I've had this problem crop up periodically and it's an enormous pain at times. I figured that the planes were imperfect at some tolerance and I couldn't correct the problem. It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens enough. When it does I try to erase as many of the hidden lines as possible while leaving those that would cause planes to disappear. It's a time consuming pain. I've even erased absolutely everything and started from scratch only to have the hidden lines appear again often enough. Aarrrgh!!! What I find doubly annoying is cleaning up a model only to find many of the lines reappearing after I saw the model. Undoing Check Validity removes the lines in the model I already erased, but that doesn't solve the issur that those reappearing lines have been saved in the model.

@mental said: As we know Glue+Cut Opening Option in the Component settings effectively hides the face of the underlying object, replacing it with the Component. Is there any plugin/trick which would let one hide the linework within the opening as well? Hide the edges. Simple as that.

I have exactly the same question, I like the idea of using groups inside my dynamic components as they don't clutter me up with lots of little sub-components that only have relevance within the main component. I have used both groups and components successfully and haven't noticed any discernable difference but I am a newbie. One day when I have time I have considered making a dynamic component using nested groups and an identical one using nested components and then compare the two for file size, speed etc. Unfortunately my TODO list is pretty long, I will watch this thread with interest

Well that's a bit embarrassing, I guess I should have checked out the available functions. Thanks for your help!

Animation can only be exported at 4:3 or 16:9 aspet ratio. This means that if your SU window is different from these ratios, there will always be some cropping. I see you are on Windows. First of all, I would recommend this plugin to hide all your toolbars (before they get messed up when you resize your SU window): http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=42926 Then this little freebie to resize your SU window so that the inner (model) space is exactl 4:3 or 16:9 (you will need to experiment a bit - try to export a 2D image and set it to export at screen resolution to see what it is): http://www.brianapps.net/sizer/ It works like shown below; you right click on the edge of a window and tell it what size it should be. As you can see, presets can be saved. [image: UWnf_4-3.png]

There's a collection of materials posted here: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=157381#p157381 You can always create your own, custom materials however. These patterns are not hard at all- I sometimes use SketchUp only to create something simple like this.

windows doesn't support it anymore??? Couldn't imagin that. OK, then I have to try these links. Thank you very much.

Using 123D Catch from autoCAD I was relatively pleased with the elephant which is fairly complex form so I thought I would test a simple case like a box for dimensional accuracy and I ended up with some surrealistic and cubistic, but not rectilinear results. I would love to sit down and wrestle this thing to the ground but I am moving down close to the Mexico border and also have an important photojob to do and need to sell the Phoenix house. When and if things slow down I will give this 123D thing another run.

I've update the first post to include a link to download Word, Indesign and Photoshop formats of the template!

Thanks everyone! Rich, those look like what I'm looking for! I'll take a look through them. John, knowing your beautiful textures, I would love to see what you have. But only if it's not too much trouble. Don't spend much time on it. I don't need it to be washed out as in the photo, just a light shade.

copied out what i needed and pasted into a new drawing and this strange behavior disappeared. so, very likely something with the CAD import... but i brought over 3-4 groups of CAD lines. thanks for the help.

Several years.

Would something like this work? [image: 6980761437_ff4849fb08_z.jpg] Text is screen text inserted in SketchUp. Actually the Postit note paper was made in SketchUp, too. This was done using the image of the note as a watermark as TIG suggested. The downside to this is that to make the screen text display on the "note", the watermark has to be set as a background image. If the model covers that part of the screen, it'll mask the note. If the watermark was a foreground image, it would cover the screen text.

Gaieus/Bjornkn, I'd forgotten about flip edges. Thanks heaps for your time and patience! Mick

I think the perspective correction utilities in Photoshop and likely some other cheaper or free progs will approximate this for you.

here's what I've been working on for the last few years. and now working on the NASCAR 2013 Season cars. [image: 6Hew_35070_127113733998048_126988347343920_140831_6587980_n.jpg][image: ImXf_33427_126990780677010_126988347343920_140169_5107975_n.jpg][image: qmkA_422350_327846943924725_126988347343920_947621_1101926830_n.jpg]

Wow thats awesome. Thanks for the info. I am going to play with this and see if I can apply it to what I am doing.