Cool but...Will it blend? Err...I mean , will it render nicely using render apps?

Fred, if you haven't done so already, you should check out ACME Brick's free masonry designer program. It has dozens of brick, cmu, and mortars you can combine in endless varieties.

Hi Solo It is nice to be shown/reminded how easy it is to make object in sketchup. cheers

It may also get stuck behind the main window (like dialogue boxes often do so). If you have your main window NOT maximized (but don't collapse it to the task bar), you can move it around and see if it's behind.

about "5" point...will be need to develop external modules-scripts or assigning with authors of renders-exporters for supporting...or make api-sections for devs....near cad-skipy future great features are....

Please post your machine specs, OS and SketchUp version you're using. Without it not much can be said.

@alan fraser said: ...Incidentally, there is no option to do this in the free version. Well, since v.6 the 2d export options are identical in the free and pro versions. Only 3D and 2D vector formats are not available for export in the free version (and for some peculiar reason in the Windows version only, the Location tab in the Model Info dialogue). That's all. Even print to scale and the sandbox tools - that were Pro features only in v.5 - are included in the free version now.

Definitely it is !!! Thanks a lot. I will now read the tutorial you did mention. (but I am not really found of the 3D guy ! it is for shadow test I guess )

Jean, Thank you for your prompt reply. Alas, I don't get what you describe. What I get is a large color wheel with six icons across the top: The trick is that the fourth icon (looks like a brick) reads "Apple" in the little window. It's when you click the little up/down arrows that the whole list of available materials appear! At that point, when you select one of the items in the list, it is as you describe with the left/right arrows, the house and a pull-down list. Thank you for your help in getting me to investigate more closely.

Well Thom is working on this that'll make thing alot easier for this type of thing. Haven't heard anything in awhile but it'll definitely allow alot of mesh tinkering

Thanks. Screen grabs and callouts with SnagIt; you have to use screen grabs or if you want to show any of the SU controls. Edited the final image in Xara because it make sit easy to re-size and shuffle on the page. Bob

That seems like a program fault to me. You could get the blackout effect by setting the wrong custom time zone in the Location dialog in Model Info, but that wouldn't explain why the time slider and time readout are giving different times. They ought to be inextricably linked.

HI, As an Adobe user, I am asking the same question. Where is the alignment window like in AI? What is I have a bunch of elements (> 50) oriented in random direction? How to align them by their "center of gravity"? How to get them all separated by the same distance? How to have them aligned on the superior top of their shape (whatever the shape)? Most important of all, how to control alignment and distance for a several element at a time, without ruler, line or any manual technic? I am looking for a select/clic technic. I am not talking about the same objects (or arrays). I already watched that video, thank. In my case, all the objects could be different, either in 2D or 3D. Thank you for your help. logicalnot

Its pretty heavy going, but its also worth reading/browsing the SU users manual. Theres loads of stuff in there about everything to do with SU, so its good as a reference if nothing else.

Any response / news Craig ?

I succeded in exporting an image with the maximum theoretical resolution ever possible with SU!!! 9999 x 5587 pixels Done with @ latest MBP 4 Gb

that one is really cool! so I dont have to plunder my bank accound after all. I can model the object of desire in half an hour and dive into wonderful daydreams, looking at my new computer (I am afraid though, that after some hours of dreaming I will spend all my money anyway...)

This answer actually made me find a way to do it with Thomthom's selection Toys: First I use Select --> All on selected layers to select everything, including edges and faces inside groups and components. Then I use Select Only --> Front Default Material so that only faces without textures are selected. Groups, Components and Edges remain selected, however, so if I use the paint bucket to give my selection a texture (so that I can find the faces I am looking for with Material Maintenance), I paint these too and Material Maintenance selects them as well. Therefore I use sketchUV (with the untextured faces selected) to assign its placeholder texture to them by right-click --> Planar Map (view). Now it's easy to find these Faces with Material Maintenance, and as it is very eye-catching with it's colors and numbers, even just by looking at the model. It sounds a little complicated when I explain it here, but it's actually quite convenient. Thanks for your help!

Yeah, 37mb is a very big model. You should be able to shrink it down by going window->model info->purge unused This gets rid of all the materials and components in the model that arent actually being used.

If you can find some suitable 2d replacement plants, you should be able to place a plant, select it and go in to the components manager (window->components) and right click on one of the 3d components and select 'replace with seleceted', this would make dealing with the vast amounts of geometry a bit more feasible as you wouldnt have to make it visible.