It's the graphics driver acting up. Try turning off Hardware Accedleration (Window>Preferences>OpenGL). That will slow up zooming and orbiting on bigger models quite a lot, but probably you will be able to see what you are doing. I would recommend a dedicated graphics card (maybe prefarably Nvidia-based, or a professional-range ATI). More RAM would be useful too... Anssi

I'm currently having similar problems after I updated the graphics driver on my laptop: ati radeon xpress series. Whenever I select a face, it is completely blue, instead of blue dots. this does not occur when I turn hardware rendering off. The same problem and worse happens to a class I was teaching with nvidia cards in their laptops! They were also having trouble selecting faces when they were at an angle to the viewport.

There are discussions of SU on Linux here http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=11412 and SU and Rubies on Linux here: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=9687 The latter includes a discussion on dos2unix, which is used to convert Rubies (RB format; RBS format seem to generally work without conversion) so that they are correctly interpreted in a *nix text environment. I should add that Rubies that depend on unusual Windows dlls or other applications might not work. For instance, commercial rendering plugins like VRay will probably not work at all. However, to simply run SketchUp on WINE most of the Registry tweaks no longer seem to be needed, assuming you have up-to-date versions of WINE (from WINEhq) and your distro...and a decent modern NVidia card. I spoke to some of the SketchUp team at 3DBC about a native version of SU on Linux, and their reply was that they were really just a very small portion of Google and that they simply did not have the manpower/budget to produce and maintain a port (or multiple ports, given that they might have to create versions for different distros). By the way, @unknownuser said: There is a Mac OS version and as far as i know OSX and Linux are both unix based... is not quite correct. Max Os X utilizes the Darwinkernel, a derivative of FreeBSD, which itself is a descendant of BSD (a version of UNIX modified to avoid copyrighted AT&T-created code). Linux (full name: GNU/Linux) is a Unix-like system made from Richard Stallman's GNU Project's utilities with a kernel written by Linus Torvalds. The two operating systems are only outwardly similar by intention...if BSD hadn't been caught up in a delaying lawsuit by AT&T, Linus wouldn't have needed to develop the Linux kernel. Wikipedia has long, esoteric discussions on all these topics. The upshot is that you would be more likely to get something written for a Mac to run on FreeBSD (or vice versa) than on Linux.

Lol...it happens I'm pretty sure he doesn't use many plugins so when in doubt think of the deafult tools.

That's a pretty useful tid-bit Jordan, thanks for sharing.

These are great (I especially like the third one). Thanks Huyvu!

I would suggest leaving the housebuilder ruby alone until you are at least familiar with using groups and components and how they work. These are two things which are so important in SU. You can always go back and play with housebuilder ruby at a later date.

Just wanted to say thank you to all who helped me on this one. I finally got it figured out. Notepad was not working properly. I downloaded notepad++ and now have full control over file naming. Thanks Again, John

Hi Dan, hi folks. See attached SU file for another way of doing your model. Shop roof with overhangs 2.skp

Thanks for these great trees.

Interestg to find this thread just as we were facing a similar prob w/ a large file. Followg Daniel's advice resetting virtual memory worked great to 3000 w/ AA for a 282mb file. Funny thg is that on a hunch I tested the idea on another prob we were havg. Not sure if Brad is watchg this thread, but as he knows we were unable to save a very large proj file (275mb) w/o a crash, but were able to successfully save a larger file at 311mb all on the same computers. Our files are const models with hundreds of obj and multi layers and TIG Xrefs so it was tough to fig out what was going on. Especially since the crash was occurring at abt 22min into a 35min save, so we gave up. But I just tried the same save for the same file that wouldn't save but w/ virt mem reset at 20,000 and it worked. Daniel you inadvertently solved a big prob for us, thx very much. And Brad, that might help whatever you all do there irong out that kink.... Thx again /Dennis

That was an interesting tutorial, what I am referring to however is meshing prior to export, not after import. If I make a plane with curves in it in Sketchup, selecting 'hidden geometry' shows nothing except for the plane boundary. When you export however, a rendering program then shows the massive triangulation (or not so massive, depending on the vertices in the curves specified in Sketchup)that Sketchup has decided as the best way to polygon the surface. The imported mesh model that is shown on the clip is optimized as far as uniform distribution and shape of the polygons...a model created in Sketchup never has this uniform distribution, that is what I was hoping to be able to do, create a uniform mesh in Sketchup prior to export. You can manually divide the plane into a more uniform distribution of polys by simply adding lines, but unfortunately then your texture UV mapping controls only work on the individual manually created polys and not the plane as a whole...really ugly.

thanks for the link, i'll have to give it a go at some point, coens looks a lot better than mine!

You might check some of your SU settings. The 2Gb of ram should do nothing but improve your situation. How are you erasing lines? Using the erase tool, the eraser, the delete key after highlighting or using Undo? Do you have the same settings in the Preferences:Drawing:Clickstyle are the same as what you are used to? The program can seem very odd if you have settings here that differ from what you are "used" to. Personally I go for the click drag click approach. If you are in the midst of drawing using the "continue line drawing" checkbox it will want to keep on with the line tool until you change tools manually (in my experience which is why I don't use it) as the program just sees you as being between two endpoints after each click. As for the printing. When you print, is the whole of what you want to print visible on the screen? The way SU works is it prints what is within the bounds of the window, not the entirety of the model or model space. When you say SU doesn't play well with Firefox or Opera, what do you mean? I almost always have Safari and FF running while I am also running SU, Vectorworks, Graphic Converter, Edrawings and so on with no ill effects. Looking forward to your responses. All the best. Karl

Thanks Eric, I'll work out the model and post there.

sorry that i can't explain more(english isn't my native) i try to put some links from wiki(look at additional links in these links) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbiased_rendering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_(computer_graphics

ok, thanks Gai, I will just assume this is true unless I hear otherwise. Thanks for the response

Thanks for the ideas. 1. Pasting components with mateirals I just tested pasting a component which had materials with the same name as materials already in my model. It renamed the old materials using square braces. 0001_PaleVioletRed - was in my model already [0001_PaleVioletRed]1 - was the renamed, pasted material So it looks like were going to have to modify the code which checks for carets to check for square braces as well. 2. SU 5 models I downloaded the original model from the 3D Warehouse. When I load it in SU 5 - it has no carets on material names When I load it into SU 6 - all material names have carets. I tried a new SU 5 model, and the same thing happens when you load it into SU 6. Again, thanks for your ideas on this - it put me on the right track.

@djh said: @box said: This is a feature request thread from 2007. Was the request granted? No. Alt never did constrain the Orbit tool. In fact, considering what you were asking for in your other thread, Alt is the last thing you want to hold while orbiting. If you can't orbit as you want with a mouse, you should follow the advice given there and get a 3D Connexion device and use it for orbiting.

Greetings cheers Alan