Ok. Thanks. I was afraid of that. Maybe I'll write a ruby to set them with one click.

Tim's reply was not very clear, so let me clarify for him... BACKUP!

Well, I thought I had tried it before posting. Must have botched it somewhere. Thanks.

Agreed! To get my geometry into its own separate file out of Autocad, I normally will select it all and a wblock command which will write it out as a block - essentially its own file. Then if I need to I go into that file and audit and purge and remove unwanted layers. And I tend to export from CAD in phases. I NEVER ever ever try to export everything at once. I wil generally make a large "X" symbol in my CAD file and then I always export that with everything that I export, so I can always line up that X inside of SU to make sure it all lines up correctly. I export first my topo, then a layer for fences, then a layer for concrete, then building footprints, etc. THat way I can deal with them all much easier inside of SU, separate from one another. I once had an old instruction sheet of how I like to export my CAD stuff. I'm sure its still around but I think its very outdated and I've updated some workflow issues. I should get that out and re-write it. Chris

@unknownuser said: By "Both Managers" do you mean Scenes and Styles? Yes. @unknownuser said: The styles manager would be annoying if it warned you everytime a style was changed. I take that update arrow circle thingy as a warning, and then one might even be explicitly warned if that setting is in place.

Hi, Philip, I don´t really know what kind of plugin do you have in mind. There is a way to set up Photoshop so it can use the tablet input, but I don´t know if this applies to mesh painting. As far as I can remember, PS CS4 Extended allows import and export of OBJ, U3D, KMZ, Collada and 3DS models import. You can edit textures on 3D model in PS CS3.

wow, that worked, .. now my drawing is cluttered with all of the failed attempts to get the grid and guides to show!!!! again, one simple little thing holds me up and eats up time... It did not even say this within the manual that I have... thanks aloha red

Could be firewall setting...?

I don't think so. sketchup on my work computer used to take up to 45 seconds to start after I opened it. It is now down to a reasonable 5 to 10 seconds. (though at home it is almost instantaneous). So even when I had opened it once before, and then re-opened it, it still took over 30 seconds to start. But that seems to be largely cleared up recently.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=20485 Have a look at this maybe?

and sketchup does not have a built in renderer either.

I also have put together some YouTube videos on script writing. The first one is similar to the first tutorial in the Link that Honolulu posted. It shows what software I recommend, and what my workflow is. It can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ChrisFullmer And then check out all the other videos in the "Writing SketchUp Ruby" series. I think there are 6 total at this point. I add more little by little as I think of something interesting to show in a video. Chris

@tig said: http://mysticcoder.net/mysticthumbs/ I've talked to the developer of that software. I gave him the info I knew about the .skp file format and he has already implemented .skp support. When he release it I encourage people to give him a little donation for his work.

@mojo said: BTW to ThomThom - those are the coolest glasses.. what the heck are they? I have not idea. Found them in the kitchen one day. Months later suddenly found that photo hanging on out photo wall in the kitchen. Student house you see.

Seems I read somewhere sometime in this forum that you can do a large terrain in smaller sections, whatever smaller means and make components of these to manage file size. However, what I understand is that even with a really powerful computer, there will be issues. But, I am not entirely sure, since my gear is woefully below par.

Aha! Thank you Chris. I appreciate it.

Good link Marcus.

Just an other question directly linked to the topic: in the "animation export options", on mac, I never could set the frame rate under 5 frames per second, which creates me a lot of useless pictures. Whatever format I'd choose, I never could access the "expert mode", which icon keeps white. I guess this "expert mode" would allow me to select the 1 fps rate, but how to get there?

Been too busy to get back and close this.... I was able to get the copy / rotate to do what was needed. I grouped a handful of faces that had the texture properly positioned, did paste in place, and then positioned the rotate "wheel" on the center point of the arc and typed in the degrees I wanted. That worked pretty well. I did notice a couple of times there were very tiny mis-alignments... not sure if I got lazy and relied on the inference engine instead of typing a value or if the polys were mis-aligned to begin with. At any rate, I'm cruzin now! Thanks very much for the suggestion.

[flash=628,360:1k0badql]http://www.youtube.com/v/sf0LprZpe1A[/flash:1k0badql] Consider taking a great advantage of those two excellent (and highly recommended) tools: CenterPoint v.1.200 by Todd Burch & Construction Line Tool v1.0 by Jim *s