Actually, Remus, with AA on at anything much above screen resolution you won't get anything at all...it'll crash the program. I ALWAYS have AA switched off. If I need that extra quality, I export big and resize in Photoshop. The answer to the original question is yes, people have exported stuff from SU that's fit to go on a billboard. Use Tiff or png...they use lossless compression...jpegs don't. Actually, SU will export a tiff completely uncompressed...and it will be HUGE. You need to open it in Photoshop or something then resave it using LZW compression to bring it down to something reasonable. If you do decide to use a jpg, make sure that the quality slider is at about 90%. You'll get some artifacting but it ought to be acceptable.

I model in perspective, with textures turned on. Occassionally I will temporarily switch to ortho mode or x-ray when selecting, but always revert back to perspective.

Thanks Nick. Something like that happened quite a bit when I moved my lap top between office and home, but was suprised when it happened on my office desk top which Is always in two screen mode. Some how I managed to move the component screen off the edge of the world!

well i guess it must be late. i just re-read your post and you were talking about "Artstudio Pro" not the "Virtual Painter" program. oooooops. i just downloaded the trial version of "Artstudio Pro" and it looks pretty good - more in line with Mike Lucy's "PhotoArtMaster" recommendation (a lot more artistic control). looks promising - i'll have to play with it more tomorrow. jb the big swooooosh looking thing is the program's trial version watermark [image: table2 copy.JPG]

Hi Pkast, Thanx for the input. I’m still at it, but nothing has ‘struck my fancy’ yet. The current batch of end results tend to be washed out. Or if colorful enough, they are “dry” looking. I tried a few via Akvis Sketch (trial) software. But they also lacked the desired ‘soft wet-ish’ color blend look that appears in Ross’s image. Still experimenting… Thanx, Bob

you can change the color of the lines from black to grey but they will still not be transparent.

Ah, Didier, that is even a more efficient way to assign tranparency. Also, I use groups on just about everything and once you are inside a group the the display of bitmaps "behind" may not be viewable.

Yup, deslecting hardware acceleration sucks big time but surprisingly I have not felt the slowdown. I'm working on several file, one at 7Mb and another at 12Mb and it been smooth so far may be just a tad slow on the resonce but still workable.

thanks, I think I worked it out now. I couldn't find any mention in that guide to clipping masks but I knew what they were so just inverted the texture in photoshop and used that. here's the result: [image: goal 3.jpg]

That's a pretty interesting read and could be useful for some architectural designs. I would certainly like to get hold of a ruby to help generate that sort of pattern.

As juju says, the Skin.rb will manage that very well. You will probably have to do 2 rings at a time and move along.

Sketchup 6.4.112 Tools Sandbox/ extensions.rb gettingstarted.rb langhandler.rb sandboxtools.rb sketchup.rb totd.rb units.rb Plugins Examples/ Utilities examples.rb utilities.rb azuby

niiicee!! thanks so much

Tom, ...yes something like that. Thanks for the ideas! Best, ~e like your new avatar..btw

Problem solved. I found that the server.dat file was pointing to the old name of the server. When I copied the file from my machine it points to the right license file and now it all works.

thanks very much! works a treat.

I'll have to ask.

Hi Brad, Anssi I'm exporting from sketchup to dwg, then xref-ing these files into Autocad. Whenever I change something in SU, I then re-export the dwg and "refresh" the xref in autocad. The problem is as Anssi says. When my drawing gets larger or smaller in Sketchup, the origin of the exported dwg file changes, so when I refresh in autocad... the xrefs move! Anssi - good idea on setting up the views. Unfortunately, this is the way I have been doing it, so it doesn't solve the problem. Brad - any help you can give on this is much appreciated. It's the fly in the ointment for me at the moment. I'm evaluating the SU/Acad combo as a BIM solution with a view to getting it adopted company wide, and without a fix on this I can't really recommend it. Kind regards Rob D

Hide the Section cut and then export

I can only reiterate what has been said before. Sketchup for speed in conjunction with Rhino for complexity works very well indeed. The new exporter does a pretty good job too.