[image: EWm6_tent2.png] You might also approach creating the canopy over the frame in a slightly different way. Instead of thinking about how to drape the large rectangle you have over the frame, draw the end and extrude it with Push/Pull. Then delete the bottom edges if you wish. You can get the area of the sections with the Text tool or from Entity Info. I kept it simple for getting the area since you wanted it down and dirty. There's probably a plugin that would give you the total area but I don't remember for sure and haven't searched yet. [image: GwP1_tent.png]

@Aerilius: thank you very much for pointing out as everything is crystal clear now. I will keep on previewing my models in GE for Windows until they decide to fix the issue (To a mod: please consider closing the topic, and thanks again for helping )

You can soften the entire mesh in one operation. Just select it (you need to have both faces and edges that need softening selected) then just r-click and choose soften edges from the context menu. Rack the slider up until all the visible edges disappear.

Greetings, I cannot make a smoove tool working on SU 2018. Starting from scratch and editing a grid surface the Ssmoove Tools does not make any interraction with surface. A radius ans any other setting is set correctly. There smoove pointer does not make any vertices selection, etc. I will be thankful for any helpful suggestion. PS Is there any possibility to reinstall a Sandox Plugin perhaps?

[image: yJzb_CAMERASTAND-1607.png] Is this what you're after? I did do it with Follow Me but I started with it scaled up by 100 instead of 10. Actually I redrew the knob to make it smoother. After running Follow Me you will wind up with a bunch of excess geometry. It's a bit like trying to fold a piece of wrapping paper flat on the top of a cylinder. Instead of folding those excess bits flat as you would in paper, you'll need to select the geometry and then run Intersect Faces. After that you just go around and delete the unwanted bits. [image: 5ssY_Knob.png] I had a little play with your knob. CAMERA STAND-1607.skp

It is official. I hate web design. I am too much of an idiot. First of all thanks for the advise. Much, much appreciated. Unfortunately I am struggling to get the code to do as it is told. I shall prevail though (cough cough, sob sob)

I like your way because it has the rotated sheet (corner up). I cannot do it faster than EEbyR, though. [image: aL8L_sheetrolled-1.JPG]

Here it is. [image: HYvx_Magaazine.png]

@earthmover said: I was still having major issues with grayed out menus even with the latest update. What fixed it for me was removing all of the CadFather toolbars. i.e. Archiland, SCF Power Bar, etc. It appears there was a conflict somewhere in those. I just use the plugins I need from them separately. Haven't had a single gray out since I removed them. Figured I'd mention it in case it helps someone else having a similar issue. It's probably that removing those you came under the limit - not that any of them individually caused problems or conflicted with each other. SketchUp has a limit to how many UI::Command objects it can address.

@mike john said: I have a toy car I have designed and I want to give the plans away free in pdf. I printed each part of the car on a separate page from scenes using Sketchup printing to pdf. That gave me 17 pages in total which is fine. I end up with a file about 1mb which is too big for my needs. I then used Word to assemble the drawings using screen dumps of the drawings and Photoshop and got a much better sized file but the quality is not what I want. How can I produce a file like the pdf attached but better? What software can I use? I can't afford Sketchup Pro just yet. Also, about three of the drawings are full size patterns and this makes it harder for me. Sorry if this has been asked before but I am new and searches failed. Quite frankly I don't know what to search for. Mike John what do you mean by 'screen dumps' ? if you're referring to a screen shot then this is where your quality problems are coming from.. i think the best thing to try (without spending any $) would be to export from sketchup as 2D jpgs then bring those into word to compile.. an extra step you could do for even better quality would be to export from sketchup at a larger than necessary size then resize them in photoshop (or other) prior to bringing them into word.. for instance, say you want the final image to be 1000px wide… export them from sketchup at 3000 px wide, with antialiasing turned off, then resize them to 1000px in photoshop..

Of course I learned it from Dave and his great blog/tutorials

As others have mentioned, Alienware is overpriced. If you're a gamer without much of a budget, you don't want to build your own PC, and you like your PC to have lots of lights, it's the way to go. Otherwise, choose another option. You can build your own, spec out a dell, etc. If you don't see the options you like you might also look into CyberPowerPC. I ordered a machine from them for someone and it seemed to go well and they provide lots of options at a reasonable price. Like Alienware they focus on the gamer market but you have a lot more options. It's much more like building your own PC but you don't have to fret so much over compatibility, how to install a motherboard, and you get a warranty. I built a ShuttleBox PC awhile back. Also a good experience but the small case sort of limits your options a bit and can get kindof warm if you're doing renderings or intensive CPU processing. -Brodie

If you use Windows > Model Info > Fix Problems you'll get the results from the previous posts. When things splat there's normally a good reason for it. Your mesh is not a mesh that can Subdivide. Turn on hidden geometry. Look at the number of edges around the perimeter. If you select all the geometry look in the entity info box. There's 1221 entities which the majority are at the boundary. When you subdivide you're dividing each triangle that are very close together. It won't work. You need a simpler shape that needs less think time. Large areas of your mesh triangles meet at one point which makes the subdivision very difficult. You should watch Dale's Panton Chair tutorial on YouTube. It's shows how to start with proxy model in 2D and progress to 3D. Very educational use of SDS. Holla back if you get stuck.

Hey! Thanks for that link. There's some interesting information there.

George, my apologies for not replying to your request. As far as changing line weight in the image above, this is done simply be changing the export size when exporting the 2D image (JPG or PNG), The larger the export, the thinner the lines appear when the image is viewed at the same size. So here are more examples. These two images are done using the same line style but exported at two different sizes. [image: 5883894649_77f3b73f0d_z.jpg] Exported at view size. [image: 5884460356_ac114e3930_z.jpg] Exported at 3000 pixels wide. As you can see, when the images are viewed at the same size, the line weight on larger appears smaller. Two more examples: [image: 7301405032_9c2870273d_z.jpg] Screen size. [image: 7301404944_11d91498b5_z.jpg] 3000 pixels wide. Often I want lighter lines in the final image so I'll export the edges separately at a larger size and resize the image in post processing before combining it with the textured image. In fact for image exports when I use my sketchy line styles I very often want thinner lines so I make separate image exports. [image: 7282589878_5fb9756879_z.jpg] In this image the lines were exported at 3000 pixels wide while the faces and background image as well as the shadow image were exported at 1564 pixels wide (the view size on my PC). The lines were resized in the image editor to 1564 and then combined with the other two images. The process is very fast and almost automatic for me, now.

Yep! You got it, NVidia was repositioning my dialog windows. Thanks!! - Joel

Hi Jeff, Thank you for your response. I noticed you switched everything to components. I did that test early and for some reason everything works great, as well as in your example. The reason I've made everything groups is so we can clean up our components list window. Do you now if it is a bad practice to use groups inside of DC or does it normally work correctly. Regards, Christian

Thank you Pilou!

If he doesn't have the TTF version of it try: http://onlinefontconverter.com/