Wow.....awesome! Thanks johnsenior1973 and Norbert! I really appreciate the links. Once again....this forum is the BEST! Thanks All, Jeff

fill gap after: [image: M8L3_Capture.JPG]

From Acad export it as 3ds. in the export options turn off the Autosmoothing. Importing this 3ds file into SketchUp will give you much better results. If you don't have the option of exporting to 3ds in your version of AutoCAD, there is a free plugin file available at Autodesk web site which allows you to export it to 3ds format. Hope this helps With best regards PRSS

Thanks .................

Now the "pluginless" method is as follows: Make one segment of the thread, make it a component Move one side of the segment up by the needed amount (here I used a default circle with 24 segments so I moved this up by 1/24 of the height of the segment - the image is of course exagerrated, see the following ones below)[image: Ic7O_MoveUp.jpg] Copy rotate it along one segment [image: Xium_CopyRotate.jpg] 4) Move it up to meet the endpoints [image: 7kog_MoveUp2.jpg] 5) repeat it with a growing number of segments (once you reached around, you can already Copy-move the whole round up as many times as you wish). [image: gXjJ_CopyRotate2.jpg] I exploded the whole thing at the end, otherwise I couldn't have smooth transitions between the segments but is you make a segment from midpoint to midpoint along the circle instead of endpoint to endpoint, you may be able to keep the components. There are actually plugins that could do this (like Follow me and keep and such) but sometimes I feel it's faster to do by hand as well as one really needs to also know how to model hings not just push buttons.

windknot - I've found that you must do 3 things. the bigger the size the better - i.e 1230 x 901 at 16:9 res is better than 720 x 340 . under codecs use full frame uncompressed highest frame rate 30fps. It will take hours to render and produce a 300meg plus file but it will look the best you can get out of sketchup and it will also compress down to a useable - web postable - size and retain the clarity.

It appears that if you want to use guides you MUST have axes on. Turning off axes in 7.1 turns off the guides.

@petrence said: here are the pictures of my molding pattern, what i'd like to remake with sketchup. this also has a negative. any ideas how do i need really exact opposite side with the same dimensions? i think this will be the next difficult step for me. Think you are looking for a mirror image. Use the scale tool and scale at -1. If you first do a copy , then the mirror and then paste in place you have the two.

Succinct

Again, I'm thrilled with 7.1 - I'm on a laptop w/ junk graphics card and SU7.1 enables me to work in any model I have tried - impressive! (so I will never go back) but (there's always a 'but') one issue I have is pretty major for me in disrupting workflow... the Alt-Bucket sampler eye dropper. It USED to work fine. But NOW in 7.1 it seems to sample the edges or something. Who in the world ever wanted to sample the material applied to an edge? (Why can we even apply a mat to an edge anyway - that doesn't make sense to me either.) So, I know that when using Select Tool you want the 'dominant' choice to be an edge... very nice. But when using the Material Bucket Alt-click Eye Dropper tool... this should NEVER notice an edge... it forces me to zoom waayyyyyy in on materials on a face (like trying to sample the mat on a soffit, for example) much more than I had to in the past, I don't remember ever needing to zoom in at all in the past. This wouldn't be a major prob, but often you are in a particular camera position you don't want to get out of just to sample a nearby material... so this is one major wish of mine for next SU update... 7.1.1? edit also, is it just me, or does the 7.1 distance sometimes come out funky? I mean, I used the move command and it said it was moving it 60 feet, but it actually was about 20feet... or I used the Extrude Line ruby and typed (1") but it extruded it about 10 inches... it's happened to me enough now that I'm actually getting a bit worried about it.

@unknownuser said: here's the basic idea behind my approach.. Thank Jeff- i'm having a look at it right now.. i wish i had a photo, but no luck. This looks very close to what i'm after... Update: Okay, okay- i can see where this can go.. i am prepared to spend as much time on this as necessary. I must know it! Back to it- thanks for the starting point!

Jeff, I can see the faceting of curves in Sketchup as being a big issue. It is to me as well. My background is mechanical engineering and I have used many different CAD systems over the years. All of them used true arc and circles so this was never an issue. Of course they also had filleting (Corner Curves) which could easily solve your problem in one step. All could create a fillet between two lines, arc and line, or two arcs. In your case it would be between the left arc and the horizontal line at the bottom right. All that said I wonder about your need for accuracy in this case. In the real world everything has a tolerance and not suprisingly when you start to build things over 6 to 10 feet your measuring tools start to throw their own errors into the mix. For instance how accruate do you think a tape measure is? Sag, flex, temperature, material and other factors add to the issue. This is why in building construction an error of 1/8 inch is an everyday occurance. Aerospace is the only industry I know of that has addressed the problem with any success. They are starting to use a new technology called indoor GPS. This uses infraRed lasers mounted around the ceiling with the receiver in a hand held measuring tool. The user takes hits on the object to be measured and the 3D coordinate data gathered is uploaded and overlaid on the original CAD model. Boeing developed it.

thanks! i'll do that!! UPDATE: it worked perfectly.... i scaled it up 10x, performed the followMe and voila! then back down to normal size. [image: 0zrl_lamp.jpg]

Read this sticky on the top of this forum about hoqw to run both on the same machine (that's how I could test it, too - interestingly, I have just deleted the desktop icon of SU 7.0 today so I had to dig for it in my Program files folder.) http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=22158

Interesting place. One always wonders how these "sacred areas" have been inherited through ages and cultures. @aerilius said: ...At least I would like better camera control (sometimes the camera fails to show placemarks with a flat angle to the ground) Yes, always be careful not to shoot a very close angle to the ground in SU because that can drive GE nuts. Best is to set the cameras in GE.

SOAP does look interesting but what I'm going for is having an interactive color choice system for all of our models and it seams like with SOAP it would have to be set up specific to each model and we just don't have the time to invest in setting up SOAP every time. furthermore, I need to supply the user with a list of eight color choices, not allow them an infinite number of choices. Thanks for the suggestion though

Great -- that did it. Scaling resolved the problem completely (the final diameter of the rod is only 5mm). Thanks! David.P

Thanks Rocky & Gaieus, amazing -- this of course did the trick even better. Cheers David.P

Neat result for classical tehcnic

Never mind - I was also "enlightened" by a Google employee when I first put my hand on SU 7 last year.