Thanks to everyone for their responces,they help a bunch. bent nail

Just wanted to say. I use Octaine with TIG's exporter. Works fine! Got an gtx 580 as graphiccard. Strength - You see quite rapidly where you're going in the render. I often use an ambient occlusion "sneeky render" that's very fast and gives good enough results, at least for me. There are different rendermethods to choose between. And an online database of materials where you can drag and drop from the menu. So easy setup if you're not a perfectionist. Also node-based interface, but one doesent have to bother about that if one doesent want to.. Another thing, if you are a paying costumer you will get full access to the whole site with bigger forum where you can get beta and test versions. There's quite some activity going on there. Can't tell how mature the software is yet, compared to for ex Thea. Octaine requires a good graphiccard.

how many cores are you running? computer stats? A more complex interior scene will take longer to render, overnight and even longer is typical on something like a dual core, it won't matter what software you are using. Try using exterior progressive preset, it clears quicker iirc, not as much caustics etc. looking like a nice scene btw

I think you can export a geo-located model to a KMZ-file and open it with Google Earth. It is a local solution of course.

So what's all the fuss about then !!! But seriously, I get it. Thanks again Tig. Thankfully I don't have to mess with Autocad and its relatives very often. And once Layout is up to speed, I doubt many others will have to either. Baz

thank you all for the replys. i will try your suggestions Thanks again

@grizzler said: ..., I need something that will get me from A to B without too much difficulty. My suggestions would be: Look for a renderer that is under current and ongoing development. These are more likely to offer decent documentation and active user forums, as well as optimizations for today's hardware. Once you've found a renderer to try, go to youtube and/or vimeo and look for video tutorials made with that particular renderer software. So, search on youtube for "XYZ renderer tutorial" or something like that. Seeing someone work through the selections while setting up a render session can be much more helpful that reading through poorly worded, overly technical documentation. You usually have to view multiple tutorials in order to 'catch' tips, suggestions and explanations for the arcane stuff that is inevitable in rendering software. Rendering software is full of technical jargon that sounds like complete and impenetrable gibberish to a rendering newbie--it's a technical subject all its own and it's tough to get a basic footing in it. Perhaps start first with truly free rendering software, like Kerkythea or LuxRender or Blender, since there is no artificial time limit on your use of the software. That will give you plenty of time to search for understandable tutorials and to practice at rendering. Lots of the knowledge you gain will transfer into other rendering software later on if you decide to then go for a licensed software.

First, let me thank Dave, Thomas and TIG for their willingness to investigate and provide insight. And while they they could not provide the Magic Bullet solution I was hoping for, the information they provided turned out to be very helpful. Eventually I was successful at draping the overlay of the parking layout onto the cad created ground model. I will briefly explain the "fix" for those who might find themselves in the same situation. The cad ground model was created by placement of shot points relative to a properly scaled jpg. satellite view of the property that included superimposed grid lines at 5' increments. The parking overlay was created in sketchup, exported to my cad program, and superimposed over the ground model. My thought was to assign shot points at locations where the jpg grid lines crossed over lines in the parking overlay so as to minimize the number of faces when exported back to sketchup. Big mistake. Location errors that occurred from importing and exporting between the programs is what made for all those short short lines segments. When I went back and moved all of the shot points into free space, (that is not on or near a parking overlay line), the problem was solved. Drape worked without problem with this slightly modified ground model. Thanks again, would not have figured it out without your assistance. Karl.

Years ago Pete made a basic studio, and I think it was Al Hart who uploaded it to the warehouse. I've used it many times. See if it works for you. http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=ebc91c36e92e7c0e971df5c4458c07f7&prevstart=0

The only files that belong in the Tools folder are the ones that ship with SketchUp itself, or are given as extra tools by SketchUp. ALL other files should go into the Plugins folder, or into that script's subfolder, which itself goes into the Plugins folder. The basic [current] setup is that SketchUp auto-loads all .rb/.rbs files in the Plugins folder and then those in the Tools folder. It uses a system global-variable called $LOAD_PATH which is an array of the paths to be used for auto-loading. There are some special scripts that add new folder paths to this, this means that you can then auto-load files from elsewhere. Ruby can 'load' scripts from anywhere: if you just give the file name it looks in the folders in $LOAD_PATH, if you give a full path name it loads that specific file. Because of this it's a good idea for authors to add flexibility into there file/folder 'path' coding, so that the subfolder of support files only needs to be located with the auto-loading .rb file for these other files to be found with it and also loaded in code. Some older scripts mistakenly say to install into the Tools folder. Unless they are specifically hard-coded to expect to be in Tools using them all within Plugins as outlined above should also work... This tool's author is mistaken in his recommendations. Putting the script into the Plugins folder [keeping files within the script's subfolder etc] should work fine, and obeys the basic principles used by every other author around. I have the 'loader' ' SoapSkinBubbleTools.rb' in my Plugins folder - and its subfolder of files in there too.[image: Aama_1.PNG]It loads just fine as an Extension, and once activated its toolbar can be activated successfully too...

Bravo for the good work!

done, thank u guys

Hi, sketchup is primarily a visualisation program with a very easy, almost vertical learning curve. Basicaly, Bim starts as a visualisation tool but vertically intergrates project management cost estimation etc.

You do not "select" them. Endpoints are the only entities in SU that are impossible to "pre"-select BUT they can be "auto"-selected by the Move tool. Just hover over the endpoint until you see the green "Endpoint" tooltip and click to start moving it. (Awful music)

I'll weigh into this discussion. I recently bought a Macbook Pro with an Intel HD 4000 GPU to complement my existing one which has a higher spec option ATI Radeon HD 6750M GPU. They are exactly the same computer (identical CPU and RAM) except for the graphics cards. Tried them out using a fairly intensive sketchup model (approx 30Mb) and could not tell them apart. Open GL, maximum texture size and hardware acceleration all turned on. Rotating the view was fine, maybe generating the shadows was a fraction slower on the HD 4000 computer. While it could be a different story in a Windows system, for Sketchup running on a Mac the Intel HD 4000 GPU is fine.

Welcome to the forum!

Good. Let me know what I missed on your example so we can see what needs to be different to make it "that's exactly right" instead of "That's pretty much what I want to do."

Assuming it is not hidden as mentioned above (which I would bet is the case) - do a save as so you can delete all the layers one by one. Start deleting layers and be sure to move the geometry to the default layer when the prompt comes up. At some point, assuming you have moved the geometry to a layer you cannot remember, you'll see it appear in your model. [image: MqDg_ScreenShot2012-11-28at3.35.19PM.png] Note the last layer deleted. Go back to your original drawing. Turn that layer on. Or delete it and move the geometry to the default.