I don't know anything about the inner workings of SU either, but I would guess that to display a shadow from an edge, the app has to treat it like a thin face, about similar as when exporting a model with the "export standalone edges" enabled. So I would use it only when absolutely necessary. Anssi

@xrok1 said: toxicvoxel, just to clarify, you painted the metal face inside the component and everything else on the outside. is this correct? Affirmative.

hi, im back. sorry i havent got back with my other posts. been really busy. right now i really need to put my finger on proper animation. i still dont understand how to use it. can u explain again step by step? thanks.

@jcarchitecture said: When you say make sure the front faces out, how do I determine that?? Oh and by the way thanks alot for responding so fast, it's really appreciated....I'm trying out the render click the icon circled in red. your front faces will show in white and backfaces will show blueish purple. you can select a face then right click and choose reverse faces. it is generally considered good practice to never have backfaces facing you. sooner or later you will run into problems when rendering with most renderers, they will either render white or black no matter how you texture them. [image: yZI8_Capture.JPG]

If I'm not mistaken once you've imported the texture into your SU file you can right click on that texture in your Materials panel and theres a Save As option or something like that. Click that and you can browse through your folders until you find SU's Materials folder and drop it in the appropriate one, or make a new one. -Brodie

an example file would be very helpful Intersecting grouped geometry will behave differently from simply intersecting ungrouped geometry. Try experimenting. The behavior of lines "just being on top" usually happens when you deal with grouped geometry.

Fair question thomthom. Good answer Gaieus. Thank you.

@gaieus said: Yeah, this often drives people who haven't experienced it before crazy. There are a bunch of commands you can only perform when something is selected (reverse faces for instance) and until you select the proper entity, no shortcut option appears. I had hoped that behaviour would change for SU7. It's not really intuitive. Maybe we can try to make our voice heard for SU8...

It says it exports/imports FBX files. You should give a chance to it - supposedly it's a better format than 3DS for conversion.

Mirjman Thanks! this rb is a big help.

Thanks Gaieus

Yes, I know the plugin to play Homer by pressing the button was written by Jim but AFAIK he used an Easter egg (maybe it was something else though). I'm just too lazy to ask

@chris fullmer said: And Paul, sounds like you should check out randor.rb. It does all minor rotates and scaling for you. I generally like it pretty good. Or Didier's Component Spray tool as it has a "click one to place one" option as well and you can pre-define random rotation, scale and (AFAIK) even tilt (is it tilt? like leaning sideways a bit).

Sounds like a graphic card issue. Have you updated your graphic card drivers?

@idraft said: http://groups.google.com/group/Sketchup-Pro/browse_thread/thread/14168c7bbabd829/bd0617c15f78519d That thread also included an offer from Todd Burch, "I'm sure I can write this in Ruby... it's just a time thing right now." I suspect all such efforts were put aside when v5 (I think) introduced the PhotoMatch tool. However, PhotoMatch has its limitations. I'm pursuing this because I'm interested in getting 3D positions of points when you have several photos from different angles that contain the same points, but you have few or no perspective lines/edges at all. Thanks again, August

Of course SOLO, (i admire your work). The components dynamic can only be edited in SKP 7 but the results can be saved in SKP 5 or 6. Thanks to respond. Greetings. Carlos

@linea said: Wow you have some impressive peers then, did they all study at the same place? University of Oregon? @unknownuser said: Maybe computers will never replace this wonderful art? Is it a waste of paper? Yes. (IMHO) Well computers use electricity which is still often created by coal burning power stations, so in carbon terms, there might not be much difference. Yes, Tinker studied Architecture at the U of O but the rest of us studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasedena, CA. I included Tinker because I have known him for a very long time and we both studied Architecture. I only briefly studied Architecture before going to ACCD but I worked as a grunt, draftsman, and project leader for local architects where I lived for several years. You may be right about the carbon footprint of coal vs timber? I hope that complicated question can find an answer sometime soon. Like nearly everything, it's not as simple as just measuring the carbon produced by the manufacturing process alone. Transportation, loss of habitat, pollution produced at each stage of the process, the various tradeoffs and costs of recycling old computers/parts vs wood based products are just a few factors that need to be weighed. I'm hopeful that the, currently, very inefficient use of electricity in nearly all products will become much more thrifty as we learn and innovate the problems.

check here too hth, Norbert

Dxf files are ascii (simple text) descriptions of the entities in a file. A dxf contains information about xrefs, but in itself can not contain a xref. It is my understanding that if the file being imported is on another machine within a network, in theory, a firewall could affect the file transfer. If this is the case, ask your network administrator to make sure that dxf files are an exception.

@l.frisken said: Just out of interest, which program are you using, because I'm also looking for good, free hdr progs! Depends on whether you are a Mac guy, if so, I am playing with Photomatix demo (watermarked until you buy it), FDR has a basic version, however, the one that's giving me the prob is called: 'qtpfsgui', I suppose the weird name should have been the tipoff. If you have the inclination to share your shots, there is a nice little posting started by 'nomeradona' down at the Corner Bar.