Pop an image up of the sort of thing you want and people will give you a variety of ways to go about it. As roland says, Artisan is a great tool but can be overkill.

I concur, I have a passage door that opens and closes. It is panel raised and can have up to a dozen panels. If I use a Schlage handle drawn professionally it works fine. I found another door handle (needs 2 per door) which is round and has way too many facets. It's motion is rather jagged.

@tallbridgeguy said: Hi, is there an easy way to place 3d text so it faces forward (toward the viewer like normal text on a page)in the current view? I have different scenes at different view angles and I would like to place 3d text in each view without having to place it and then try to guess the angle to rotate it to get it straight in my scene. (Like typing over an image?) Thanks! s Plugin had a coding error and had been removed.

Good idea. I spent 30 mins trying to figure out Marcus' words of wisdom and failed so I've started drawing it again. After 2 hours of intensive drawing I've run into the intersect problems again though, SolidSolver has been working on it for the last 10 minutes, I predict failure. I'll go away and try to see how this 'intersect with selection' works.

Yeah, you're right, I've been getting some really good help so far. Cheers

Thank you TIG, this was VERY helpful! Cheers

If you are disciplined enough you can turn of your auto-save. Before you do, check to see that it is actually the file save slowing you down. It is going to happen if you have complicated geometry and many texture images. Opening another SU session will either crash your box or slow you down to dead stop.

Thanks Jim. I figured out that if I change the "Units" in the drop down list from 'Default:Text' to 'Decimal Numbers' the IF function worked out. Hpe that helps anyone else going through this.

this is an old explanation about observers, but still relevant... @unknownuser said: Observer is one of a set of new Ruby classes provided as part of SketchUp 6.0. "The Ruby Observer Mechanism is designed to allow Ruby scripts to be notified when objects change in the SketchUp application or model. For example, you can create an observer class that "listens" to when SketchUp quits and then performs some action." "Create a Ruby class of a specific observer type, such as AppObserver, override the desired methods, such as onQuit, and add an instance of the observer to the applicable objects in your Ruby script (using the add_observer method for that object). Refer to individual observer interfaces for further information." There are 16 observers, to run routines when various things happen to the model, entities, etc. A lot of plugins use observers to speed up their response time when in use, others monitor your every action and 'take notes'... If a plugin is watching for new materials, new geometry or new layers, etc... it can really slow down any imports... some have 'on save model' observers that check for changes each time you save or autosave your model... if you do a search for 'Sketchup Observers' you'll find lots of posts about issues of clashing and failing... john

Displaying layered transparencies is a bit harder (more calculations) for render engines. Have you tried changing the style settings to transparency - nicer ?

Absolutely no offence taken - it was indeed in my (mis)understanding of what I was seeing. It is now much clearer, and your clarification just sets out very well what I clumsily sort-of-worked-out by experiment and observation in a variety of cases. I think I was further confused when Chris's plugin seemed to be getting the same unexpected results as I was, and by a rotation I was doing of a view.draw_polyline about the reported face.normal which seemed to be visually wrong - it was actually rotating the polyline in the face plane, about an axis apparently NOT visually normal to it! However, since the only thing that was really bothering me was that when I tried to do a view.draw_line for the normal, it was in the wrong direction, I now understand why, and have fixed it. Thanks again for your helpful comments. Has anyone ever done a Tutorial about programming Ruby Tools in SU? I haven't found one, and have done almost all my learning from reading the sample code for CLineTool, and reading and re-reading the API documentation, which is very thin on real world examples and sample outputs. It's been hard work, though ultimately I've got something that now works for rectangular profiles. Next challenge - to extend it to arbitrary profiles of mouldings. A bit like a simpler version of the Profile Builder plugin from Dale Martin and SMustard - indeed, perhaps in comparison just a poor thing, but mine own, as one of Shakespeare's characters says.

which code the dynamic component should I enter to leave the material texture in fixed size?

http://www.drawmetal.com/ for the spiral volutes! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX1HptFLObM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC79wWTEzbw

@dave r said: Did you try clearing the Safari caches? and additionally - if this does not work - the 'Cookies' too.

Thank you everyone, I suspect it could be a graphics card problem. I have tried installing latest drivers but this makes AutoCAD impossible to use. The card I have is expensive but out of guarantee. Will save up for a new card. Regards, Andrew

Excellent! Seasons greetings to you, too.

Thanks Kaas. I'll check that out.