wow you are all too buzy talking about some kludge thing to notice that someone has just announced SU7 release date!! Amazing. Unfortunatley its only relaesed in mountian time, and as mountains move so slowliy I will have to wait millions of years untill it catches up with GMT.

Cool - two of the solutions worked - turning off the sky fixed the problem as did using preferences-->opengl and unchecking 'use hardware accelaration'. Thanks very much Amy

Yes this works in Windows 7 also.

I thought this a very interesting problem so I tried playing to see if the situation could be improved. There's some good news but it might not be viable in every case... I made a similar model to ridix's one. I could see the same problem in mine when I had the edge display turned off. The white phantom edges would appear particularly when the shadows were turned on. The trick I found that could improve things was to temporarily turn back on edge display and select an offending line. With it selected, look to the 'entity info' panel and note there is an option to "smooth". (If you don't see the 'entity info' panel, right click on the line and choose it from the top of the context menu). To the selected line apply that "smooth" option. Switch edge display back off and you will see the white phantom edge will be gone. For some models this technique will work very well. For others the "smooth" function might alter the display of some faces so much as to become a curse. (I can anticipate: "Damn that Ross! - Damn him to hell!"). The 'smooth' function works by rendering the faces connected to the edge with a varying tonal value. It can be hard to anticipate the effect it will have. Faces defined with lots of edges can get their display screwed up when the edges are smoothed. In conclusion don't just select all edges (easy in wire-frame display mode) and 'smooth' them all. Do that and your faces will look wonky. (The resulting inflated look is fun but rarely useful). Instead apply it to offending phantom edges and see if the effect looks good. Play. The best way to have fun. You will learn while you do. Regards, Ross

Hi Ahr8tch, hi folks. My answer given in Google groups at: http://groups.google.ca/group/sketchuphowto/browse_thread/thread/6f0c3e16287b97f4?hl=fr The Large Tool Set is an assemblage of the most used tools taken from the various Tool palettes. This set don't contain all the available tools. My suggestion is to turn off this Large Tool Set and to turn on all the other Tool palettes that contain the tools that you normally use. These palettes have a grab bar and they can be positionned around your model window to suits you needs. Just ideas.

Kurt, About the unfilled loop: 3 out of 4 corners are coplanar, obvious (3 form a triangle and are always coplanar) One solution: the bottom corner near the green axis needs to be moved in the red AND green direction to fix things, to position it perfectly below the other endpoint of the vertical black line => result=blue. But there is more going on here. These examples give the most problems because you do have the topline that shows as being on axis but it is NOT!! It is within tolerance, so to speak. The vertical black one is without tolerance hence shows black as it should. To resume: the short vertical black has an angle with blue that is without tolerance while the longer top red edge has an angle within tolerance with red. How to check: change your settings as follows: Window > Model Info > Units > change Format: Fractional to Decimal with high precision. Open your nested component to reach the bottom level, the edges and endpoints in question (i.e. ultimate edit mode). Use the ‘Text’ tool to label the 4 endpoints. You will see following coordinates: A= 13,559926", 2,049547", 12,394535" C= 10,567197", 2,049763", 12,394535" B= 13,559926", 2,049547", 11,842216" D= 10,569578", 2,048282", 11,828312" Here you can see that A and C don’t share the same green value hence aren’t even on red axis. How to fix this side is easy but how much that influences the rest of the geometry depends strongly on how accurate the rest is. Redrawing the arc you should do only after fixing the position of the 4 vertices (here: moving C AND D) Hope this helps, Wo3Dan p.s. Why is correction important. When not, you will constantly get conficting situations for the inferencing engine 'gets confused' about inferencing with almost on axis endpoints and the corresponding axis itself

hey rogue, you ever going to do that other tutorial? I'm really interested in how to model cars!

Thanks Daniel

Thanks, Alan. Lots more to explore. I can do the vectors from dingbats in Paint Shop Pro (old version of Corel) and see where to go from there in reducing faces. As to the push/pull, I'm still having some problems with the shapes I've tried, but it's got to be relatively easy once I get the hang of it. For some reason I'm having problems getting the dingbat to the surface of the model at the size it should be unless I use an interim rectangle. Yes, I do understand alignment and the spacer. Saved the dingbat component in the component menu, but it "forgot" what size I wanted it to be. Two things I've learned. The first is that the font doesn't have to be installed for SU to use it. That's great. Second is that a couple of the fonts I've tried flat out won't work with SU. Appreciate your advice. "In case all else fails, follow directions." I'm trying.

Joao, Yeah, I haven't seen a style like that, but I also haven't searched a lot. I'm looking for something like that as well - and will probably try and make one myself. There's a tutorial here that shows how to make a style, you should try and make one!

thanks guys, i know it was easy!

@tomsdesk said: In the "camera" pulldown menu you'll find the "standard" flyout menu...there are the "top" and 4 side views (you'll need to turn off "perspective" if you want a true 2d). Thanks.

@themaskedunit said: damn, one would think that for as supposedly innovative program as this, there would be an easier way to make a curved plane... ah, well thanks That's the problem...there's no such thing as a curved plane. A curve is curved, a plane is flat. What you are requiring is a series of planes arranged to form a curve. The easiest way of achieving this is something similar to the demo by James. You are likely to end up with more than you need, then simply delete the excess. [image: N6eR_curved_plane.jpg]

Just go to File > Export > 3ds....but then notice the Options button hiding in plain sight on the export dialog box. By default it's probably set to weld vertices. You'll need to change it to Preserve Texture coordinates.

Oh thanks a lot! I've done it correctly! Bye

Could you post a pic of the problem? cheers.

@watkins said: Of course, we should both be out enjoying the sunshine, shouldn't we. or celebrating the Queen's birthday!

There are many ways to create spheres these days as already demonstrated, but as solo mentions above, why not keep things simple and quick and use the ones which are provided for you in Components/Shapes.

Nice model gidon. I thought id jump on the band wagon with this little number: [image: 2789787101_317cbed680_o.jpg] Cardboard table.skp