Hey guys thanks so much. Chris: I was afraid you would say that. I would have preferred a script that does everything at render time and not messing with geometry. I'm just afraid that one time its going to mess something up or texture mapping might get messed up. Definitely worth a shot though. TIG: Thanks for making this. I will have to try it out! Getting the vertical to scale properly will be necessary so thanks for the tip.

@chris fullmer said: We'll have to wait and see what 8.0 brings. Hopefully more greatness. I'm personally hoping for even more Ruby improvements for the ruby developers and more UI improvements. And greater ability to deal with large models would be cool too. Ditto! Developing SketchUp as a platform is something the users will benefit much greater of in the long run. That and sort out current bugs and UI annoyances. (Yes, I'm looking at you Toolbar Chaos and Shadow Bug)

Hey all Really sorry for not getting back to you sooner, I've been offline for a little while. You guys really helped, we turned a few things off as Thom suggested and turning off unused materials helped alot too! I'm sorry I didn't send over the file, it's a client file and it was best I checked with them first (I still haven't heard back from them) If I can, I will send the unedited model over and let you guys go to work on it Thank you!

You can set the grid scale when you are setting up or editing your photo match. First get the perspective lines up, and then you can move the mouse to the blue axis. The cursor should turn into an up/down arrow, clicking and dragging will change the scale. You need to know the true dimension of something in your photo. Full building height or width is best, but if you have to you can use a smaller object such as a door or window. If your object is too small then any minor flaw in your scaling will make things worse. That is why a large object is best. You can also re-scale the model outside of MatchPhoto by using the measure tool on an object and then typing what you want it to be. You should get a warning "do you want to re-scale your entire model".

V-Ray doesn't support distorted textures. To work around, make the texture unique. (some render engines does this automatically.)

One have to set aspect ratio explicitly in SU2Thea and it has a option to revert back to SU default view. But true it wont notify about side effect if one tries to print while aspect ratio is changed.

The definitely looks like a case where the buildings are slightly lower than the groundplane. You can right click on the axis and choose "reset" if its an option. And that will show you where the true groundplane is. Two ways to fix it. Move all geometry up above the groundplane. OR open the shadows info dialog box and uncheck the box at the bottom for "On Ground". Then SU won't display shadows on the groundplane. Good luck, Chris

I don't know if that applies, but I'll give it a try. My model has several components in it, and when selected have the blue border around them. If there was an object that was a long distance off, the box would be commensurately as large as the distant object. Also, the same is true when I scale the object, the scale box is the same size as the component. As far as FOV goes, the clipping occurs only when the object is being scaled, not when zooming in or out. This is the part I don't understand, why it disappears with scaling; when the model is visible, I can zoom in/out and no clipping occurs other than normal. EDIT: I just discovered that when I zoom in and work on an individual component, some bad clipping happens. I scaled the entire model from original size to 10% (I knew it was still visible at that scale), and went through the each component and applied "Scale Definition". Then reduced the model size down to life size and have had no further problems. Don't know why it worked, but it did. Here's the model, created for the sole purpose of, "How would I...?": [image: LAix_DPDT.jpg]

In my case I did a Save As after I got that error. And when I reloaded the old file it had not saved. But the one I had done with Save As worked.

My lines have not been moved, and there was no reset option - I found a way to move it in the BuildAR app, so for now it works.. Thanks for the help.

AWESOME!!! Thanks so much!

@utiler said: Cool Brodie, thanks for the image and lengthy post! Reading through your comments it makes total sense to do just that; prepare in CAD for as long as you can to make SU workflow less lengthy. The CAD files I received were actually a 3D terrain of the design levels of the site so I had actual finished surface to play with. the trouble was with the 2D file really; just as you said lines not joining, and small line segments and some slightly off Z made making faces a challenge and dropping linework over the terrain a time consuming task..... Anyhow, I've learnt a lot to date so the next time I'm sure I'll get it done a whole lot quicker!!! Ya, fixing things in CAD is crucial to not driving yourself mad. To deal with the Z axis thing you should definitely select all your linework in CAD and go to properties. If your linework is polylines you can just go to Elevation and set it to 0. If the linework is in regular lines then same deal except you have to set it to 0 in both the Start Z and End Z boxes. Smustard.com has a lot of rubies that should help out a ton with this little areas where segments aren't quite attached or there are stray lines, etc. They cost a bit of money though and I'm cheap so I don't have them That stray lines issue is huge by the way. For some reason if you have a stray little line inside of closed linework that would normally create a face, that stray line prevents SU from creating a face so you have to find the little bugger and delete it (or use a ruby to do that). -Brodie

Turn on hidden geometry in View>Hidden Geometry. Then you can position a texture on one of your curved faces as usual (right-click> texture> position). After that sample it by holding down Alt while the paint tool is active and clicking on the face you positioned. You can then paint the rest of the faces that are incorrectly oriented. Still tedious though, and some alignment between adjacent faces is often necessary. Also a plug-in aimed at this problem, I haven't tried it out though.

I use all toolbars and no shortcuts. Love the Clausen jersey as your picture too! GO PANTHERS!

@tig said: If you make the top and bottom 'tread' lines into 'curves' with ' weld.rb' [divide the 1 edge into 2 or more pieces first], and also make 'curves' from the two side 'stringers', then you can use my ExtrudeEdgesByRails [part of the Extrusion Toolset] - then you'd pick the bottom 'tread' as the 'profile', then the stringers as the two 'rails' and finally the the top 'tread' as the 'melding-profile'... It should form a mesh face to suit... Here's a quick example...[attachment=1:3wyvaxf0]<!-- ia1 -->Capture.PNG<!-- ia1 -->[/attachment:3wyvaxf0] thank you tigger, ill try it here is sample [image: SXUu_001.jpg]

@chris fullmer said: Is this s model you could upload here to the forum? Sure, I could try.

Cool! This doesn't appear to work in LayOut...

Using Layout is another alternative when trying to control the aspect ratio. Its also great if you have many scenes to export. With Layout you have to setup the page the first time, but on subsequent prints, it just a single click. If you are careful with your scene naming you can use old Layout files already setup, and swap out the source model.

Thom and Jim thank you.

Beau21, what will you be rendering? Is this for work or hobby? What's your current experiance level with rendering? Reason I ask is if it's just a hobby then price is a factor, if for work then finding the right solution at any cost is needed.