...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: [image: YMT9_Clipboard01.png]

Maybe by : Kmz-->Blender-->OBJ (or 3DS) ?

Not quite what Amo was envisaging, but it's a step closer. Enjoy. http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/245

first guess: try to switch "transparency quality" in the style window (edit tab > face settings) from "faster" to "nicer". second quess: if you have grouped your fence and outside of it is another face in the same position, SketchUp may get confused which face to display. if that is the case, just delete the additional face. could you post your model? would be interesting to have a look at it...

If what gai mentioned doesnt yield satisfactory results your only option is to redo the model but with more triangles, although thats usually really tedious so only do it if you really need to. If youve got a bit of cash to spare it might also be worth checking out the subd and smooth plugin, i reckon itd be pretty useful for the sort of things youve shown already, and its very good at getting smooth surfaces. subd and smooth: http://www.smustard.com/script/SubdivideAndSmooth

Just a quick addition - for better results, try editing your styles so you have thinner edge lines, I find it gives it a slightly more professional look.

I hope you don't mind if I say that this model is a complete mess (seriously, I don't mean any personal). Actually not only some (but many) of the rear and some of the front windows are also see-through (only from that angle it's not apparent). For some reason, all your window components contain another window component. Exploding the outside ones make all the inside ones see through. I wonder which component has gluing/cutting features and which is cutting what... (although you have all the window openings cut into the walls anyway). So my guess is that there's something with the "cut opening" feature but seriously speaking there are sooo many components nested into each other that I can't really investigate which is which and which is causing the problem. For this particular project, I'd suggest a "workaround". There are two styles in your file now that I created. One is in monochrome mode with transparency turned off and one is the shaded with texture mode with transparency turned on. Use the styles dialogue to change the rendering modes instead of the buttons in the toolbar. Also purged the model a bit... Hope didn't delete some components you were going to use later 7 Nightingale Rd Extension 30 var.skp

http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=9864 Hello All, Interesting Topic here. I saw Hypercosm mentioned in this tread, from my very limited experience it does not support section planes from SU. Would be interested to know how this is in the different varieties of 3D-PDF? Btw, I asked some other questions regarding Hypercosm here. http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=9864 I guess that sub forum is a little quite, if someone feels like having a look, I will appreciate it. Kind regards, Robert

@plot-paris said: I am a great fan of drag-and-drop actions (even if I am no mac fan ). a cool option would be just to drag a material and drop it onto another, which brings up a prompt if you want to replace the material with the dropped one... cool, isn't it? Very!

Thanks for the info. I can now recreate what you have done. I just draw a curve, and close it, no welding, the arc stays an arc. I then use extrude to create the surface and afterwards the texture works fine. What I was actually doing to create the extruded shape was rather different, and it might have something to do with it. I create an arc just as a guideline for a follow me. Then I create an Upright Rectangle, and follow it along the arc. The reason for this was of how my Ruby script work. I have to create a lot of components that follows basically the same curve, ie curved panels, with mouldings, etc. It seems that in that case, the resulting follow me creates the "segments" somewhat differently, and hence the texture problem. This might mean some rethink on my approach.

nice tool. seems to be quite simple to use

Hello Anssi Thanks for your two sents. NEver heard of that problem. But it´s not that either. The model is entirelly created in SU and is pretty much build around the point of origin. Oh well. I got the pics in the end. Can it be that SU is still a pretty buggy app?