@dave r said: I don't think you can. I suppose you could rearrange them by editing their names. That only works in the materials list, not in Entity Info. Entity Info seems strictly sorted (and remains static) in order of initial application from Materials into the model. If you import a component or model from some other library, their colors are added to the list unless they have exactly the same name and color/shade (RGB) and that is why a lot of duplications exist. In one model that used a lot of imported components I ended up with 7 "blacks", all RGB=0,0,0 but the names were slightly different; ie: "00black, black-2, <black>" etc. I haven't played much with textures/colors to see if I have any control over that.

Hi folks. Click in sequence on the scenes tabs of this SU file for ideas. Flattening a curve.skp

If you are running a tool that is very intensive then Sketchup can become unresponsive, and the screen 'whites-out'. It's likely it's still processing. The Task Manager window should show its memory usage fluctuating as it processes. If you want to kill it you can, but it might be near to the end of processing. Many scripts have show a status-bar 'progressbar' or a counter [10% or 1/1000 etc]. Unfortunately this will stop changing when unresponsiveness kicks in. Unfortunately Sketchup's timing seems to increase almost exponentially so 1000 operations don't take 10 times longer than 100, more like 100 times ! If you seem to be having problems open the Ruby Console before running the tool in question and see if there are any error messages, this might will indicate a failure - a Bugsplat! is a sure sign of disaster !

@tig said: Simply, something is wrong with the SKP's database. Usually it's Lines with zero length, or Faces with zero area, but it can also be incorrectly 'named' objects like Layers etc... In the case you show there was a [useless] tiny face with a 'zero' area, which it erased. SUp has 'tolerances' so that two vertices within a range are deemed to be coincident, otherwise you'd never get anything to form! Thus very very short edges can be thought of as zero length, which then produces a zero area face... Sometimes things fall through the net... In this case if you were making a Followme extrusion of a profile that had some tiny edges and it went around a path with some tiny segments, then quite often it just fails to make those 'too tiny' faces (<~0.01sq") and leaves a hole in the mesh; in your case perhaps it actually made a tiny face that was effectively zero area, but after auditing the database and realizing it, SUp erased it - as it's effectively of no use to you. holy cow!!! seems like you've extracted all the coding of sketchup!!! you really know all the nuts and bolt assembling of sketchup working!

Thank you. It took a good deal of time to get a result but I got there in the end. I am happy with it. Mike John [image: xuX4_boat_tail.jpg]

No prob

Hi folks. From within SketchUp: Help Menu --> Help Center --> Learning SketchUp(top button in the left list with the title Get started). You shall get there: http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=36207 There is an hyperlink labeled video tutorials in the middle of the first line of the paragraph entitled Start here: Video tutorials. Clicking it shall bring you there: http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/training/videos.html Just ideas.

Hi Chris, thanks for the tip, I'll try it. Charly

I'm afraid not, because drawing a person in SU is pretty difficult...at least if you want to create one with a usable number of polygons. You also need to be able to draw a person with pencil and paper if you're even going to reach first base. Almost all of the 'decent' human figures in the 3D Warehouse have been drawn in some other software...probably 3DS Max...then imported. Some have simply been pulled in from commercial collections or are imported Poser figures. That's not to say it can't be done in SU; I've made hundreds myself, like the ones below...but explaining how would take an entire book. Edit: ...other than Justin's blog...which I forgot about. I use an almost identical technique, but I don't think he goes into detail about how to make hands, faces, hair etc. which would require whole other sections each. [image: requestFile.php?type=1&id=13475&img=small_FF_Model_ID13475_winterppl14.jpg] [image: requestFile.php?type=1&id=13572&img=small_FF_Model_ID13572_4346.jpg] [image: requestFile.php?type=1&id=14167&img=small_FF_Model_ID14167_steps.jpg] [image: requestFile.php?type=1&id=15749&img=small_FF_Model_ID15749_main01_04.jpg]

The prop was rigged to explode just after this shot was taken, it looked like it was just pushed together for a quick shot, and they probably used a wide angle lense...I'll stick to practicing on houses

Thinking back on it, If I was to do it all over a third time, I think the way to avoid hand measuring each and every crenel while still getting the organically-curved wall would be to draw the whole wall down a straight line first, then add slices, and bend it on those slices.

You can be surprised just how powerful SU is when other tools are added to the equation. Blender/SU workflow is pretty quick once you get the hang of it. Michalizissou is a good example of someone using other apps to compliment SU. I've a video on YouTube showing mapping in UVLayout using Whaat's UV exporter.

GoldenSim is apparently quite upset that I referred to the stolen Caddy as "my" Caddy. And technically, he's right. I did modify his original model for a contest that he was holding (see Topic http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=333&t=38739). So I just wanted to set the matter right. The model stolen was in fact my heavily modified/corrected version of his original basic model.

Working 8hrs on a laptop is not fun for any human wrist and hand. I had a 90 day return policy on an Acer i7 with Nvidia graphics I returned it after test driving it for 60 days. .....My 2 cents

@irwanwr said: just uploaded the screenshot up there. Omg. Thanks a lot. You can't imagine what I tried all day to fix the problem until I saw this little button just saying "sun". (I just had sky dome turned to physical sky before, because I guess I also can't read properly.)

Allrightallright - for the Windows people: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=42469

Thanks for the tips. I ended up just reinstalling the program and it seems to have sorted the problem out. Strange that it started happening though... It was stalling and quitting even if I flipped a single box. It was sketchup 8.0.4810.

hi, thanks for all the answers. i managed to get the result i wanted using this UV Toolkit plugin. TIG: yes, i also thought that painting the group will apply the material to both front and back faces. sadly, this wasn't the case. maybe it could have been a problem with the geometry? my model was actually first generated by script in rhinoceros, and then i exported to 3DS to import it into sketchup for VRay rendering. also, this was a group of groups inside a component, so that my have also been the issue dsarchs: yes, i read about that, but since i do all my renderings in vray directly from sketchup...

I wish I could find a plugin that would make money come out of that unused A-drive slot on the front of my computer.