I'm looking for something that can walk me through how to use this plugin.

@vortex said: shade i don't want use adobe pdf viewer, too cumbersome for me, and this not works with foxit reader. but good to know this possibility. Maybe if we all take a minute to nag Foxit, they might respond. I'd be willing to pay for a small, fast PDF viewer over using the free, but huge and slow Adobe reader.

As an ancient marina, the concepts of Ruby, and OPPS originally fail to easily register on my consciousness. The following is the degree to which I currently understand them as applied to SUs Ruby API. A class is the generic form of an object. Objects within a class share the same class characteristics, the differences between objects are found in their variable differences. A class "box", results in objects, that differ in height, width, or length. Methods nare procedures that dertermine a variable's value. For example, the boxes height = volume/(width*length). A SU Ruby plugin is a program that utilized the SU Ruby API to affect a SU model.

Vray for SU does not have that capability

That's exactly the same as I got into SU Gaieus, but when viewed with Autodesk Trueview (free download from Autodesk, and it converts ACAD files to older formats) there are things that look like a framework of beams in 3D. Anssi

http://cgtextures.com/textures.php?t=browse&q=23740

it's ok.Thanks a lot..

Yes, it's supposed to be the back of the faucet. I haven't gotten to the actual spout, yet. Went back to play with my banister in another drawing. Yeah, the couch came out pretty well, didn't it? I couldn't figure out how to get it going 'round in two directions, so I used only one-half of the cushion, and did two halves, and then joined them together. Worked out well. Thanks for your great tip! Will serve me well in the future! Gigi @chris fullmer said: Oh good. So its really a sink faucet head or something? It doesnt look half bad at the XL scale as a big block cushion chair/couch thing.

I go to window from the top menu, then shadow settings in the drop down menu, it opens a menu file, there is a checkbox for display shadows, we uncheck that box as instructed, under it is time and date sliders, under that is light and dark sliders, then we have written, display, under that check boxes for on faces, on ground , from edges. And nothing else, this is version 5 of sketchup, either Im on the wrong thing, or in my version the setting is some other place, or it is in version 6 only. mine is this [image: Shadow-settings.jpg] not this [image: dczk5s33_38f666cdcj.jpg] EDIT I found it, its in Display settings for versions of SU older than 6

Now I remember I encountered the some problem about 2 years ago when exporting some hi-res images for print. It happened that some surfaces come out triangulated, with a wrong oriented texture. I believe it was a memory problem. There is a resolution limit, when exporting a picture, that depends from the amount of your memory. When you reach this limit, sketchup is not more able to export an image. My opinion/experience is that when you get near to this limit, the output may be somehow weird. A workaround I've found was to move slightly the camera and retry to export the image. Sometimes it worked. Other times a "broken" face come out good, but some other face was weird. In most cases I had either to reduce the resolution of the image output, or edit it in photoshop to correct such strange output. /matteo

For me export quirks like incomplete files etc. often happen when I try to export to a network drive, and exporting to the desktop or a local folder then helps. Anssi

@kimberlylarae said: That might explain it. I'm so totally new to this. In school we are told to do it, unfortunately not much is said about how to do it. Today I'm doing a secional sofa and learning groups and the arc tool. As usual, I'm lost. At first I thought it was because I've gone back to school at the age of 40. Now I'm certain I would be lost at any age. kimberlylarae, Looking at your uploaded .skp I have some suggestions. Don't use screentext to point directly to your model. Whenever you orbit or pan it will only be confusing. Avoid using 3D-text for it will increase your file size. 3D-text is just a bunch of edges in components. Dimension important geometry in your model to keep track of changes in size and to stay in control. I've made a sequence of how you could start creating a floor plan. It's just an example though. See attached file: W4A3-Kim-Floorplan.skp

Thanks for trying dave. Still no joy.

