Create rubbish? There are a few of my earliest models.... Seriously, it's going to be the textures that solve your problem. I did a model of a recycling metals company and I found some very useful (free) textures at textures.com. I suggest you check there.

That did it. The STL's been approved by Shapeways. Thanks!

Thanks, Jorgensen! For the link, here is ClothWorks: https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=69485

Fredo Tools > CurviShear should help you out.

@box said: Very quick with Curviloft. Thanks Box, I knew Curviloft was the key. I haven't really used it much, as you could probably tell. I tried several attempts with it but I was pressing the wrong button. I ended up using the old "join the dots method" but that is exactly what I was looking for. Just gotta press the right button. That is going to come in very handy.....the learning curve continues. Legend.

No one?

That's true, too.

This will be an issue with the drivers for your graphics card. What is the graphics card? Try updating its drivers. @d7man2000 said: The problem is SketchUp 2017 doesn't have an option to uncheck hardware acceleration like in the older version. No. Due to the new graphics pipeline used by SketchUp 2017 there is no option to turn off Hardware Acceleration. SketchUp 2017 does not have an option to use the software rendering like older versions. @d7man2000 said: not sure how to disable hardware acceleration. You can't. You need to make sure your graphics card is up to the task of supporting OpenGL3.0 or you will find it difficult to use SU2017. @d7man2000 said: I am attaching print screens of older and SketchUp 2017 OpenGL settings where hardware acceleration options is missing. Thanks. As before, it's not missing. Since there's option to do software rendering, it's not an option to turn off Hardware Acceleration. The fact that you needed to turn off Hardware Acceleration in the past implies that your GPU or its drivers haven't been suitable from before SU2017. Now you'll need to deal with that instead of pushing the rendering off on the CPU. Read the Release Notes and System Requirements.

If it's the connector you are after, there's no plugin to make them automatically. Possibly you'll find something suitable in the 3D Warehouse. Drawing that connector is not difficult, though. You should be able to get the specifications for the connector and for drilling the holes from the manufacturer.

It's a nice video! I have seen it before. The new thing on my video is that the worm drive is curved or enveloping around the wheel.

Thank you, Anton! I used an old plugin by Rick Wilson "fixAspectRatio.rb", but it does not seem to work in SketchUp 2017. The problem is, my original scene has no gray bars. After using your line there are dramatically changes in FOV and focal length. But there are no gray surfaces in the exported 2D-image - a first success! Edit: One possible solution is to restore the old FOV values in the menu Camera Advanced (plugin tt_camera) after entering your code line into the Ruby Console.

Thanks guys, theres a few alternatives and I'll look at each. Not to discount Unity but I suspect that it will end up being influenced by the fact that I have friends with a good knowledge of both Unreal Engine and Blender which will likely give me a boost and save time.

Curious, i have the same guidelines dashLines for SU 16 & SU 17 ! In SU 17 section cut of a group guideline is translated! [image: Kn3k_trimed.jpg]

@tuna1957 said: major duh moment for me. gotten so use to using vertex tools forgot the simple way. sdmitch curious why the alt key comes into play ? just checked on my mac, left to right selection and move tool gets me there..... is it a windows thing ? The up or down arrow would achieve the same but the Alt key is what I thought of first.

I need to do this sort of thing frequently since I'm always making plans for furniture piece. I do use LayOut which makes it much easier but much of what I do you could do with Make. First, you need to make sure you are using layers appropriately so you can make parts invisible when you don't need to see for a given scene. You can make copies of the components and shift them off to another part of the model space to create other views like 3-views of parts and exploded views. Here's an example from a recent plan. [image: rZrO_Screenshot-4_12_20174_56_34PM.png] Between layer management and camera position, I can show exactly what I want to show for each scene. It's much easier to fine tune the view in LayOut but in your case, export the scenes as images. Then import those images into your document. You can control the size of the images during import and you can use an image editor to crop the images if needed. FWIW, it is totally inappropriate to scale your model to make it look larger. You can zoom the camera to look at a smaller portion of the model if needed but don't use the Scale tool. That invites all sorts of problems including incorrectly displayed dimensions as you mentioned. BTW, doing this with SketchUp Make and some other document creation software such as MSWord is time consuming. Revisions are especially problematic. If your time has any value at all, you would be wise to spring for SketchUp Pro so you can use LayOut. In the grand scheme of things the cost is relatively minor compared to the time you'd save in making the plans so you can get to the shop and start building.

I think you can just right click one of your components and Select > Active with Selected Materials [image: w9tT_selectedmaterials.jpg]

Draw a rectangle as an "extrude line(s)" by Projections by Didier Bur can help in critical positions! [image: mZMg_GIF_rectangles.gif]

Just to explain more clearly: I made an aspen tree with aspen "leaf" level 3 components grouped together inside a level 2 "branch" component grouped together inside a level 1 "tree" component. Then I used the aspen tree component to make a birch tree in a new file. I replaced the Aspen leaf .tif texture with birch leaf .tif, and changed the branch shapes a bit. Then I make a new landscape file and insert the birch tree. Later I insert the aspen tree. However the Aspen leaf.tif texture is now replaced with the birch leaf .tif texture. It seems SketchUp remembers that the leaf level 3 component was the same. Changing the components and sub-component name before importing makes no difference. The only thing that helps is exploding the leaf component. This would be a nice solution, except the tree is much more complex than explained above, with tons of different level 3 leaf components, which are not easy to find. Also I modeled a handful of trees before discovering this problem. So, either a solution to the issue of help figuring out the logic behind this problem would be greatly appreciated.

Are you using SketchUp Make? This seems to be directed towards people not using SU Pro (even though the text fails to say it out loud) "If you are learning SketchUp, creating 3D models, downloading an extension, OR developing an extension for your internal/personal use you DO NOT need a SketchUp Developer account". If you are planning to sell extensions for money that's probably commercial use that requires a Pro license. However I think having a Make license is a really bad reason for not being allowed to be a developer. I had never used SketchUp commercially and was still using SketchUp make when I became one of the top developers in Extension Warehouse. There's no reason why Make users shouldn't be able to share their extensions with others.