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.

@gaieus said: If you had purged the file, could have been about 5-600 Kb Well, your component was not set to glue and cut opening first of all. Then it was just a little bit misaligned and the component axes NOT set correctly for cutting a hole. In order to cut a hole, a component must have a closed loop of edges (not necessarily with a face or with only one face) that will actually "cut" that hole. Making sure that the component axes are correctly set is the most crucial part of such components. [attachment=1:1nr2cmpk]<!-- ia1 -->Comp.png<!-- ia1 -->[/attachment:1nr2cmpk] The best and most fool-proof strategy is to first draw a rectangle, double click and immediately turn into a component. In this case SU makes it a gluing/cutting component by default and places the axes correctly (they cannot even be placed differently on a 2D entity). THEN edit your component and add the details. Thanks heaps for correcting my model and for the advice. i originally created the whole model from autocad layers that were a bit messy. i made the whole model again from scratch to make sure all the faces were aligned. cheers!

Yes, I know what you mean and of course, you are right; SU 7 came out much more than a year ago and the bonus packs are still not there.

I calculate that for 62 scenes, 4 sec each by 30 fps the file size is about 2,454.5 MBs. WOW!!! Billy, you got a deadline, so go with what you know. Make smaller files, join them in Win Movie Maker, outputting a wmv file that is more compact then the avi. Wmv will run on any pc.

Face Style Toolbar - Wireframe (Wireframe Cube Icon) (Stops you selecting faces) ......... Now select edges of interest Window - Entity Info ......... Hope this helps Howard L'

thank you all for the replys!

Hi folks. If you would like to try it without plugins, just to get to know native SU capabilities, see this SU file for ideas. Arc_extend.skp Note that this file was made with SU 4.0. Now, with the autocutting of line, introduced with version 6, a couple of steps can be avoided. Best regards.

Thanks!

Hi Gaieus, Thanks for the quick reply. I didn't find those plugins helpful for my model. In the end I did it manually.

Thanks again for the suggestion, but as you say, the background image doesn't lne up so well. In the meantime I'll continue to create another plane with the photo match image on. I've streamlined this a bit in terms of perspective by copying a face of the back of the camera object to use as the plane for that image as it lines up in 3D space exactly except for size and distance.

I think he meant "how" [to get 'weld.rb'], not "why" [he divided the edge before welding its parts]... To use the EEby... tools [and others] any profiles/rails/etc need to be 'curves' - that is any collection of edges that have been made into a 'polyline' [in CAD-terms] - or a 'curve' in SUp-speak - SUp's arcs etc are naturally 'curves' - Bezier curves etc made with Fredo's tools are also this type of 'curve' - BUT any edges joined end-to-end [with no branching] can be made into such a 'curve' - even if there is no apparent 'curviness' in it at all The tool to make these edges into a 'curve' is weld.rb. However, you can only 'weld' two or more edges into a curve, if you have just the one edge then it can't become a curve that way - therefore select the lone edge, right-click context-menu > divide it [i.e. 2 or more - if it's to match a 'paired' curve as a profile/rail/etc then it's recommended that you divide it to have a matching number of segments], it will remains highlighted [but it's now in bits], immediately weld those selected bits into a curve... You are now ready for he next step...