Hi folks.

I dont see this behavior of "Follow me" as a bug. This is to be expected since, when "Follow me" goes from one segment to the next, it must rotate the profile as it goes.

If the direction change imply a rotation around only one axis, the profile will be reoriented around only this axis. Good for now.

If the direction change is done around two axis at the same time, like the ramp in a spiral staircase, a rotation around the third axis in unavoidable since all three axis must remains at 90° from each other.

What would be nice to have in a future version of SU would be some kind of modifier key that would allow the user to tell the "Follow me" tool to consider only one axis for rotation when doing the pull along the path.

Just ideas.

Jean (Johnny) Lemire from Richelieu, Quebec, Canada.

Sorry to celebrate your frustration, Elysium...but: YEAH! I'M NOT INSANE!

OK, thanks for the rephrasing. Yes, I knew about the export difference so I was quite surprised when misunderstood your first statement! 😉

@remus said:

Definetly possible, although it takes a bit of work.

Theres a good tut on it here: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3631&p=43237&hilit=rounded+cube#p43237

Sorted 😛

lol thanks.. but im not asking you to do so - this aspect of the unit isn't significant. It's only for this unit in which im designing a nightclub, that our teacher wants us to implement different drawing views throughout our folio- it's not like the main presentation or anything.

Oh yes, bumps and such - or even clipmaps and layered materials so that it could look like a marble column with a winding, gilded stripe on it! 😄

Just for a sidenote, in Kerkythea speifically, you can use the alpha channel as a clipmap. You put the png, tiff, whateve format with the alpha channel into the diffuse slot and at the clipmap slot there is a checkbox (aomething like) "use alpha mask as clipmas" you can check.

But other applications may not have this option so to create two files - a diffuse and a clip - may still be useful (not to speak about file sizes that Alan mentions).

You need to do more than just select the edge. The softening effect is a combination of both the edge and an adjacent face. So long as you select edges and at least one adjacent face for each edge, you should be able to simply turn down the smoothing slider to unsoften them.

and if all that doesn't help, you may be in the "wireframe" face style mode. then you just have to change to one of the other modes (shaded for example) and you will see all the faces again.

this sounds far too simple. but it happens quite often... 😉

pretty new to these forums, but have been using sketchup pretty regularly for the last few years. I am in the videogame/film/tv industry and have found sketchup to be heavily used in the design process. It's a similar industry to architecture, considering the needs for conceptual, photoreal designs. I have been waiting for sketchup to take the next step in terms of modelling and am hopeful that 7 will address some of the issues. I hope Google understands the widespread use of Sketchup in diverse industries. If in the next update there is little to address the need for better modelling, and maybe even more extensive lighting options (like the light up plugin) i think i'll have to bite the bullet and learn modo...ouch. I hope not because i love sketchup and am heavily invested in it. just my two cents.

i love this board by the way, have learned an amazing amount and am constantly inpressed with the quality of the work displayed!

i think this is the script markitekt is refering to, unfortunately you have to pay for it, but dont let that put you off.

Cheers for expanding on your original description 😄

...and you can change the mouse's balance with a set of weights 😎

I have no idea how to balance it correctly though (just made it as heavy as possible) 😉

The answer is simple really, most folk that bought the professional version were indeed using it in a professional capacity and in doing so their workflow would probably require exporting and importing over several other apps in order to deliver the final product. I cannot comment about the Layout feature as I have never had the patience to deal with it and it never yielded anything productive in my hands.

I havent had this with the stamp tool before, but i have had problems with grouping/ungrouping subsmoothed geometry. No idea why it does it 😉

Not sure why softening the edges is causing the model to lose its colour either, it stays put in my little experimets.

thank you SOOOOOOOOOOO Much!

Hi folks.

Just in case someone is interested in the Platonic solids (also called Pythagorean solids),
see these two SU file that show the relation between:

1 - The cube or hexahedron (6 square faces) and the octahedron (8 triangular faces).

2 - The dodecahedron (12 pentagonal faces) and the icosahedron (20 triangular faces).

For each pair, you can get from one solide to the other by joining the center of each faces to the center of its neighbors faces.

For the tetrahedron, you will get another smaller tetrahedron if you use this procedure.

In conclusion:

1 - You can get the tetrahedron and the octahedron from a cube (see previous posts).

2 - You can get the icosahedron from three intersecting golden rectangles each at 90° from the others two as was shown in a thread somewhere.

3 - You can get the dodecahedron from an icosahedron.

Thus, you can get all five solids with great precision using only basic SU tools and without using any mathematics.

Just ideas.

Cube and octahedron.skp

Dodecahedron and icosahedron.skp

Just did a quick test comparing the file size of 100 individually grouped cubes and 100 copied component cubes, and surprisingly the component cube file was slightly bigger. I imagine this is only really true for quite simple geometry, and that when you strat getting more complex components the advantage (file size wise) will become apparent.

I will have a look at it. Thanks for the tip.

The problem is at the office everyone has their own set and layout for the toolbars so if one person needs to update some SU images then we end up with deviating images.

I'll add a request for custom aspect ratio.

You may also want to make a group out of the property box. This way you can move things around that you place on it, without affecting the property itself.

I've had this happen sometimes, I think it's something to do with pasting groups or comps from another file with a different axis.
But if you explode the group or comp then regroup it fixes itself.
baz.

here an example:

Clipboard01.png