If what gai mentioned doesnt yield satisfactory results your only option is to redo the model but with more triangles, although thats usually really tedious so only do it if you really need to. If youve got a bit of cash to spare it might also be worth checking out the subd and smooth plugin, i reckon itd be pretty useful for the sort of things youve shown already, and its very good at getting smooth surfaces. subd and smooth: http://www.smustard.com/script/SubdivideAndSmooth

By all means jump on it! your a lot better at textures than i am.

Take a look at this link Some videos are on your subject (use the "research on the page" of your navigator) Normally only 2 corners are sufficent

Sure, go to Window>Preferences and go to the shortcuts tab. Then click on export and save the .dat file somewhere like on a flash drive or a network location. Then do the same on the laptop, but choose import instead of export. Good luck Chris PS There used to be a bug where commands that already had a shortcut assigned would'nt get updated correctly. I don't know if that was ever fixed or not, but I think it was....

I hope you don't mind if I say that this model is a complete mess (seriously, I don't mean any personal). Actually not only some (but many) of the rear and some of the front windows are also see-through (only from that angle it's not apparent). For some reason, all your window components contain another window component. Exploding the outside ones make all the inside ones see through. I wonder which component has gluing/cutting features and which is cutting what... (although you have all the window openings cut into the walls anyway). So my guess is that there's something with the "cut opening" feature but seriously speaking there are sooo many components nested into each other that I can't really investigate which is which and which is causing the problem. For this particular project, I'd suggest a "workaround". There are two styles in your file now that I created. One is in monochrome mode with transparency turned off and one is the shaded with texture mode with transparency turned on. Use the styles dialogue to change the rendering modes instead of the buttons in the toolbar. Also purged the model a bit... Hope didn't delete some components you were going to use later 7 Nightingale Rd Extension 30 var.skp

nice tool. seems to be quite simple to use

Thanx, John, I wonder how big a computer you need for that... and what kind of budget!! Tom

@gaieus said: They cannot document the workflow with each and every 3rd party paalication This is why forums exist! That's true. At least WE now have documented in RIGHT HERE for further reference!

Hi Johnnyjack (and welcome). This really sound like some video card issue. Try to go to Window > Preferences > OpenGL settings and first turn off Fast Feedback. If this doesn't help, turn off Hardware acceleration as well. This (finally) should work however it may affect performance especially with more complex models. The ultimate solution would be to update your video driver and see if that helps.

cd to the same dir as sketchup.exe. Run- regsvr32 ThumbsUp.dll It should say succeeded. If not, I seem to recall that since the dll is not 64-bit, it won't work in 64-bit Vista.

If you like developable surfaces please see the book written by John Sharp about my D-Form geometry. Search Amazon for: D-Forms: Surprising New 3-D Forms From Flat Curved Shapes Enjoy. Regards Tony Wills

Well, I also have Camtasia 3 (downloaded/installed when there was a frrebie period some time around december) and YES, it is superior to the others I have. And yes, it can create very small files with seemingly lossless compression. I like it.

Thanks for the info. I can now recreate what you have done. I just draw a curve, and close it, no welding, the arc stays an arc. I then use extrude to create the surface and afterwards the texture works fine. What I was actually doing to create the extruded shape was rather different, and it might have something to do with it. I create an arc just as a guideline for a follow me. Then I create an Upright Rectangle, and follow it along the arc. The reason for this was of how my Ruby script work. I have to create a lot of components that follows basically the same curve, ie curved panels, with mouldings, etc. It seems that in that case, the resulting follow me creates the "segments" somewhat differently, and hence the texture problem. This might mean some rethink on my approach.

Hi folks. Just in case someone is interested in the Platonic solids (also called Pythagorean solids), see these two SU file that show the relation between: 1 - The cube or hexahedron (6 square faces) and the octahedron (8 triangular faces). 2 - The dodecahedron (12 pentagonal faces) and the icosahedron (20 triangular faces). For each pair, you can get from one solide to the other by joining the center of each faces to the center of its neighbors faces. For the tetrahedron, you will get another smaller tetrahedron if you use this procedure. In conclusion: 1 - You can get the tetrahedron and the octahedron from a cube (see previous posts). 2 - You can get the icosahedron from three intersecting golden rectangles each at 90° from the others two as was shown in a thread somewhere. 3 - You can get the dodecahedron from an icosahedron. Thus, you can get all five solids with great precision using only basic SU tools and without using any mathematics. Just ideas. Cube and octahedron.skp Dodecahedron and icosahedron.skp

Gaieus once mentioned a free programme called Camstudio. seems to work quite well...

okay it sort of works now......improvement is being made, allthough it looks like the model is attached to the points by a rubber band. can't have everything i guess. ffd-test.skp

Im not sure if youve tried this yet, but try turning hardware acceleration on but turning of fast feedback. If it works this is generally a better solution and will make US run faster. As for pushing things through walls thats just a 'feature' of SU. To make sure it cuts through you need to get an inference on the opposite wall, just look for the little dot...

Just a quick addition - for better results, try editing your styles so you have thinner edge lines, I find it gives it a slightly more professional look.

Not quite what Amo was envisaging, but it's a step closer. Enjoy. http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/245

The answer is simple really, most folk that bought the professional version were indeed using it in a professional capacity and in doing so their workflow would probably require exporting and importing over several other apps in order to deliver the final product. I cannot comment about the Layout feature as I have never had the patience to deal with it and it never yielded anything productive in my hands.