Dear John, Many thanks for that. Kind regards, Bob

hi rich, I visited the site and was very much impressed with DCs there. I have never seen Dcs as rich (no pun intended...) in possibilities as those. I downloaded the free cabinet and was again impressed by the wealth of help in the way of videos and tutorials. I'd be willing to help if it is not too heavy in terms of time commitment. regards.

Please explain what you mean. Post here? You just did ?? Do you mean 'using Vista' or what exactly?

thanks TIG

@dave r said: Joel, I would definitely like to see what you're working on. After all, it's a boat, isn't it? Who wouldn't be interested. What's the hull to be made of? Cold molded oak with mahogany exterior veneer. One inch thick. Most of the structural members (carlin, stem, rudder stock (etc) are laminated oak. They are deliberately oversized. This is very much a WIP. I am currently working on the helmsman's station (in particular the compass) and rudder gear, so those parts are very incomplete. As is the engine drawing and propeller. The masts, cabin floor, headliner and cockpit floors are in transparent and are only interim position, till other mechanical and structural considerations are defined. You can hide them by turning off layer D0. The deck (layer 1.30) is turned off so you can see the insides. Many layers have no content yet, and many more layers are known, yet to be defined. I had to RAR the file as it was just over the 4mb upload limit. If that's a problem let me know and I will ZIP it or split it as needed. The ballast keel is oversized and will be resized once the center of bouyancy is calculated. Right now the hull displaces almost 43,000 lbs, and a lead ballast keel would weigh almost 41,000 lbs. It should be about 1/2 that and would most likely be iron, not lead. I planned a cabin to sleep 4 in comfort and 6 max. My experience is 6 for 1, maybe 2 nights, 4 for a longer trip is best. The engine is a 40hp 3 cyl Yanmar Diesel. It is probably a bit underpowered, but the next up 4 cyl Yanmar is about 55 hp, and might be just right. I have not yet done the calcs. My old boat (40 years ago) was a 53 foot Yawl with a P Class racing hull. Originally a tall sloop, it was too tired for racing (built in 1911), but its 25 hp engine was more than adequate, when it worked. I sailed a full summer with only a 5 hp outboard jury-rigged to a sideboard. It moved that sleek hull like stink. This hull is not anywhere near as fine, but I wanted more interior space. The old boat had the interior of a 30 footer. The old boat suffered a badly broken carlin in a storm, and was far too expensive for me to fix. The wood stick for the carlin alone was almost $2,000. So I sold it as is, for a bit more than what I bought it. It had about 3-4X the value in the lead keel, bronze antique parts and the bronze screws in it. I still miss it. (Note: I had to compress the file in RAR format as it was just over the 4mb upload limit. If that's a problem, let me know and I'll ZIP it or split it as needed.) 55 ft Schooner design (WIP) RAR Compressed format

You can get as industrial and techy as you like... realising that there is, of course, a difference between working-up an existing object from plans, and designing something from scratch, where you might need a more technically advanced system to precisely tune aerofoil surfaces to maximum mechanical advantage etc...although, I guess there's nothing to stop you exporting the SU mesh to other software to do that kind of thing. You just wouldn't get instant feedback.

Is this SketchUp use or abuse? Just kidding.

I'd forgotten about that plugin. thanks for reminding me. I think a keyboard shortcut for that would be a handy thing.

Thanks for understanding Graham. Hope things work out okay for you. I'm a Mac User also. Have you checked out, Useful MAC Applications [Ongoing Updates] http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=6369 Some useful apps there in the graphics area. Mike

Not concerned about objects getting out of order, not concerned with objects that are being moved. Merely concerned with 'altering' unique objects that must change shape to fit each other. E.g. "whoops we're 2' outside the zoning envelope, let's move everything back 2' from column line 'B'" Moving the columns is easy. But each floor, partition, wall, storefront group etc. must be opened and edited separately as necessary, moving only the faces which need to move, using an 'area select' and 'move' within each group. Just want to do this in one step. I bet if this were easy to do as a plugin it would have been done already.

OK, I have found my problem. I didn't have the hard drive connected by USB 2, I had used the firewire connection, which I though would be faster. So here are my results. Firewire, 1m, 3.3 sec to save, original file, original connection that I was complaining about in my first post. Another HD using USB 2, same file, 13.3 sec The HD in step 1, using USB 2, same file, 14.2 sec. Note, difference here could be my finger time using the I-Phone stop watch. So something is not working correctly on my Firewire connection. Finding this problem will give me something to do later today to try and find the problem. Anyway thanks to all for your response. Ken

It might be a plugin clash, and until you've tested as Dave suggests we won't know... but I can't envisage any 3rd party code that might do this - so I suspect it's a Sketchup/OpenGL/graphics-card issue - have you tried reinstalling/repairing Sketchup ?

Uber Fantastic! Thanks very very much!

I looked it up and TrueSpace is still available for free, but the company was bought and dissected by Microsoft so they are not working on it anymore. It has Blender level capabilities, just their shared model system doesn't look that good. From the youtube videos it seems like every change takes 5-20 seconds between performing an action an that action affecting the model, surely this is a secure system but that is in no way usable (could just be a bad video). But I'll still check how that all works, thank you for bringing it up.

great.... this looks like exactly what i was after - much appreciated!

[image: DdDf_clampthread.png] I would appear to me that you turned off the edges in an attempt to make the surfaces look smooth. There's a better way. After you do as Karina and Alan said deleting the interior edges or at least the triangles, correct the face orientation so all the outside faces are white. Blue goes on the inside. Then select all of the geometry, right click and choose Soften/Smooth to smooth the edges between the surface triangles. When you get finished, you'll have a very nice looking thread segment. [image: BFhI_clamp_thread_for_questions-1.png] By the way, I converted it to a component and hid (Shift+Eraser) the edges at the ends so it would give the appearance of continuous threads.

Adding custom feeds to Gmail 'Web Clips'

No, I tried. It didn't change. I've 'solved' my problem by working in inches in the Component Attributes. As long as the user sees his own units in the Component Properties (which is the case), it's fine with me, for now. The problem in the second post is more irritating though. But it seems to be OS related, for it happens only on my Win-Vista machine, and not on the mac I borrowed. Sadly, I only have a license on my windows machine, and not on the mac, so I had to put up with the 8 hour time limit. I'm able to put properties on to child components by opening them in such a way that the parent component is not displayed in the Comp. Attr. window. But that sucks, cause I loose the ability to click-reference parent properties. Type type type. Bah.

Don't take it the wrong way. What people are saying, is that although your question seems simple, the answer is not.