Everything is working nicely now, thanks for the help and suggestions. I installed 8 first, then 2015. I can just double click on a model if I want to open it in 8 (I still save all my work as 8, for various reasons), or just right click on it and select Open with Sketchup 2015 when I want that. I use my C drive only for the OS and programs, so I wasn't worried about all my Sketchup stuff (actually that's what it's called, Sketchup Stuff, my largest folder, 265GB, 347,927 files, 9,769 folders) or anything else, just some of the stuff on my Desktop. I had some folders there that would have been almost impossible to rebuild from scratch, plus there was my Thunderbird Local Folders file (144 local folders). I was really lucky to find a program that let me recover all that stuff. I guess I was getting complacent, I never had a hard drive crash so completely like this one, I was always able to pretty easily save the files I needed when a drive started going South. Now I include such files in my backup plan. I tried a number of backup programs before I found Syncback Pro, been using it for years now and it works really great. I can setup a new profile in a minute or two. I too use a 1TB WD black for my backups, only connected to the computer when I do my backups. I also regularly backup to my backup computer, which also has a 1TB WD Black which is connected when I do backups. Plus, everything is backed up to my laptop. So I think I'm pretty much covered there. Backups of my backups everywhere. Yeah, I are a bit paranoid. I never have more that one computer connected to the internet at a time, and only when necessary (I only use hard-wired modems and routers, and I have them connected to the AC through remote controlled outlets, so I just click a button to connect to the internet and click again to disconnect, no sense giving the bad guys any more of a target than I have to ) I might give an SSD another try eventually. I've been eying the Samsung 850 Pro 512GB (MZ-7KE512BW), not cheap but looks promising. Maybe I'll just let the technology cook for a couple more years. Anyhow, thanks again for the help. Much appreciated

Battery life is not really a concern, pilou, I've been carrying an old laptop with a dead battery for years now. I often travel to visit clients, I live in a country area and sometimes I do like to stop at a cafe and make some edits. Usually I'd be working at home on a workstation computer. I know its a small screen but that would be tolerable for a short session here and there, Kaas. I wonder if a surface pro 3 can load a house sized model for example and switch back and forth to Layout.

Attach the model so we can check it rather than guessing.

Didier Bur has Line2tubes (Just put Precision = 4 for quadrangle, Precision = 6 for have Hexagons etc... But you have to keep the path somewhere! Else it's absolutely easy if you have made your structure with components! Just change the component! Component Replacer by Thomthom! [image: j3u9_replace.gif]

@unknownuser said: Doing so on my Mac produces no such result however I have not a Mac but on PC that work fine! Do you have not forgotten to click some buttons as shown in the video ? And aespecially this one? (Alt + Click (on PC) on the bulb for Edit it) [image: v7AO_lightup01.jpg] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVcZsiwdMD0

@ashscott said: What can I say, I'm retro Thanks... I needed that laugh...

The tell at the router service they will only take .ai files.

Oh cheers for the tip!

I don't think trialing a software for commercial purposes should be out of agreement. What it might be is dangerous if you can't find time to finish the project within trialing period. You should read the agreement though...

Thanks Box, there's plenty to go on there. Cheers!

Do you have any other pictures of it? Any larger images? Dimensions? I'd probably use Curviloft or TIG's Extrusion Extension to create the shape. I'd set out the curves at normal size, make a component of it and then develop the surfaces on a scaled up copy. You could actually get away with using Follow Me on it, too.

Although the Model Materials are the ones you see in the Materials-Browser, SketchUp has two other types of Materials - those associated with Layers and those associated with Images. These cannot be directly accessed using native tools or the API - although there are tricks, like my SKM_tools which has a new_material = image.use_as_material method, which can be used to extract an Image's Material and add it to the Model without Exploding the Image. If you Explode an Image its Material has a database flag reset so it then appears in then the Model's Materials list [renamed]. It seems that in the case of this Image when it was made into a Material that flag was not reset properly. Even saving the texture-image as a PNG and reusing that, it still is missing in the Materials-Browser ! On a PC the only way I found of jerking it back into reality was to edit the group-container, select the face that uses the wayward Material [named "Image1"] and use the right-click > context-menu > "Make Unique Texture" - so now the Material "Image1" is duplicated as "Image1#1" - however, you can then rename it "Image1" with no errors, so the origin has vanished... and now all is well !

Yes, this person does have a big problem...

@roland joseph said: OK...that's what I had in mind although in my local area we don't have the breaks. I don't know what the concrete recipe is but they don't need the crack protection which I guess the breaks are for. We have long continues ribbons. Your method is sound and looks good. If you go to CGTextures > Roads > Various, there are two photos of curbs that are not even concrete, but stone blocks. By the names of the authors, one is from a portuguese speaking country and the other from an english speaking country. When having stone blocks as curbs, it´s even more paramount the necessity to use textures with "separation" between the blocks... Thank you and Frederik for the awesome asphalt textures. I want to make one here with several different layers (so it must be used with a render engine that support materials with different layers) for a more "damaged" kinda of asphalt, and will share with you guys.

Thanks TIG. I slept on it, and your answer this morning made a lot of sense.

A DAE Collada file contains the geometry data. When appropriate, there is also a folder of the texture images. A KMZ is a re-suffixed ZIP file. this contains a doc.KML file [used to interpret the other data for GE's purposes], and a subfolder named 'models' containing a very similar DAE file, and an images-subfolder [although the image file-names differ from a vanilla DAE] etc. So if you extracted the compressed KMZ's contents it'd actually be slightly larger than a plain DAE and its images. If the client now wants DAE files, then when they are uncompressed that's what they'll get - bigger files. For 'transmission purposes' you could ZIP the DAE and its images-folder - then it'd be about the same size as the equivalent KMZ... Of course they would need to extract the files to use them in their alternative 'Cesium' app and convert them into its 'glTF' format data - with GE the KMZ's contents are extracted 'behind the scenes', but it still happens ! I also see that there is a KML to CZML converter https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/cesium-dev/kHtl6MXvEFY

@JQL: That would seem like a viable solution, however it would cut into the next rooms. If sketch-up had a camera section clipping function on the other-hand it would be a solution. @Frederik: Perspective view is shown to demonstrate in 3D our design to contractors and help visually. We want to show depth, as there is no ambient occlusion lighting...so edges become our only reference. Perhaps this is a better example. A closet space about 5'6"x 7' you can imagine the space is fairly rectangular. So when trying to show all four facades with adjacent walls we can see the problem of editing the Field of view. Shown in Views E and W, increased Field of view to about 100-110. I suppose in real life this would be your only options. To increase camera wide angle or in sketchup "field of view"... Which is okay except you see the distorion of adjacent walls is uneven visually creating confusion to the size of the closet space... If I keep to one field of view then I would not be able to see the bottom of the walls for views E and W. Any ideas? [image: p2HL_Betterexample.jpg]