hi&thanks for this great patch! i got pretty frustrated to see that my old p4 pc running sketchup on winxp easily outperforms my macbook due to the mentioned freezes... disabling fast feedback only did not help. if i disable hw acceleration, the freezes vanish. but of course you get visibly better performance using the patch. (btw, rotating large structures without hw accel on the mac looks about as "smooth" as with hw accel on the mentioned pc with geforce fx 5200 go) details: Video chipset: GMA X3100 Model Name: MacBook Model Identifier: MacBook4,1 Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz Number Of Processors: 1 Total Number Of Cores: 2 L2 Cache: 3 MB Memory: 2 GB Bus Speed: 800 MHz Boot ROM Version: MB41.00C1.B00 SMC Version (system): 1.31f0 running SketchUp 7 (7.0.10938) on Mac OS X 10.5.8 i wonder if 10.6 works any better - according to http://developer.apple.com/graphicsimaging/opengl/capabilities/ opengl implementetion has been worked on since 10.5.8 (version 2.0 for gma x3100 and 1.4 for gma 950 instead of 1.2 for both in leopard). regards peter

Hi foilks. See attached SU file for ideas. Yukulele.skp

Thanks for your input, Santiago. I'm intimately familiar with SU's odd way of handling layers, and realize that I can group the copied geometry BEFORE I place it on the new layer to prevent this behavior from occurring. But (there's always one of those, isn't there?), that doesn't change my opinion that the selection filters don't work in a logically consistent manner - if "Select All" respects layer visibility, why don't the others? Select All is actually "Select All Visible" - why are the other selection filters ("All with same Material" specifically) not logically consistent with "Select All"?

So brilliant and fast, thank you very much Tig this is the tool I needed. I do not like to look in the engine of my car, but your demonstration encourage me to do so. Merci beaucoup - Marc

I remember back in the days of AutoCAD 10....at work once I was so frustrated I pounded on the "ESC" key so hard I nearly shoved it through the keyboard. I wonder if you can train this software to to understand sarcasm. as in "Yeah that's right I wanted you to extrude the wall 10,000 feet... No really leave it there it looks fine. hehe. As if my wife did not think I was mental enough wait till she hears me talking to the computer. Soon enough two big guys with a nice white jacket with really long sleeves will be visiting me.

@unknownuser said: http://www.amazon.com/Chevrolet-Cavalier-Pontiac-Sunfire-Automotive/dp/156392403X Have you considered getting the Haynes manual? see link, they normally have very detailed isometric drawings, it might help if you are going to model it. Hey that isnt a bad idea! I think my uncle has tons of automotive repair manuals laying around so I can just ask him if he has the one for my car. Thanks for the idea On the other hand buying that would be a good idea just to keep in the car since I usually would rather do the repair myself rather than pay a dealership. For example, the dealer wanted $1300 to replace the head gasket, and almost as much for the wiring harness. Well screw that nonsense! Since the car had been sitting for almost a year the wiring harness was chewed up by squirrels. So in the process of replacing the head gasket, we also fixed the harness since you need to remove the header to get at it anyways. Total cost: around $150, and about 3 hours of time.

We can now add one more feature that does not come with the Free version: The Style Builder.

@unknownuser said: What is "create curve from edges", and where do you get that function? I don't see that option when I right click on anything. I use "Create curve from edges" when creating animations with a Plugin called SU Animate. http://www.ohyeahcad.com/catalog/index.php To make a path for an animation you draw a line, arc or circle, divide it into segments and then "Create curve from edges" and the path can be assigned to an object or camera for the animation. Larry [image: Createcurvefromedges.JPG]

Thanks all. Always face me is something I don't generally use except on the "Bob" layer (or whatever that guy's name in the Arch template is) and I don't mind him following me when I light up his private layer. I was wanting to play with the balusters from http://www.sketchucation.com/scf/viewtopic.php?f=105&t=3603 and couldn't get the one I isolated to play with from following. Real strange behaviour when you do a rotate copy with something like that.

Ok - thanks a lot guys - i remembered that i used that feature in the past in a soft ... but i forgot what soft it was ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjWITUFTi4o

Thanks for that TIG...all useful tips Coming from a standard CAD background I always felt frustrated that I couldn't just click LINE>EXTEND. But now I see there are a number of ways to do that!

in case it is needed i have tom's skippy and a hard copy of the main discussions.

Why complicate your life when the answer could be easy. Draw a circle with any amount of edges.You now want to draw a tangent line to this circle.Chose any vertex, it connects two segments, go at the end of those and join them with the tape mesure tool, then slide a //guide line to your chosen vertex you now have a tangent.Et voila

Thanks for that very useful tutorial - I am now on my way to making nice regulary spaced tracks around a path! One additional question I have though, it's about making the individual segments of the tracks all neatly spaced at regular intervals... I am not much of a mathematician, so getting the track segments to space evenly around the arc - to match the spacing on 'the straight' - seems to alude me. Is this simply a case of trial and error to get the spacing on the arc and straight to match? Any hints at how best to match the spacing both through the arc and the straight would be gratefully recived. Sorry is the answer to this is obvious - unfortunately it isn't obvious to me!

thanks guys

Hi guys - Tom, thanks for making the changes! The model looks great!! We'll push them up as soon as we can. Modelhead, I forgot to mention that I do not know what the magenta dots are... Could be jpeg artifacts from the surrounding color averaging gone wrong... Weird though... Thanks again for the questions and the models in Google Earth!! We really appreciate having the SketchUp pros create 3D content for Google Earth!! Keep these great models coming! Cheers, - CraigD

I'll give it a go, thanks!

Hi Goggin, hi folks. See attached SU file for ideas. Point perpendicular to midpoint.skp

To be honest Roger, I haven't toyed with Kerky myself, so one of the KT regulars would be best qualified to answer how long renders would take, but I gather it depends on method used as well as scene complexity. I don't know if the Kerkythea forum is back up yet, maybe have a look there. Kerkythea can make use of as many CPU cores as you can throw at it - groovy huh?! To my knowledge, there are no 8-core processors commercially available. However there are machines equipped with motherboards that accept two 4-core CPU's delivering a 8-core machine. Be warned, they are freakishly expensive, due to the CPU's used as well as the RAM requirements (typically uses ECC RAM) and powersupply needed together with cooling for that monster. I just built myself a new 4-core machine with 4GB of RAM a week or so ago and as soon as I've got a little spare time I'm starting rendering.