@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...

SU2Thea will do letter boxing, but in my understanding only when you have set custom camera. In SU2Thea you can change camera back to original (SU2Thea exporter > Scenes > SU Window in view parameters). If that happens for some other reason, maybe there is a bug. Some other renderers do use the same letter boxing too...

A problem like that could be indicative of a hard drive that is on the verge of failing. You might consider backing up your hard drive.

@d12dozr said: @comatose said: Is the $7 plugin much better than the free one? I've never used either of them so I can only go by the description on each plugin's page, but it appears the $7 one has more options for focusing the camera. Why not just try the free one to see if it does what you need, and upgrade if necessary? Maybe somebody that has used the scripts could answer better? It's already a while when I used one of free camera patch scripts (sorry cannot remember the script). There was some hard (or impossible) to control accelerations - so I finally did gave up (Kerkythea produced better results). Never tested FlightPath2, but it seems to have crucial camera target options. I think Ecuadorian have played a lot with these... maybe search his posts.

@numbthumb said: Oh, no, not again... http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=27923 thanks for the link- interesting discussion.

BTM made some scuplt tools, too that may be useful. http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=20781&hilit=sculpt But I'd put my money on Thom's vertex editing tools as soon as they are available.

Nice look to the water, esp. reflections visible at top and distortions/refractions of the block wall through the water body, and also very magical forces applied which produce the narrowing of the flow.

HI, Thanks, minutes ago, I read online to try to uninstall usb overdrive from my computer, and it did the trick. It is orbiting fine now. thanks so much, Keea

@thomthom said: but when I use V-Ray fro Sketchup I can assign a 100% transparent material on one side and a solid on the other. You can then see through the transparent face, but no the other way around. And the light does not pass through. how do you do it thomthom??

@thomthom said: Open the Styles window, Go to the Watermark section (fourth button from the right, big OK on it) Insert watermarks/backgrounds Thanks Thomthom! I found it. More details for those who may run into this problem again: After opening the Styles Window, clicl the Edit tab. The Watermark button belongs to the Edit section.

Hi, Slench I´d say it´s pretty much the same procedure as with any other model - learning basic SU operations, watching video tutorials, finding a decent blueprint plus lots of reference photos ( but if you´re aiming for a low poly model, you probably won´t need many of them ) etc. This might give you a rough modeling idea http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5riz0_uzi-sur-google-sketchup_creation - no blueprints used , but anyway... About setting up blueprints in SU http://www.the-blueprints.com/tutorials/sketchup/ As for using your model in games like TF2, you might want to check this out http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SketchUp_Source_Tools Hope this helps.