. Have a look at this arch texturing tutorial where I used it. Also, even if it is not about an arch (and of course your arc is semicircular), you can position the texture on just one segment and use the Copy-Rotate tool to distribute it along the arc (in this case it will of course be the same texture on each facet)

So... I think I have it now. here is a picture of it and how it relates (in principle) to what I am doing in case you are curious... The octagonal thing holds the 12" diameter telescope mirror. [image: 9DRX_rockerbase.jpg] First, I drew the outline and used the offset tool to draw 1/2" in (on a separate copy) I drew the first large hole bottom dead center. then I measured 3 degrees to the left and estimated the center, trial and error. Then I did the same thing on the right for the remaining holes. The crescent attaches to the mirror box with four 5/16" bolts. The box, the crescent and the tine on the far side rotate in altitude about the hole in the tine. The crescent rests on two teflon bearings. The whole thing rotates about the azimuth in the center of the base plate. I gotta say, that after making the crescent, (took perhaps 3 hours) the rest of it went together in about 45 minutes from scratch. Did I ever mention how much I love Sketchup?

@danbig said: Has anyone come up with a good way to save a few different workspaces for sketchup? I'm on Windows XP with SU Pro 7.1 Well.. on Windows, Sketchup saves all the data in the User hive of the Registry, so... the only (easy) way now, to run SU differently OR run diferent minor releases of the same major Sketchup version, is to create separate User accounts on Windows. In your case.. the NORMAL user for mutli-screen, and a SECONDARY account for single-screen. There are filesharing issues however. You'd need to save your models in the 'All Users' folder tree (displays as 'Shared Documents') so you could access them from both accounts. (..or just "Share" the secondary user's Documents folder and subfolders.) After making the secondary account, you log off it, and onto the normal account. Then when you need to run Sketchup in single-screen mode, you do a "Run As..." (right-click your Sketchup icon, and choose 'Run As..',) and run Sketchup as the secondary user, but still you can run anything else as the primary user (most importantly your email client,) etc. because your still logged on as the primary user. You'd never really ever need to log onto the secondary user, if the primary user is an administrator; because admin's can see all user hives in regedt32.exe in case you need to look at the secondary's SU settings in the Registry. So your just using the secondary user account, to create a separate User Hive to save Sketchup settings for a Single-Screen mode. (You could even name the user SingleScreen.)

People really seem to have problems printing directly from SU. Here is a quick fix solution: Export all your scenes as images, then print them individually. I hope this solves your problems until you get a real answer!

Well I do have a lot of plugins, I think just downloading random ones is becoming a habit. But I say as long as the ones you need are at close at hand its ok. I recommended an idea a while back when I suggested Sketchup in full screen, for those of you who don't remember here it is: Basically when you put SU in full screen all you see is the modeling window. But if you move your mouse to the side your tools slide out. So it was possible to have a normal window full of tools (most of them are obviously from plugins) and still have plenty of work space. Now the idea was ahem AWESOME in my opinion but it aroused not many people to their delight. But back to the topic - the only monster it becomes is the monster that a computer might not be able to handle. Even though I'm trying my hardest to reduce all the junk that came from my habit, I still can't get it to the point like it was. But don't worry I'm getting close. So if you don't mind having over 100 files in your plugins folder, then go ruby crazy. It took my modeling to the next level to say the least.