Thanks Boofredlay. I have turned off "Enable length snapping" and set "Precision" to 0". Same results. I'm working on a small house model. I'm beginning to suspect I don't have a powerful enough computer. I'm using an optical mouse with about 3-400dpi, a 128mg video card, slightly less than 1gig RAM and a 7200rpm HDD on a 100mhz bus. AMD 1.7ghz P4. There is no room for more RAM (poor mobo design). Nor can I upgrade the cpu for the same reasons. I might be able to upgrade the vid card. I'm thinking about going with something that uses DDR. I had good results with a customer's computer after installing one for them. The HDD is brand new. (Seagate Barracuda) I have a 19" LCD monitor. In other words, it's an old computer.

Explode them first, or convert them using the Express Tools to non-dynamic blocks before importing the file into SU. There's no way around that. To my knowledge, no other CAD or modeling program outside of AutoDesk's own products imports AutoCAD's dynamic blocks.

A circle and a polygon are pretty much indistinguishable in 2D. Same number of sides and all connected into a single 'curve' object - if you explode either type the sides split into individual edges... However, a circle and a polygon differ if you extrude them into 3D forms - using pushpull or followme etc. A circle is a smooth curve and extrudes faces in 3D that are also smoothed - i.e. the edges between the facets are not normally visible. A polygon is not smoothed and so it extrudes faces in 3D that are separated by visible edges. However, you can hide or smooth these later if desired...

Thanks, I'll have a look.

Thx for the help man Well let's try to get some older installer of SU somewhere... Someone? Oh i know some place where to...

A slightly buggy Triangulate.rb is available at Ruby Library Depot to first triangulate faces. The script messes up on a few types of faces, but it does save work. Add a one-step undo by inserting model.start_operation "Triangulate" ### one-step Undo after line 56, entities = model.entities.

If you want the entire scene with cameras exported then use .max, if you only want the object then use .3ds.

It's in the Component property box (which also pops up when you create a component). Certainly you need to carefully adjust the gluing plane prior to use this option otherwise it will just be the R/G plane afaik (I haven't tried now). See attached image. [image: zAGr_Gluetoany.png]

Other examples: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4721

In this particular case it looks like just a noisemap, wouldn't it work to apply the texture, non-projected, to each face?

you could also try: http://www.sketchupmodels.com/ baz Edit: Seems to be defunct. May 2012.

We're having a similar problem. I've just installed 2 new fonts (.OTF) but although they are available in other software, like Word, Sketchup doesn't display them in the 3D Text dialogue. Is there any way to fix this?

@solo said: From SU ----> .3ds ---> gmax. Yeah, I believe that is what I asked? I just wanted to be sure

The 3d exchange facility allows import but no export and is at an additional cost.

Yeh!

Thanks for all the ideas everyone. Interestingly, I created a file with Mac SU that resulted in about a 700kb file size. I opened the exact same file in Windows, replaced the textures with the exact same image files, re-saved the sketchup file and the end file was 450kb! There is something weird going on in the Mac version. mc

I did some work directly off my usb this weekend. I was kid sitting for my brothers two hell-raisers and after knocking them out I went to work. Thanks SU for having a free version. My brothers computer is horribly slow to begin with but working off the usb was not too bad. FYI.

Pompeyfan, There can be multiple reasons for your speed issue - so it is hard to be too specific. But generally speaking - the following might help, and are based on some broad assumptions. While working in sketchup: - the video card and memory are critical, as your processor should be sufficient. All of the comments regarding the on-board intel accelerators apply. A seperate nvidia or ati chip based video card with dedicated 256 mb of memory would make a difference. More than 1 Gb of ram would help for larger files. While rendering with the V-ray plugin: - the video card play no part with the exception of showing you the progress and end result on the screen. There are a couple of potential causes and solutions 1- Vray likes to take all of the processing power of the chip - so you will not likely be able to do much else while rendering with a single core chip. also - Vray can take advantage of running multiple cores to help with this. 2- Your memory of 1 Gb is low for rendering - jumping to 2 Gb should help your system with some breathing room 3- Vray has some very efficient pre-sets for rendering that I would suggest you stick to till you get more comfortable with what can and should be tweaked. 4- File optimization can never be over rated, all of us can always do better. Hope these help - I know how frustrating it can get waiting for the renders at times! Bytor

Charlie / Anssi, Thanks very much to both of you for your help with this. I tried both methods and they work really well - just what I needed. ... Regards Howard Leslie

Are you importing models via the File > Import > 3D menu? Also it is possible to open the file you want to import, copy the geometry, switch back and go to Edit > Paste in place. This is very helpful if you want to insert objects into the same place (to tell the truth, I never use the real import menu in my workflow but it should work like inserting any component: "stuck" to your cursor and you can place it with a click).