Found it, used it, it worked Thanks

Many ways to skin a cat! Here's what I do: Draw the floor plan or import it if you use ACAD. Extrude the walls to the desired height. Set indidual level (floor plan and walls) as a group and assign its own layer. Repeat the same for other floors Draw the roof and repeat the same steps. That gives you a basic model I never draw in different scenes. I always draw in 3D and stick to one scene that is labeled "working model" You can name it whatever you like. I keep this scene simple for speed - no shadows or fog. Now you can go in and edit individual floors, adding windows and doors without affecting geometries of the other floors or roof. Just use layer control so you can easily isolate the group you are working on or you risk accidently erasing one of the other groups. The other thing you need to watch is that you are drawing in the correct layer, or verify after you are done.

Hi guys, Please contact SketchUp Support for solutions to your single user network licensing issues. These changes were made in SU8m2, released last december- you may want to make sure you have the latest release installed as well- we're on SU8M4 now. john .

Thanks. Indeed, as you are there to represent geometry much with textures, there could be some place of further reduction but still better than modelling every part.

Seems perfect for the DUH-DOH thread no ?

@jean lemire said: BTW, the center of a square or rectangle created with the rectangle tool or with separate lines can also be infered with two consecutive midpoint inferences from two adjacent sides. I know. But it is not about finding centers. I learned 3D with Blender where 0,0,0 is more center than bottom left. [image: MKZF_toonsway.png]

How about if you "wrap" them (the entire model) into a single component before uploading? Doesn't that return that very component when downloading, without answering questions like "..download...in current model? Y/N" ?

Dave, Thanks for the info, looked everywhere but didn't touch the edit tab in Styles. Managed to make the model opaque even though the colour of the model rendering doesn't seem to apply over the photo. Nevertheless, it much more presentable and effective as an illustration. Cheers, Paul

In the shadow settings, uncheck the box for casting shadows on the ground...just leaving them cast on the faces. Either this, or unlock the imported geo terrain, select the entire model and move it upwards so that nothing is beneath the ground plane.

Andy, You have the pro's help here, but maybe I can add something. You can make a component from one-half of our model, copy and scale by -1 and have symmetrical parts. Then you only work on one half, the other side will update accordingly. To see some basics on fabric shapes, see Daniel Tal's video here: http://sites.google.com/site/3dbasecamp2008/all-sessions-2008/working-with-terrain-and-other-irregular-surfaces towards the end. Oldie but goodie. Then going to Curviloft and Extrude by Rails & other plugins you can expand on your organic modelling abilities. Peter

The biggest problem, I think, are the save/load times associated with SU and large files. They become unbearable for me long before I have any major crashing issues. 3ds Max has comparably incredibly fast save times, I suspect Rhino is similar. -Brodie

Because it's symmetrical do one half and then mirror a copy to finish. Also group and hide all superfluous things to make life bearable.[image: UXLU_Capture.PNG] Join all curves into continuous sections [use weld.rb]. It then Curvilofts or EEbyRails OK...[image: 19nE_Capture1.PNG]

Sorry, I coulda googled that. Very interesting. I went to Pinang near there but didn't make it to Sumatra. (One of my favorite coffees though!). Don't travel so much lately myself. Have to stay put and try to make a living. Peter

yea, that's what i though. and that is what im doing now. is there ANYTHING i can do to improve performance? why is this lag happening anyway? running out of RAM? if its not video card. is it ram? cpu? both? i know its a 32 but program and can only utilize 4gb. but what if i up the cpu? thanks for the info

Thanks Dave, top tip

@Rich-O-Brien Thanks Rich. Now I know that I can share the link with Fredo6 on the Animator thread so he can download the file and look at it (to hopefully identify the problem I have been having trying to generate a video). You might also try generating an Animator video and see what results you get.

@alan fraser said: They ought to sort themselves automatically, as they are created. If not, try clicking the (faint) arrow on the layer name tab a couple of times. This has pretty much the same effect as when you change the sort order in a Windows folder. It seems like layer 0 is immutable and always stays at the top, though wow!! thanks