%(#008000)[ @tig said: However, the bottom [and top] facets of your curved beams must have dividing edges between them to maintain the associated faces which have slightly different 'normals'. you can use the slider to only affect edges between faces up to a certain limit so if it's ~60º solid edges are kept between clearly different angled faces, but those between edges with slight variation in their faces' 'normal-angles' are smoothed... ] Ok, I'll have to pay closer attention when moving the smooth slider, I've just been putting it all the way up and checking every thing. I see that I have very limited understanding of how most of what I do is accomplished, I'm surprised I've even gotten this far! %(#008000)[ @pbacot said: TT cleanup to remove coplanar (unnecessary) edges. Then smooth all with soften-smooth window--adjusting the setting to keep sharp edges sharp. I don't see a problem with texturing etc. What is the purpose of welding at this point? ] I have an issue that's been driving me crazy when rendering, that the faces don't reflect the light how I want bc the faces have hard lines separating them. I want the roof to reflect like a curve, not a faceted diamond. I thought welding would stabalize the structure, allowing me to erase the offending lines. I tried welding the whole roof face, but that caused more problems, as whole squares welded together, not allowing me to select one edge, but a whole window opening on one click- not wjhat I want in this case, but an awesome plugin! Cleanup fixed tons of probs, and cleaned out tons of unused materials, but I think it also purged some mats that were in use on a small scale- this was well worth it to me, as there were so many trash materials that twilight wouldn't even attempt to list them! I've gotten great info from you guys, but I think I've gotten far enough off the original topic for now, I guess it makes more sense to start a new thread relevant to my next question or issue. Thanks for all the helpful replies!

@rob d said: I guess I missed the announcement to that. So what gives chaps? I'm not criticizing, though it's quite an unusual move for a forum to make, so I'd like to understand the benefits to me of joining in. Hi Robin, "So what gives", thanks for asking this question in plain language I'm sad to say that very few actually are 'givers' when it comes to participation on the SketchUcation Community. What keeps things afloat are the few that actually give 100%+, the Moderators, Top SketchUcators, Ruby Developers, regularly Contributing Members also Management and of course our valued Sponsors. Premium Membership has been introduced as a means for members that wish to support SketchUcation but do not have the time to make 'time / support' contributions. In return they get free content and discounts that far outweigh the cost of their support contributions. Also they are offered the opportunity to sell their content / services via the SketchUcation Shop system. I trust these few lines explain matters. We are also 'all ears' should anyone have a better solution for keeping SketchUcation afloat and thriving. Mike

@mgfranz said: I currently run SU Pro 8, I wanted to trial run SU 2013, my OS is Win 7 64. By default my .skp files are all associated with SU 2013, but I want to change the default program to SU 8 however no matter what I try to do they always open with 2013. I have done the Open>Default Program route, I have gone through the registry and changed the default path to C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Google SketchUp 8, but when I double click on a .skp file it still opens with 2013. When I right click and try to change the Open With>Browse> and select Google 8/SketchUp.exe the only option I get it 2013. So the only way I can open a .skp in SU 8 right now is to open the SU 8 program from the Desktop or Start and manually locate the file I want to open, is there a way to change the path in Win 7 or do I have to just uninstall 2013? I have faced the same problem and have also looked for a solution here before. As there was no simple fix. I uninstalled the 2013 version. Only to find out today while reinstalling SU 2013 that during installation of SU 2013 if you clear the check boxes for creating new file associations in Windows for skp files, then windows lets sketchup 8 remain as the default application for skp files. Try that, it is so far working for me. Hope it works for you as well

Thanks for that tip. Makes a lot of sense.

cotty: yes in fact I saved only some ko, so nothing big daver: I just wanted to delete inside colors because I thought that colors have significal size, but now it's ok, since I notified that colors aren't really heavy.

did you check "include in animation" for all scenes ? (just in case!)

Thanks for posting that, W-B. I'd forgotten I made that fix back when it was first brought up.

SU2013 can save in v6 and above.

There was a similar question some days ago, perhaps you can find some hints there...

Thanks Kim, Thats good advise, I'm just trying to help a frend out with an attachement he wants to make. I wish I had the time to model this for him. Like all things...we can model anything..if we just had the time! Thanks, Matte

When this happens to me I close the window if I have open windows where the tool bars are intact I save those and reopen su and the go back to normal.

Can't really get it working with errors. Just took S Shepherds test to use it in my project for the moment. Thanks!

common problem fixed by putting the attribute within quote marks, "RotZ" animate("RotZ",-RotationExample!RotationAngle,0) the case is same for using Current("LenX") is like using absolute and relative references in a spreadsheet I dont know the explaination of this behaviour, only the fix Philip

@cheem said: I'm bumping this because I never did find the answer for this and ended up working around it with a fairly cumbersome, manual method. I'm curious still if anyone has any ideas, or perhaps it just isn't possible at this point. Thank you Tim . . the scale is found in the transformation xscl = component_instance.transformation.xscale yscl = component_instance.transformation.yscale zscl = component_instance.transformation.zscale To reset the scales to 1.0, you can use the Scale Reset plugin on by blog. Right click on component and choose "Component XYZ Scale". The scales will be displayed in a Messagebox.

Thank you Gabor

Is "centerpoint.rb" key to any particular plugin? I don't know of any plugin I have called "Centerpoint", must be part of another one.

Thank you

Thanks!!