@jean lemire said: Hi folks. If after searching the help, you are still unable to find it, use Menu Window --> Preferences --> Extensions. Use the check boxes to enable the utilities. While at it, why not enable all of them. After that, close SU and restart to make sure that all extensions will load completely. You do this only once, normally. With the extensions enabled, the contextual menu for an object, will show, as the last choice, "Point at center" for circles, polygons and arcs. Just ideas. Cool!! thanksman

I think what most people have been trying to politely say in most of your threads is, If you try learning the basics first you will do so much better. Trying to use a plug in before you understand how to do something manually will only slow you down in the future.

Sorry, just found Boo's tutorial , will have to try and work out how to use subdivide and smooth !

You have double posted - in the other thread there is some useful advice please read it. If you use Ruby code to reset the formula to be a fixed number how can you expect it to be a formula again later on? You must change the attributes that the formula is using to effect a change that is not permanent! The formula cannot be changed in anyway without changing how the DC works. There are also other DC Ruby tools to scale objects too...

It is very very fast. I'm not 100 percent sure but I know overall my system was using close to 5gb with just SU and Podium 64 running. It really takes advantages of as many CPU threads as possible, It is still going to be limited by SU in terms of geometry it can handle and I tried rendering a scene that had over 1 million polys worth of 3d plants and it just couldn't handle it which isn't a big deal I just replaced one component with a 2d plant and it dropped the model down 90% and rendered quick. For a quick one click in SU solution it is pretty good. I'm getting into Thea for more complex stuff.

There you go. Now just correct the face orientation inside the slot and your golden. I've set the back face color for my default style to the green you see above. It's easier for me to pick out on the screen so I can keep face orientation correct as I go.

nice links. never thought of it. might work. yes xml will be a bitch. No, storyboard would be easy. Im talking prototyping entire dialog inside sketchup. no camera movement just dialog. dialog tree is xml file of entire dialog with certain character. like when you play adventure game you click on character, then he says hello massage and you are offered couple possible questions, when you click on them he gives you answer where you get new questions or your just brought back to first screen. so all of that in one file is called dialog tree. its mostly in xml and in modern games like starcraft 2 or dragon age or neverwinter nights its done in scripting language like ruby or lua. thanks for advice, I tried scripting so Im not master programmer but I really need to do this. Ill post my progress...

Hi, Jim: In Sketchup 8 I inserted a sphere component and made a tall narrow box near it, I applied the native dim tool, clicked on some vertex on the sphere and dragged over to the box hovered over an edge and clicked- it didn't take, so while the tool still waited for the second relevant point, I clicked on a top vertex on the box. The dimension displayed the direct distance (non ortho), but as I brought the cursor downward a dotted blue line accompanied, and clicking near the edge below that vertex the dimension was set. Is this not what you see? Or, do you mean, after first click you do not have any type of axis locking? That is what I see also. Would this be a bug or an undeveloped feature, or have you been able to do this previously? Because, it is not available in my 7 version either. Just hoping to corroborate and keep this item floating in the active topics.

Pro has several advantages including various additional exporters that a CNC machine's software should be able to cope with - like DXF - there are some exporters that might do it 'for-free' with Free. So first work out what the formats your machine[s] need and then see what you can do with 'Free' [+ 'free'-scripts] - otherwise, you'll have to bite the bullet and upgrade to Pro

One question and many answers. Generally the answer is yes. You use a park bench as an example. One way is to just create a vertical plane through the middle of the bench. Then intersect the plane with the model. This cuts the bench in half, then you the erase tool and get rid of half the bench. Of course that leaves one side of the bench unsupported. So you take the remaining bench end and duplicate the end piece. If the end piece does not have left/right symmetry, you copy the end piece and scale the end piece to -1. Now you have a flipped bench end to attach to the unsupported end of the bench. Instead of erasing you can also select half and delete the selected half. Su8 also has dynamic components. I have not used them much, but the idea is you can make a component called bench and give it a length attribute. Then you can look at the components attributes and if length is one of them, you can reset length to any value you want. Lets say you built a car engine and the air filter was a component. You just select the air filter and then delete the instance of air filter from your model. There are also layers. A layer could be something like all glass windows in a house. You delete the entire widows layer and all window are gone in a key stroke. Yes, you can erase anything.

@unknownuser said: @unknownuser said: ... the whole thrust is to expand modelwork at the expense of paperwork type processes. I'm not exactly sure what you mean chris Just that this type of thing is about passing around labelled models (think cans of soup in supermarkets) rather than documents like ortho drawings and voluminous specs that need interpretation to be usable. In this case, if it catches on, modelers like you will be much in demand.

It sounds to me as if you either have the circle drawn outside a group or component. If so, the Push/Pull tool will extrude a cylinder but it won't create a hole because the plate, being in a group/component is protected from being modified. Delete the circle, open the plate g/c for editing and then draw the circle and push it through.

Thanks Solo, it works now. I also just found the same solution in this thread : http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=33676&p=296276&hilit=material+uneven+surface#p296276

In addition to TIG's description, perhaps the video here would help, too. It isn't meant as a step by step basic tutorial but you can see the process I use to draw a table or any other piece of furniture.

Inundated with help! That looks to be just the thing. I'll give it a shot on monday. Thanks for the help. -Brodie

Stuart, you've got your problem sorted out now but I thought I would make a suggestion. Make a keyboard shortcut for Edit>Delete Guides. This will make it easy to clean up your model from time to time. Depending upon what I am working, I might use a lot of guides. The model can get quite cluttered so the keyboard shortcut gives me a quick, one button clean up. To set the shortcut go to Window>preferences>Shortcuts. In the Filter box type "Guides" You should actually see Edit/Delete Guides as you type the 'u'. Then click in the Add Shortcut box to the right of the Function list, type your shortcut and hit the '+' button Hit OK and you're good to go.

[image: wrTW_pataan.jpg] Call it dumb luck, but I came across this post: http://groups.google.com/group/Sketchup-Pro/browse_thread/thread/ca7d0ba921af4611 Then I tried opening ArcScene, selected the tin surface, then added the face elevation with graduated color ramp from the symbology properties, and exported it in 3d vrml (.wrl). I then imported it in Blender 3d and exported it as collada (.dae). I don't know much about Blender 3d and I can't figure out how to display the imported data but just the same, I when I imported it to SketchUp, the surface was there together with the colors. Not as clean as the surveyor's version, but it is almost there. pataan.rar

Ditto. I was going to say my ratings disappeared as well until I was wise enough to see Aerilius' post.