we did a job for a car reseller some time ago and the boss bought a couple of car from humster. at first try, the "low poly 3ds" versions of them crashed sketchup instantly.. i had to send a mail to them and they were very polite and sent me back a custom skp-low poly version.. still pretty hi poly, but at least sketchup manged them (after a furter cleanup of the geometry, in particular some utra hy-poly details, such as headlights). now with beta vray maybe you can use proxy, as far as i know also maxwell can mange proxyes, so maybe it's a bit easier..

I think the real problem is that the image appears to be a gif file. Now although gifs have transparency, their bitrate is too low for SU. They are only only indexed 256 color instead of full 24bit RGB like jpg files or the 32 bit RGBA png files. You'll need to raise the image's bitrate in some image editor that allows a change of mode, then save it as a png with transparency.

I have already seen the same issue in my toposhaper model. I think the answer may need to be developed either in the tool or some workaround. I think the water line needs to be projected on the terrain surface then the vertices flattened to one plane. There are "make planar" and "flatten vertices" tools that may help. Haven't gone back to trying it out yet. I made do with the last method for now. Maybe the toposhaper tool could be designed to flatten the edges at selected holes.

Thanks, Jeff. I do have links to a local collection. Is there any advantage to putting components in the sketchup software itself (e.g., putting it in the program files on the pc or dragging to the lower browser pane) vs. linking to a local collection? or is just linking the best way to go?

yes a deleted scene is gone... kind of. You could always quickly, open your autosave file and the scene may be there. or your backup file.

If for some reason ctrl isn't making copies for you, could be a keyboard problem, drag them and build your custom toolbar. Then go to the toolbar dialog and use Reset on any toolbars missing tools and they will be replaced. Don't use Reset All as it will wipe your custom toolbar.

Some hints maybe here...

Hey thanks alot for your quick reply !! il give this ago now!! Thanks again!!

Thanks, I've looked at Shadow Projector briefly but I don' think it creates a polygon of the shadow area. I need to select this to fill it with an AutoCAD hatch or solid fill with grey. When I export from Adobe Illustrator as a dxf I can easily select this in AutoCAD and hatch it. It's just a rather cumbersome process and I don't have Adobe Illustrator on my home PC.

thank you very much guys, i had same problem now it's solved!

In Sketchup 2013 - save as - sketchup 8. Then import skp in 3ds.

@swingman said: Besides SpaceNavigator being a no show, 2013 Pro will neither print,nor export textures on my Win7 laptop. All I get is line drawings. I may be missing a simple configuration, but have both Pro 8 and Pro 2013 installed and can find no difference in configuration between the two ... Pro 8 continues to perform/print/export as it always has. What am I missing? Problem identified, but not solved. It is an OpenGL problem/BUG with SketchUp2013 Pro. Turn off "Hardware Acceleration" in Preferences in 2013Pro and the behavior, as described above, becomes normal; IOW, with Hardware Acceleration OFF, both printing and export work with regard to visibility of materials, colors and textures contained in the model. Once again, I have two installations of SketchUp, Pro8 and 2013 Pro on the same machine. Pro8 does NOT exhibit this OpenGL problem/bug/behavior on the same machine. I can visualize a few reasons for this (dual installation with conflicting registry info for starters; a driver issue, or is it just a BUG in 2013's implementaion??) Whatever the reason, SketchUp 2013 is a total bust for me thus far. Apparently, it is time to test the efficacy of Trimble's $95 support scheme. OS: Win 7 64-bit Dell XPS 15 Display Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M (driver 9.18.13.697 10/2/12) Any suggestions welcomed. Thanks! Did fill out a bug report on Trimble's site link in the Bug report sticky on this forum. Edit: Updated to nVidia's latest driver, to no avail.

It shouldn't be any in the Plugins folder anyway.

@chris fullmer said: Hi Gerrit, double clicking on the left side ...... Thank you Chris. Once the toolbar showed up (top left underneath first current toolbar) I had no problem to (double)click > pull it > dock it at my favorite location below the modeling area. My problem was to find it. Once you know...., well, not likely that I'll ask this question again. Thank you and I hope you can find how to overcome the 'hide and seek'-toolbar bug.

@unknownuser said: @unknownuser said: Would this Sandbox thing help with that? Better is use the Scale tool for make ovoïd form from a sphere I'll experiment with that. Thanks! So a few updates. I scrapped my original chassis and started over. I think this one is marginally better. At least, I'm getting used to making components and cutting them to fit. Here it is. I've no idea why the closest corner pieces show the blue side. I reversed faces and all kinds of things trying to fix it. Overall, I'm shooting for maximum torsional rigidity through the red axis, while keeping weight down. [image: ChassisWIP-01_zps12c73d73.jpg] Also, I said I'd post the one ship that I used the scale tool on. It seemed to work fairly well, though it's tough to get a good view of it without being able to orbit around a bit. I used it on the front "forks" on either side of the cockpit. [image: StarwindWIP-02_zps1b0630df.jpg]

And intersecting a face through the object will at least give you a closed face for one half if done in the correct context.