All, You may be able to use section cut(s) to demonstrate an assembly sequence. Remember, you can have more than one active cut per scene.(show sections in attahced model for example) See attached example please. Charlie Tank_Assembly_Sequence_Wsections.skp

Welcome Cameron, So the easiest way to do what you want is to get SketchUp 8Pro and send your drawing to LayOut. There you can easily set the scale to 1:1 and generate a PDF file which can be printed correctly. Barring that, you could make image exports and scale those in some application such as PhotoShop or maybe Inkscape to get the right size. I would draw a scale that can be included with your section slices so you can confirm that you've scaled the images correctly. A third option would be to create PostScript files from SketchUp using a plugin and print those. You won't wind up with a PDF file but maybe that's not that important.

@maxevron said: @dave r said: As you can see, I have two other quarters of a disc to create (radius : 5 cm). This will be a good exercise. Well, I managed to create my quarter discs a few days ago. In fact, I made a huge trigonometry mistake. I created a circle made of 36 segments in order to have a quarter disc made of 9. I don't know why but I imagined the angle between each segment was 9° instead of 10°. So rotating my circle 4.5° (9/2) created a segment not perpendicular to the polygon I wanted to extrude. Rotated 5° fixed my problem. Many thanks all for your precious help.

Huhu that is the disadvantage to use new version of SU free! You will find free old version here (scroll the page) version take the V6 (it has more functions of file format than the V7, V8 free) It has DXF import inside!

another method Draw the red line from the middle of the diagonal to anywhere you want (you have an inference straight) ! [image: jcb5_diago_scale.jpg]

I'll give them a try. Thanks!

@unknownuser said: Why not the free Meshlab ? It's the Mesh doctor! [image: images?q=tbn;ANd9GcS-mYuW4N9e40Tk4nIQEuhyDIlBTW-QWa-SZaD3Sz7IBoLxorUActDqle9e] downloading as I type

Well, I've installed my new card and have been putting it thru it's paces all day, and I must say it has made a huge difference in SU's performance. No more sluggishness when moving the model around, shadows come on almost immediately, and everything in general seems to be snappier. Just so you know, this was my old card --- EVGA 01G-P3-1373-AR GeForce GTX 460 SuperClocked Video Card - 1024MB GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.0, Dual DVI, Mini HDMI, SLI, DirectX 11, Fermi w/Limited Lifetime Warranty with Registration and my new card --- EVGA 025-P3-1579-AR GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) HD 2560MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card In all fairness I must say that for some time now I've suspected my old card was getting tired, so the change may in large part just be due to having a new, fresh card in place. I'll probably never know for sure, but for now I'm very happy. Now if I could just put one of these babies in my laptop

If you had unselected entities (even one) when you made your components, that little box would need to be ticked manually. If you select all connected entities (edges and faces) that box will get ticked automatically when you choose Create Component. BTW, Peter, to get an idea of how it works to draw as I suggest by making one component before moving on to the next, take a look at the video here. The video isn't really done as a detailed tutorial but it demonstrates my workflow when drawing furniture and other things will many parts.

I agree there's some basics that some people just seem to understand. Besides the proxy results, there's just creating meshes from scratch, or simply how to draw the proxy shapes. I think if you watch car model videos, or buy one of the SCF books on car modeling (or a chair with organic shapes), you'll see how people approach some of this. I'm looking at learning more of the same things.

@john2 said: sorry for posting this topic. No, this is very important. Group/component materials often trick even experienced users so anything that helps other "remember checking" is very useful.

What I mean is that after you match the photo and press "Done", do you also project the photo onto the model? Like below (please, disregard the example as it is really not a PM example but I only used it to invoke the dialog) [image: QlkJ_project.png]

Worth doing a "purge" also before saving as a template, to remove unused stuff. I got this wrong when I made my first template - all my first projects had +many MB of file size from the components I made to give the new styles a workout. Doh! The template is really just a regular SU file, so you can include anything that you find useful; components, layers, styles etc. - even geometry in the workspace if you wanted, say, a grid of guidelines always present.

Has there been any headway made with the mac toolbar situation? Has someone come up with a plugin that helps or is there now a way to group together the separate toolbars (the top custom toolbar line just isn't enough)

I use Maxwell on my Mac setup: http://www.maxwellrender.com/index.php/maxwell_for_google_sketchup Best part - it's free! And integrated into SketchUp, so you don't have to port it to another program. If it isn't rendering the way you want, stop the render, make your adjustments in SU, and press the render button again. I also use VRay, but Maxwell can give me a quick render without a lot of work when I want to show a progress image.

The problem discussed above (my humble explanation) is that SU native system lacks a true compass-like function--in order to do some basic geometric manipulation. And since circles are only made of segments, they don't help. If you try to rotate to intersect a line you can't accurately do it, unless you already have a point right where it should intersect. The plugins can do it. Or did Dave figure out a way? I fooled with it and couldn't. I don't think it has anything to do with the behavior of triangles. When you move a point in Sketchup, it just moves and stretches edges however it needs to. That seems intuitive to me. So grouping (by making a group or a component) means the edges and endpoints cannot move independently and a triangle or any form holds its shape unless you edit the group (by double clicking) (OK, not entirely true- you can scale the component non-uninformly). The reason you probably saw a difference in rectangles is because SU will tend to resist deforming a face by creating more faces (unless you push the right buttons, e.g. up-arrow). SU will lock movement to be within the plane as a default; and this can be helpful in some situations--like boxy architecture SU was designed for .

[image: 220px-BernsteinBowls.jpg] The brick-bond version with the wedges rotated half-a-turn in alternate rings is indeed quite common, especially with two or more contrasting colored woods used for alternating wedges in a ring, which can give 'spiral' effects etc. However the 'stacked' version is also sometimes used with wedges that are mainly all of the same wood but with thin slivers or narrower wedges of contrasting colored wood inserted between every wedge in every ring and perhaps even between the rings themselves to produce a 'net' pattern... There are many permutations - even leaving out wedges to make a 'pierced' surface... Enjoy makin' shavin's...