Thanks for the enthusiasm Rocky, @xrok1 said: ... c'mon people, i'm pullin my hair out here. ... but dont' hurt yourself over it. I woundn't even be thinking about it as a possibility if all these other wonderful tools hadn't set my expectations so high. And I'm certainly not the programmer to do it myself. I have not tried "TIG's extrusion toolset" but your phrasing suggests it's another one that does not quite go this far. I'm just trying to work out a design idea. I have manual ways to try it out in rough form. If I get hooked on one that takes some tedium to execute in finer detail, I'll just put on some music and get into a "Tower of Hanoi" rhythm. It looks from the PhotoShop screen shot like Adobe calls that particular morph "Fisheye". I had thought about using that term myself, but I didn't because I thought it would unnecessarily predispose people to thinking in terms of 2D-like solutions. I like your notion of "Shape Bender on steroids". SB is still at Beta 0.55, so I might imagine this for SB 2.0. Where SB 0.55 has a single Guide line and single Target Curve, I could see SB 2.0 allowing two or four (or N?) matching Guide Lines and Target Curves. (1. Select Source Group. 2. Activate SB. 3. Select single lines or group of N lines. 4. Select Target Curve or group of N Target Curves. -- How do you specify the order of the lines and the Target Curves? Like most such development projects, if you can design a UI that lets the user intuitively and unambiguously specify their intent, you're part way there.) That would be a lot like being able to apply SB or FredoScale to the guide points of SFFD. From a programming standpoint, extending SB to multiple Guide Lines seems like a smaller conceptual jump than extending FS to be able to move SFFD's guide points, but maybe "all" it would take is getting FS to handle nested groups. Maybe extending SFFD to align guide points to a target curve, like SB, would be the easiest of all. But of course, I don't know the internals of any of these, nor how much interest any of these developers has in going out into the ionosphere here. Comparing relative "ease" of these tasks is irrelevant when there are three different volunteers involved. (I can see it now, this year's Ruby extension challenge, submissions due 12/31. ) Thanks again for jumping in, Rocky. At least I know I'm not missing the obvious (as I too often do). August

Why don't you just download and try the Demo version... You can make a search here at the SCF and see some great animations rendered with TWR... (check this example...)

Well, these projects are the ones one never finishes - maximum does not work any longer on them. There will be an exhibition opening next month where some of my older (Medieval) works will serve as "illustration" and this one is actually only the beginning of a large, Antique project.

No, I did not say anything like that. Instead, here is an example file. On Shape A the material is positioned (it does not matter how or with which pins) while on Shape B it is not. Try to move both and notice that if you once position a material (again, no matter how), the material will be fixed (UV mapped) to the face but until then it is just "floating" in model space. shapes.skp

coulteri: Yes, most likely either the dxf or the import process. I am not the expert here, but what I have learned is that the original dwg or whatever, needs to be cleared of stray z values. This happens when the original drafter unintentionally or otherwise failed to snap vectors to appropriate endpoints, midpoints etc. There is a thread or two here involving best practices for import dxf's and how to prepare them.

i figured out what might be your problem.. if i try to print a vector image, x-ray won't work... i'm not sure how to access this on windows but i'll show it on a mac.. [image: c1cJ_screen4.jpg] [image: 9laL_screen3.jpg]

@unknownuser said: There is going to be some work involved whichever method you use. This work will be far easier if the building is modelled correctly using groups, components and layers. Thinking off the top of my head, what I would do if I received a 3d model with wall thickness is, go to plan view and turn off the roof to reveal all internal walls. I would push pull them back down to floor level, which will leave the outline on the floor. You would need to make sure there is a line drawn where the internal wall meets the outer wall so you do not push everything down. You could then just draw a few lines using the pencil tool and the inference engine to quickly add back the faces of the walls. I guess what may need some thought is how accurate you need these wall positions? If you need to create a wall with thickness as a single plane, you may need to create this plane central to the said wall. DAVID Spent some time on the IES site and even thought they have discussed their plan for a SU thick wall capability I am thinking that cahange is not near term for you. They make a recommendation external walls are modeled ref to out side wall location and for internal use the center line ref per your post. Suggest you post your SU model or a portion thereof if you have some proprietary issues because how changes are made will be influenced by how the model is made. I get the idea IES wants either components or groups for their model. Assuming you have the rooms presently modeled that way changing out one model for another may not be that difficult using the SU select and replace component functionally. Good Luck

I just wanted to know if this plugin could give the drawings a bit like working with StruCad

Hi folks. The quickest way I found so far: 1 - Double click on the face that you want to keep to select it and its perimeter. 2 - Make a group with the selection. 3 - Triple click the other face to select it, its perimeter and all the other edges and faces that make the sides of the thick wall. 4 - Delete the selection. Only the group will remain. 5 - Explode the group, if needed. In step 1, if you single click the face, you will need to use the Edit Menu --> Make group to create the group since the contextual menu don't show the choices to create a group or a component when a single entity is selected. This glitch has already been reported to the developers of SU. I know it makes ne sense to consider grouping only one entity since it is, after all, alone, but, to separate it from other geometries, it makes sense. See this SU file for ideas: Removing thickness.skp

works with fredoscale!

Many thanks honoluludesktop I have posted a request for such plug-in in developers forum. Hopefully somebody answer it.

How about India??? because sketchup usage hasn't been at peak here as compared to other countries...Moreover there are no training centres for the same to the best of my knowledge

What I do is make the bezier on a temporary working plane(rectangle or circle) at z=0. (but the z value could be anything). you can actually do beziers on a vertical plane too. Click starting point, then click ending point, then go back near the start to place the control points and watch for the prompts saying "on face", or edge, midpoint or endpoint if you have other lines on the working plane. Then set your control points sequentially as you please until the bezier ending point. If you wish to do scaling, Fredoscale seems to work better for non xyz plane orientations, since it will align with the working plane.

TIG, Great explenation of x-refs in CAD. External References are one of the most powerfull features of all of the different AutoCAD flavors. Multi-discipline teams / offices could never survive without them. That being said - I have never seen a topic and concept that so confuses a typical CAD user more than x-refs, and their proper use. This 2 pages is a a good reminder of why I am so damn glad we migrated to Revit this past year! Dean

Thanks for the explanation, Jeff

it's really hard to say what the problem is as i haven't experienced it even though i run SU on inferior ppc hardware.. fwiw, SU was originally written on pre intel macs so no, it's not only meant to run on intel macs.

@unknownuser said: I really need to use more rubies! I use not one! I can't believe that!

@unknownuser said: In trying to figure this out I learned a new trick. If you right click on the material in the materials browser you can Select (all of that material). After it is selected you can repaint them with the proper material all in one click. Does that do it for you? Thanks for your reply MuseumMaker! Mh... doesn't seem to work on my Mac - I found this brilliant script "Material Replacer" from thomthom which sort of helps. You can pic a material and then pick another one which will replace the first one in all instances. Still this requires to know which one you want to replace in the model which is a bit frustrating when all of them look the same So far it is the best solution I found. Still a little ruby that would let me do the same thing the material replacer does in the material library would be brilliant...

@frv said: I was trying to use the soapskin & bubble tool but it does only seem to generate a flat surface. After that the tools seem not to have any effect. Maybe someone can help me see what I am doing wrong. Tx Francois you have to enter pressure values ( neg or pos) to get the surface to inflate

thx solo