Could you upload a copy of what your talking about there? I'm not quite following what happened, but it might make more sense to see it. Thanks, Chris

Okay. I got the skin22.zip and put it in the plugin folder. Now what?

Chris. Using the watermark feature is great. Worked perfect! Thanks Jason

Thanks, Tom. My email is barry.deutsch@gmail.com.

hi Jason I liked much of the model.

hello i use Art-cam to Model/sculpt faces or anything organic, it is an expensive program at around five grand but i use it commercially and it was provided by the company..however there is a forum for art-cam users who will sculpt for you ...other than that there is an app called mud-box from alias and also there is z brush from pixologic..all these programs require some extensive work coming to a usable workflow but if you are artistic they are the bees knees, and a real compliment to a wacom. mud-box is about the most versatile for freeform organics in a simple fashion z brush is a steep but rewarding learning curve and art-cam is the type of software used by industry for routing wood or metal but is hight field technology or is "flat" 2.5D ..mud-box is 3D there are apps geared more to animation then Modeling in which the mesh is manipulable like hexagon or maya, or any other "subdivision modeler"like studio max ..cheetah for mac.. They normally require the use of bones and constraints that move the mesh in scale and dimension giving the "movement" through animated key frames. Google virtual clay or subdivision modeling look also at sensible technologies ...awsome.......for me anyway

Thanks

Nice. Here is a screenshot: [image: HU8B_DG945GCLF-MINI-DESKTOP.jpg] Moved to Components.

That is the most recent. Could you upload the model so we can just look at it? Chris

I agree. So to learn a bit more I tried this: make a cube into a component. Open component and hide all lines on two sides. Then duplicate and scale/mirror in four symmetrical components that are touching on two sides. Then sculpt one component. You do have to hide more lines afterward underneath (still working on only one component) and you can remove the kissing faces so they don't z-fight. You can do these operations on a copy that has been moved away from the rest. It's pretty fun to draw this way. Sorry I couldn't film a tutorial. Mine would be so slow to watch anyway.

@daybw said: I tried the option and restarted, but it did not work. I did try my desktop rather than my laptop, and the desktop did not have the issue. So I am assuming it is some sort of grpahics card/driver issue with my Dell laptop. (Mobile Intel 945GM Express graphics) Thanks for all the help. You are perfectly right. Mobile Intel graphics don't work well with SU. The only thing you can do is to turn off Hardware Acceleration (Window>Preferences>OpenGL tab), but SU will be quite slow with all but the smallest models. Anssi

I've run into the same problem Chris has when I've been trying to help others get their models straightened out. I agree that forcing geometry to reside on Layer 0 makes much sense. pbacot, when I am teaching new SketchUp users about components and groups, I use an analogy to try to explain how they keep geometry separated. Think of a sandwich. A couple of pieces of bread and some stuff in between. Lay a great big dill pickle on top and the juice soaks into the bread changing the sandwich. Wrap the sandwich in cling wrap and the pickle juice can't soak into the bread. Assigning a layer to a component or group effectively turns that cling wrap into some of that new "cloaking device" fabric. Unchecking the visibility box turns on the cloaking device. The geometry remains where it is though on Layer 0. It's kind of a lame but it seems to get the point across.

I believe I just didn't understand how layers were working with components. I have now done more testing and I think I understand how and when layer will stay and leave. So, I guess it was me, just not understanding. So now I have been adding alignment lines and faces to my rigging components. Most of my rigging components are organic like in construction, no flat faces or easly obtained alignment references. So now I am adding these faces and lines and making them all active with my Align-Hide layer. So thanks to everyone, I now know how to make the alignment faces and lines stay in compontents and still be on their asigned layer. Thanks Ken

Thanks for the link Chris. That's interesting. I see what David is trying to do but not exactly what he does. I didn't get the three horizons (and that's his first statement!). But there's nothing like fooling with it to clarify the issues.

Hi Ken, well, to my best knowledge construction geometry consists of points and lines (infinite and finite). I don't know what these ruby gurus might come up with (nowadays you dare not say NO to anything) but I don't think there is such a geometry as "construction face". You could use a simple face however put on a certain layer (where you could also put all your construction geometry as well) and control its visibility. Make sure to group that face though otherwse it will interact with other geometry.

@chemtech said: First off, remember that I offered these as suggestions of ways to attack the problem, so this was just my version of a brainstorm idea, and second, I have never used any GIS functions, I don't even know what you're refering to, but I think I can get and idea from your discriptions. It sounds like you're on the right track. If you can get the photo size to match the size of the footprint of the building, or vice versa, then, measure the size of one side of the footprint in the real world, (get the width of one of the buildings) use the tapemeasure to rescale based on the width of that building. Then just use it to measure the heights of other buildings in the photo. I'm pretty sure that to do this accurately, you're going to have to use photomatch, rather than just painting a photo on as texture, because photomatch takes into account the perspective of the photo, and thus, measurements are related to the "vanishing point" of the photo, regular imported photos (I don't think) will do this. This all sounds like a fun project. Also, if you can make this work, you also might consider posting a tutorial in the turorial section. GT I'll definitely do this process for the down town area (where the focus of most people’s attention would be) and some of our more popular areas of town. I don't think I'll be going down each block and taking pictures of ever household I think it would consume a bit too much time. (even though that would be wicked, I mean who doesn't wanna see their house on google earth in 3D?) Once I get my process down and get a decent collection going I’d really enjoy making a tutorial . Oh also another thing that I've been doing is assuming the height of a door is about 7foot (you can usually tell if it’s a bit taller) so using the tape measure tool you can use the door as a known height to scale the building as a whole (if you didn't have a chance to get an actual measurement to use scale the building) @ehaflett said: Since you said you're using ArcGIS it's possible that you have MOD IV (tax and parcel) data for your city. This data will often contain a Building Description (BldgDesc) field that may be helpful in knowing how many stories the buildings are. You could do a spatial query to transfer this attribute, or at least part of it, to your building footprints. This would work in the method you described in your original post where you multiply the # of stories by a number but would not require you to go out and collect this data. I was kind of waiting for this to catch your eye thank you for the tip, I'mma go search our city data asap to try and find that information. It would make this much easier than going out into the field and collecting the story data.

http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=10404&hilit=+Plugin Enjoy.

All sorted now, I have received a mac compatible license, hurrah! Thanks again for your help with this. Matt