jbacus, strange that shortcut (edit/context menu flyout/zoom extents) doesn't work for me. I just get the mac error sound when I hit the key. Strange. The menu itself works.

That's a handy ruby, thanks. I often export the my sketchup models to 2d AutoCAD drawings, particularly at the concept stage of the project.

Okay, Gaieus. Thanks for the data. Danty

That was an interesting tutorial, what I am referring to however is meshing prior to export, not after import. If I make a plane with curves in it in Sketchup, selecting 'hidden geometry' shows nothing except for the plane boundary. When you export however, a rendering program then shows the massive triangulation (or not so massive, depending on the vertices in the curves specified in Sketchup)that Sketchup has decided as the best way to polygon the surface. The imported mesh model that is shown on the clip is optimized as far as uniform distribution and shape of the polygons...a model created in Sketchup never has this uniform distribution, that is what I was hoping to be able to do, create a uniform mesh in Sketchup prior to export. You can manually divide the plane into a more uniform distribution of polys by simply adding lines, but unfortunately then your texture UV mapping controls only work on the individual manually created polys and not the plane as a whole...really ugly.

That's a pretty useful tid-bit Jordan, thanks for sharing.

You might check some of your SU settings. The 2Gb of ram should do nothing but improve your situation. How are you erasing lines? Using the erase tool, the eraser, the delete key after highlighting or using Undo? Do you have the same settings in the Preferences:Drawing:Clickstyle are the same as what you are used to? The program can seem very odd if you have settings here that differ from what you are "used" to. Personally I go for the click drag click approach. If you are in the midst of drawing using the "continue line drawing" checkbox it will want to keep on with the line tool until you change tools manually (in my experience which is why I don't use it) as the program just sees you as being between two endpoints after each click. As for the printing. When you print, is the whole of what you want to print visible on the screen? The way SU works is it prints what is within the bounds of the window, not the entirety of the model or model space. When you say SU doesn't play well with Firefox or Opera, what do you mean? I almost always have Safari and FF running while I am also running SU, Vectorworks, Graphic Converter, Edrawings and so on with no ill effects. Looking forward to your responses. All the best. Karl

I think he is referring to particles in the air (dust,humidity,etc..), that cause refraction and reflection of light, thus causing the 'volumetric' effect (beams or cones of light). Most of the time,volmetric light is 'mimiced' by modelers/render engines ,as the polycount of real particles can be troublesome..... Cheers, Kwistenbiebel

Script published here: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=153&t=3848 Hope it helps,

Thanks for the ideas. 1. Pasting components with mateirals I just tested pasting a component which had materials with the same name as materials already in my model. It renamed the old materials using square braces. 0001_PaleVioletRed - was in my model already [0001_PaleVioletRed]1 - was the renamed, pasted material So it looks like were going to have to modify the code which checks for carets to check for square braces as well. 2. SU 5 models I downloaded the original model from the 3D Warehouse. When I load it in SU 5 - it has no carets on material names When I load it into SU 6 - all material names have carets. I tried a new SU 5 model, and the same thing happens when you load it into SU 6. Again, thanks for your ideas on this - it put me on the right track.

@unknownuser said: If you increase the number of segments in your cylinder (and the squished sphere as well) you'll get a smoother look. Thanks - that's great advice and helps . . . just a word of advice to the other newbs like me - DO NOT set the number of circle sides to 2000 - NO! Use lower values, closer to 100, or so. Happy modeling, Brad [image: 5yET_bw_egg_slicing_001.jpg]

We had so much spam in the Wiki that we had to shut it down to manual registrations.o Send me you email address, and desired screen name and I will add you as a user.

Wow, so simple that I did not see it. I looked and tried everything BUT that Thanks so much Glenn

Gai, Thanx so much... I'll loo0k in to it later today and let you know the result. Again... Thanx, Bob

John, There were issues with Leopard that the latest M4 release was supposed to fix. Do you have the latest SU version? (This is the fourth maintenance release of v5).

Ah! Thanks for taking the time to explain, it's one heck of a workflow that must have taken time to get comfortable with. Your work is mind blowing in it's detail, thanks once again for sharing...

Thanks for your help...That was it..Now looks good upon import.

Luckily, I got all my layers to stick, by using the notepad technique. I didn't have to add entities to each layer.

Hello Juan, Excellent. I'm glad that all is working again. Yes, let's blame it on Papa Noel this time. Happy holidays! Tricia

Hi Guys, apart from TIG's future (and ever wonderful) solutions as for now, can you just use his section cut face ruby (with wich though section cuts remain static) they are actually turned into a group to which you can attach a text label easily. Or do I miss something now (again - as usually )?

Al, Thanks for the info. I agree with item C. As well as the thought behind using Adobe. The file size limit kinda scares me, but at this point it's only 7 meg, so not sure what will happen by the time I'm finished? Oh, just thought of a way to get the file size down, delete the countour lines, as all I need is the topo (I'll rename the file just in case). I think I'm going to try the trial version and inform my client about these issues and let them see a sample. The other option is for static images with mouse over "zoom" for some key features of the site. Thanks again to everyone for the help. Glenn update: purging the contour lines cut 3mg off the file size. I have some 2d property & road lines to purge after I'm finished with the drape. So, the 3d pdf is looking viable again.