Did you use the internal pdf export function of sketchup, or do you use some external pdf creator? I have encountered some problems too when used pdf export function of sketchup. If I remeber well, archicad installs a virtual printer to save file as pdf. You may try to "print" it as pdf, instead as exporting it. If it doesn't work, try some other pdf creator, there are some free programs too. I personally work well with cute pdf. but beware! If you print it as pdf, the standard sketchup's output is a bitmap image saved as pdf. This means, you are not able to edit the edges as vector entities. If you want to export the lines as vectors you have to chek the use high accuracy HLR option in the print preview panel. This allows you to preserve the line thickness too, but you can't export faces, texture and shadows, only the lines. You will be able to edit the lines in illustrator, but you have to redraw the surfaces and fillings. The result is precise and you shall not loose parts of your drawing; moreover, you can watch the preview, before saving it as pdf. /matteo [image: ULqm_print-preview.jpg]

Thanks James! I think I got it. I don't know why the various times I tried it, I never noticed anything. I was working with an ACAD import where the colors are for the lines. Well it changes the faces not the lines in SU.This particular time I hadn't drawn faces yet. However I can get the lines to color as well by using "By material" in the color setting under Styles /edit / Edge. I was hoping to better differentiate lines in the import. Works great. Peter

@gaieus said: The fact is that Kerkythe is being developed by one person who (until recently) didn't have any experience on Mac. Also, this is the first release for Mac and obviously the "Mac user base" is quite small (true that Podium has only released its first Mac version, too). All the help files for Kerky are being developed by enthusiastic users who devote their time to sharing their experiences. I find these help files quite intuitive and helpful and also the people on the KT forums (and yes, the Podium forum is alo a great place). I realize my post was a bit provocative and certainly don't want to start a pissing contest. The Mac workflow mindset is quite diferent. PC guys drive ten miles to save a penny on a gallon/litre of gas, Mac guys fillup across the street. Anywho, finally got an answer to my dilema...you got it...from a PC guy!

@gaieus said: Hi Andrew, Jim has a plugin that adds a layer which is hidden on all scenes by default: http://sketchuptips.blogspot.com/2007/08/add-hidden-layer.html As Gaieus says... Jim's script lets you make a new layer that is NOT visible on any scenes/pages. You need to switch it on in the desire scene/page(s) and 'update' that/those scene/page(s) to suit... .

Basically layers control the visibility of things in SU. If you have geometry on one layer which you then turn off that geometry will be hidden. Its important to remember that visibility is all the layers control, they dont work like photoshop where things on layers are separated. The basic workflow with scenes is to draw everything on layer0, then when youve drawn some things, turn them in to groups and move them to their respective layers. Its very important that you draw everything on layer0 to start with, as otherwise youll get geometry all over your model, and its a real beast to sort out. Just to give you an example, say i was doing a quick interior. Id first draw all the walls, doors and windows, group them and then put them on a layer called 'walls.' Id then start adding 1 arrangement of furniture, id put all this on a layer called 'furniture 1'. Lastly id do another furniture arrangement, and put all that on to a layer called 'furniture 2.' This would allow me to show the model to the client and switch between the 2 arrangements of furniture simply y toggling which layers are on and off. To answer your second question, you dont need to use scenes with layers, although you can. As default i think SU is setup to save the visibility of scenes when you add a new scene, so if you ad a new scene when youve got a few layers hidden, those layers will be hidden each time you go back to that scene. This can provide a quick way of switching between views, which is pretty cool. If we go back to our previous example, you could save a scene with 'furntiure1' visible and then another scene with 'furniture2' visible, then youd be able to quickly switch between the 2 layouts with minimal messing about in between. Lastly, the organiser is a different thing entirely. Its is basically just a folder tree sort of arrangement to display what groups and components you have in the model. If you want to use it it is very important you name all your groups and components, as otherwise it just become a large incomprehensible mess. It would be quite OT to go in to any more detail here, so i'll just link to the rather useful google vid here: Very un-usefully the vid has disappeared grumble, all i can suggest is to have a play around with it, its fairly self explanatory. p.s. this might be more appropriate in the newbie forum.

Just to add one more tip for anyone stumbling across this later on...I've occasionally had a weird issue where even purge won't take care of a massive file size. It's been awhile but I think it tends to occur when you sometimes when you delete big chunks of a model as I recall. Anyway, the end-all be-all purge is to turn on all your layers, copy everything and paste into a fresh drawing. This has helped me a couple times in the past. -Brodie

Solo, Thanks for your input and help. How did I get my model below ground? Well got to be more careful. Maybe a function of the Drw2Dxf2Faces2Skp conversions to bring the model into Su. [image: LUu9_Pla59cinteriorlivinglookingfoyer.JPG] Now I can move on to other embellishments.