Thanks, Chris: You are very kind to reply. As a matter of educating me, do you happen to know what factors would contribute to this condition, other than my ignorance? This appears analogous to Autocad block insertion points issues, but I don't know. (And it is rather involved process to correct this in Autocad, too.) I assume there is no easy script fix for this. Or is there? EDIT: After performing the operations suggested by Chris Fullmer, I gained a little better understanding of the problem. The component axes (not the workspace global axes) are normally connected with the bounding box of the component or group upon creation. If some modeling operation "corrupts" this relationship, the component axes may become divorced from the bounding box. It just so happens that while using SketchyFFD in SU6 I discovered that the deformation matrix was being formed at or near the divorced group axes, and because of this offset, some squirrelly results were happening after moving the matrix into position around the target group and applying the deformations. So, this may be a caveat for users of SketchyFFD, whatever version, to be sure that the axes are in the right location.

Hello Jody, That is exactly what the problem was. Now in what way does turning off Hardware acceleration affect the performance of SU? I am on the iMac 27" With the latest OSX 10.6.2 Graphics card is: ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 Mb 8Gb Ram screen resolution of these big ones is: 2560 x 1440 Many thanks Jody for your advise Filip K.

since clouds are water vapor, will the software then become vapor ware??

@jagizzi said: Gaieus, I am on my Mac, which is new to me, so I don't know how to capture a window to post so I will have to save the sketchup file itself. (Would take that bit of knowledge too, if you knew how). Easy on my PC buy am learning the mac as i go. Thanks, jagizzi to do a screen capture on your mac you can use "command/shift/3" for a full screen capture, or "command/shift/4 " will bring up a set of gun sights to capture the area you highlight. I have always wanted to build one of these ovens for bread and pizza, so I will follow this closely.

@honoluludesktop said: Hi Paul, Your render has a very nice nice feel. Where is the shadow on the right side of the building coming from? I often add too much yellow to my landscape and really like your use of green. I have been asked that same question when I posted this image on the Podium Forum. There is a tree floating in space off to the left of the view that is casting the shadow. I moved it over there to get it out of the way while modeling and forgot about it. When I saw the shadow, I said to myself...no one will notice...ummm I was wrong. I have to give credit to Oli for the final grass color/tone. It was a darker green when I first posted this image and he grabbed the image and lightened the grass to more match the lightness of the sky. p

Hi, Manoj I assume that you have already checked out some car modeling tutorials, but anyway take a look at http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=23792 However, there are no shortcuts. If you really lack the patience, I have no advice for you, except to be persistent, especially if it is about modeling in 3D Studio Max. Best regards, NT

And to make it read-able reverse those steps at the other end ! The only way to give someone else your actual skp file in a way that won't be very 'useful' to them is to copy it and explode every group and instance [then purge], remove layers, styles etc and sabotage bits and bobs so it is not at all user friendly. They can still edit it but it won't be very useful for 'harvesting' or reuse... Alternatively make a 3D PDF of it so they can still look around it and print off, but not edit it. You can make it read-only but that can be undone in a second. You can ship it with a special ruby that limits what can be done to it - but simply removing the ruby from the plugins folder will scupper that plan... No one has come up with a way of 'locking' or 'password protecting' skp files - enough have tried...

All true, I guess I shouldn't had asked. Lets just forget about it.

Yes, I only need the exterior mold (shape) of the plane, with very few internal (structural) elements. It will be used (at 1/12th scale) for planning the manufacturing stations (sizes and locations) in the facility. Once that is firmed up, I have a partial full scale detailed version of the facility that I will modify and use. I went to a scaled version because it is easier to navigate and change than at full scale, even if the full scale planning model was low-poly. There is very little detail in the scaled version, and a full scale version would entice me to add details. I will try "polyreduce". As for the footprint, I cannot figure how to set my geo to the equator at noon (time I figured). But you got me thinking about scaling the airplane model down flat i.e: 100% scale down the blue axis. Then I'll intersect it on a flat plane (no pun intended ) and trace that outline. I'll get back to you on both. ======================================== Well, scaling on blue to "flat" did not quite work. First, "scale" only allows a "-.11" scale factor so I tried ".01". It was not flat enough, even doing it twice. Also my dwg was too complex. Scrap that. Still can't see how to set my Geo to the equator, so I can trace the shadow. However, since I used to draw boats and calculate the heeled waterline, I tried something like that. I made a flat plane group, and successively moved it up and intersected the plane at various "wide" points on the airplane to get a close approximation of the outermost footprint, plus a myriad of extra lines from the airplanes internal structures that I could not turn off. Spent a lot of time deleting those lines, then hit the old SU 6 problem of non-intersected crossing lines, coupled with Intersects' bad habit of not keeping lines on face as well as omitting a lot of intersecting lines. A LOT of cleanup to do before I can get a cohesive footprint. Back later.... ================================== Frustrated!!!!!! I cleaned up the outline, but it will not form a face within the outline. Many lines are just off the z=00000 level, so that the face won't form. Then as I was replacing 2 short lines with one, SU crashed. Fortunately, SU autosaved just a few minutes prior so I lost almost nothing. Back on this tomorrow, as I gotta pick up my "warden" at the subway.

thank you to everyone who has taken the time to answer my question. it is an issue that has been raised in the past & will be raised again many times in the future. i know that it must seem odd to those of you living outside of australia but, the simple fact is that this is unfortunately an overly politically correct culture filled with committee driven ideals & crap like 'target indicators', what ever the hell they are. i think it would be best if i just let this issue slide for now. cheers & all the best for the coming year. Glen

@unknownuser said: @unknownuser said: @unknownuser said: @unknownuser said: 11.5 tb :shock: :shock: :shock: 450 files = 1,19 gb(all my sketchup models,including sketchup examples, etc)

@thomthom said: @mikeewilly said: Any ideas or plugins out there? Chris to the rescue: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=19168 Thanks for the pointer. That's what I was looking for. Cheers, Mike

Well, this is also a plugin so everything that can be expected from plugins working slowly and poorly is valid here. An "own version" sound interesting! And no, I do not really work with much CAD geometry so I don't have particular examples but have seen (and experimented with) a bunch in the forums already.

@thomthom said: The real solution would be to update the drivers. Or even a new card - in case it is really that old computer (although sometimes you do not want to spend money on an old machine any more - and most of the modern cards may not even be compatible with your motherboard)

Hi Guy, Thank you for the welcome and the help, I am importing perfectly now. Devo

In hindsight I recommend using Offset rather than Scale - then you can fix it at 7"+ ?

Thanks Chris and Jim. I didn't realise that it was a bug. I will try your idea Jim, sounds like a workaround. Thanks, CB

Hi Thomthom, and thank you for your reply. I had completely forgot about the Model Info window (that was allready there in SU6) ! Shame on me ! Best regards.

If anyone is familiar with 3ds MAXSCRIPT, here's a Quadrulate script someone made. Granted it's not much use for SketchUp, but maybe some of the concepts in it will help someone find a ruby solution for SketchUp. http://www.scriptspot.com/scripts/web_upload/Gene%20Crucean/quadrangulate.mzp (*.mzp is just a zip file for Max)

Actually, Tom you could use http://www.screentoaster.com for video capture. It's free, but it had a slight glitch when I was creating that screen capture, so I had to fall back on SnapzPro.