Orientation kinda matters because it could inference along one of the model's axis lines (red, green, or blue) or if it is close to one of these axis lines it may snap to it rather than the point you are trying to inference to. Can anyone shed some light on why this is happening? Its obviously not an isolated issue.

@chris fullmer said: Oh good, glad that worked. Thanks for helping us find this bug Chris yeah, thats a good one to find.. i can see how it could of slipped through

Thanks Kaas. I have worked it out. I have a skydome in the model and although it does not interrupt the view in sketchup it hides it when exporting. Switched it off and all is well. Simple, but took me a few hours to work it out.... First time I have used a skydome in a long while.

Hi Jérémy, Is there any imported cad entity in your model? This often happens when there are impoprts in the model and they (or their origins) are very far from the world origin.

Incredible - for all a plugin and such fast answer... Thank you very much, it is exactly what I was looking for...

Just bigger in this case isn't enough. You need to also consider the radius of the bend especially on the inside or the corner. [image: zxfn_FM1.png] SO this is after running Follow Me on your profile using the path. Notice in the elbow there are some little edges. If you run this and then orbit inside the wall of the pipe you'll see that there are some faces in there. There are edges that only bound one face, not the required two, so the extrusion would fail the requirements for being considered solid. Below the pipe I put an offset edge aligned with the side of the elbow at the inside of the bend. You can see it is very sharp. I expect if this was a piece of PVC pipe that you heated and bent, you would fine that radius too tight. In any case you can select all of the geometry of the tube, right click and choose Intersect Faces>With Selection to create the required intersection where those tiny faces are and then delete them making sure you don't leave any holes or hidden orphan lines and when you make it a component, it should be solid. I've attached the elbow. I made the outside diameter of the pipe 1-1/2 in. Is that correct? At least it is a solid. elbow_is_a_solid_1.skp

@massimo said: Just press "shift" key once you get that pink-line to lock the direction. Yes, some more hints in the help about inference locking...

I guess we can try a competition or two to further gauge interest. I'll start one up on Monday. Boo, have any ideas for a topic?

Yes. Which is exactly what I did originally.

Thanks so much for the well illustrated geometry, is exactly what i need to know! Problem solved.

So far, RoundCorner seems the be the biggest crasher for me with VR 1.6. I just work with it disabled until they find the bug that's causing it. They are working on it feverishly.

sometimes a pdf doesn't contain real vector lines but an image of vector lines instead. Maybe that's why the conversion generates 2 files and you get the error. If that's the case you can try some image2xdf programs or trace them by hand.

thank you sir for the advice

Kentucky, I export to dwg regularly. The difference is that I am looking for a 3D model in Autocad (I export to 3D). If your parts are groups, solid groups or components, they will come into Autocad as blocks. Unfortunately, each piece will be its own block. Not really what you want. I'm not sure that what you want to do is achievable. Kris

Hi, Gosu by Renderiza : http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=51919 This plugin includes some features for replacing complex components with simple ones temporarily. Set:: Proxy(Box) Set:: Proxy(cline) Cleanup by thomthom : http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22920 Optimize your SketchUp model by getting rid of unnecessary elements. Another Sketchup Plus by dukejazz : http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=42951 This might help you send only the component that you are working at the moment to another SketchUp and when you finish place it back where it was. Hope this helps, Renderiza

Glad that worked. It might have only required unticking one of those boxes so you could play with that and see what results you get.

@wo3dan said: @tk0001 said: @smicha said: Here is my solution - works prefect for me: Define new shortcuts: F5 - parallel view. Pressing F5 twice will switch from parallel to perspective. Alt+1 - top view (I also have defined Alt+2 for bottom, and so on up to Alt+6) Z - zoom extents - it is defined as ctr+shift+e by default, but I use this function too often. So simpler Z works perfect. Now select your object among many in your model. Hit F5 for parallel view, then alt+1 for top view and finally Z for zooming on your selected object. Hope it helps. smicha, using this method, the views are still intermittent, but I really like these shortcuts! Thanks! I will use these heavily! They shouldn't be. The method described by smicha works if you apply the appropriate 'Zoom Extents'. There are two different 'Zoom Extents'. One is the default Ctrl+Shift+Z or the icon. The other 'Zoom Extents' is the one in the right click context menu. It is this one that you need to assign to a shortcut key. It isn't displayed in the overalll shortcut list untill you have something selected. So select something > then goto menu Window > Preferences > Shortcuts > assign 'Edit/item/Zoom Extents' to a key(-combination). Say you pick {Ctrl]+Z With this shortcut key it always works. Method (being in Parallel Projection): select something you want to focus on in top view > hit Top View > hit [Ctrl]+Z THERE IT IS! Thanks so much. This is something that has bugged me for awhile. Glad to know the solution wasn't as easy as I feared.

You could always import it as a background watermark and try to manually match a camera view to it. Not sure if the perspective would work for match photo scene.

Many thanks to the people who helped resolve the SketchUp file preview problem. I just downloaded the latest version and once again all is well throughout the SketchUp universe! Thank you!!!!