@theolwakachangchang said: ... one more question though, what affect is turning off "Use Harware Acceleration" going to cause me? 3D screen output is not calculated by the GPU of the video card but has to be emulated in software by the already occupied CPU... which leads to a significant speed decrease especially with larger models, i.e. no "realtime" rotating etc. hth, Norbert

If youve got the subd and smooth plugin, you can get a similar effect (a model that is very triangulated) simply using the subdivide feature a few times.

Pilou and Wo3Dan, Creating hide/unhide shortcuts will help me a lot I guess. Thanks again for your detailed answers.

remus thanx for the tip... indeed i was working in mm. but it wasnt that small. i was trying to make a wooden table which has plywood tiles of 500mm x 100mm. but i scaled it and than made the arc without the cut thanks again. ps im working on a imac 24" with leopard. i got this mac on my work just a couple weeks, im not really sure i like it. native im a graphic designer and used to work on amc a couple years a ago. I loved the mac always for it steady system, but this system sucks a bit!!! SU suddenly quits aswell with other programs. i read that tiger is much more stable

Thanks, I think I thought of that from 5th element or some other movie where they were building up a person, bone first, then tissue, then skin. The trick was doing it with just two scenes vs. something more complex. That is when I realized I can adjust the heights of the lower and upper section cut for each group as a timeline to control the start and finish of the build. As long as what you want is linear (e.g. no speed ramp up or down) you can get any timing you want with just two scenes. @plot-paris said: very impressive, David. it never occured to me to use several section planes to show different elements of one building grow. thanks for the demo file

Thank you every one for replying you have really helped me out! Im very greatful! Thanks

Thanks for all the help everyone! Not sure how to make things out of the TIN or use the ruby script, might try doing it with the tutorial on the horn first. I'll see how things go

@nednarb said: being able to delete a surface then select something behind it, hit undo and still have my selection made Even better is to set shortcuts for "hide" and "unhide all" and hide the geometry in front, select the geometry behind and then unhide all again. I use this all the time and it's zero-risk as you're never actually deleting anything, just switching off it's visibility.

///thanks,Matteo!I like GERVASONI too...

Thanks Matteo, this is pretty cool

Using animation for batch export is a useful trick. Notice that often (always?) you end up with a duplicate of the last image. Also, there is a bit of a technical (not really technical, more like bery unlikely you'll come across it) bug in the way shadows update from scene to scene. If you have geometry that hides and shows from one scene to the next and your scenes don't have shadow information turned on, but you have shadows themselves turned on, then the shadows won't update correctly. If you think you might be in that category, I can explain better and I have a little model that shows how it works (or rather, how to see the bug in action). But batch export is great and a huge timesaver! Oh and also, you can set your fps and time per scene to whatever is easiest for your brain. So the example given above is great. I tend to set 1 second per scene and then 1fps. Chris

Takuji, and oecodesignator, Thank you so much for sharing these great models! I like that first woman and pose the best - great emotion from straight SketchUp - very impressive!

Is there a good marriage? Joke!

then it is no trace but drawing, is it?

Wanted to share in case someone else was experiencing this... Environment: SketchUp 7 (7.1.6859) Mac OSX Snow Leopard Problem: Despite following the directions explicitly... could not manage to print a true 1:1 scale. Ex: I drew a 100mm x 20mm rectangle... Printed at 1:1 scale... Measured... longer side was at 104mm. Went through this over and over again. Read and re-read the directions...forum postings, everything...Nothing helped. Solution: In the File->Page Setup (Remember this on a mac...may be different for PC) I HAD 'Format For' set to 'Canon MP620 Printer' and 'Paper Size' set to 'US Letter (borderless)'... Sounds reasonable right? Well guess not, because as a last ditch effort I decided set 'Format For' to 'Any Printer' and 'Paper Size' to a custom '8.5 x 11 Borderless' that I made via the 'Manage Custom Sizes' option in that same menu and BAM problem fixed! If I set 'Format For' back to 'Canon MP620 Printer' and the 'Paper Size' back to 'US Letter (borderless)' problem returns again! So, I'm not sure what the scoop is but obviously something screwy with the Canon supplied profile. So moral of the story? It's definitely worth giving this fix a try if nothing else is working... definitely did it for me. -Mike

You can preselect the follow me path if you want, just select the path, click the follow me tool and click the face. As for keeping your geometry clean, dont forget to use lots of groups and components in your model, they help immensely in keeping your model clean.

I don't know if the Omega drivers will solve the problem, however in the past when I had ATi GFX cards I only used the Omega Drivers, they're good and help to speed things up a little.

Ughhh, I just re-read that and realised it wasn't very clear, I edited my first line. It only happens (thankfully) when you export jpg animations, not when you export 2d graphics. I use this method so I can batch export perspectives, elevations, sections and plans from skp models which can take up to 30 minutes in total. I'm not sure if font affects it (I just used Arial), but I suspect the two issues I mentioned are connected as it is the largest font (the "C") which moves out of alignment the most and the "horizontal copy" bug becomes more pronounced the larger the font size.