Twilight can do that -- Neon lights: http://twilightrender.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1797&start=0 Animation in Twilight: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=306208#p306208 Or Kerkythea, which is free, can do that too(just not as easily): http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/index.php Vue can do neon lights and animations as well. Those are just a few renderers I am familiar with, but most others should be able to as well.

Great advice... There nobody left in my office so it's really about time to head back home-> where SU is all about fun I will first learn it the hard way and come back for plugin advice...but it's written down in my list for wanted plugin. Have a nice day/evening

Thanks Gai. This really sucks because they are not matching up once I import a second one. I did not have this problem last month with a location less than a mile away from this site. Grrr indeed.

Thank you I will upgrade, I also notice SU 8 is available too. Sean

@gaieus said: What we meant here is this setting in the Model info dialog: Thanks for clearing that up! I've set up the same shortcuts for me now, too. @gaieus said: One uncomfortable thing however; even when the rest of the model (and all similar components) are hidden this way, the Orbit tool still behaves as if they were there (i.e. "weighing" the orbit tool when you do not use it exactly on the geometry you are editing). Using the orbit tool can get really aggravating anyway. I'm lucky I have a SpaceNavigator at work so I don't need the orbit tool.

welcome.

My 2Dtools contains a Fillet/Chamfer tool, with the radius set to 0 it trims/extends the two selected intersecting edges rather than fillet/chamfer them... In fact using AutoCAD's Fillet tool with a 0 radius is a way of doing the same thing. 2Dtools also has 'Adjust' which lets you select sets of edges to trim/extend to and then sets of edges to 'adjust', you can pick individually or use a 'wiping action' to do multiples...

I don't know. I've been using SketchUp for about 8 years with a simple mouse. No problems for me. I just use keyboard shortcuts and they seem to work just fine. I guess it's just what you get used to. I've had complex mice and found them to be a pain.

@kenny said: Thanks for all the replies everyone. It would appear that at the moment I'll just have to put up with the slow performance. Whilst I could get a slightly higher spec it doesn't look like it would be worth it in terms of any meaningful performance improvement over my current set up. For the type of work I do Sketchup is still much faster and easier than any other 3D software but on large models the actual button clicking takes seconds whilst waiting for it to respond takes hours! It's very frustrating and throwing money at it in terms of equipment can't even address the problems. Hardware just doesn't seem to be able to keep up with how much we all push Sketchup. Or perhaps it's that Sketchup hasn't kept up with hardware in that it can't take advantage of the way hardware has gone with multi processors. Or a bit of both. Well Do what I do, have 2 to 4 SU sessions running and work on 4 different things. That way you are never waiting for Plugin X to complete a task Edit: Did I mention that I am a mild sufferer of ADD

ExtrudeEdgesbyFace has worked perfectly...... it took much longer to process the geometry than lattice maker but still 1 million times quicker than it would take to model the damn thing!! One minor hitch is that the timber battens on the axis don't rotate with the structure..... this is such a minor thing tho that is barely noticeable until you get really really close to the structure. So all in all i'm as pleased as punch - thank you very much for your time and patience gentlemen. Tig as soon as my next student loan arrives I will be sure to make a donation to you (that is a promise) because you have saved me ALOT of blood sweat and tears. [image: done.jpg] [image: rotatingbattens.jpg]

@unknownuser said: pm @unknownuser said: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=335&t=34736 I think you wrote this reply and you hurry but thank you Rich @unknownuser said: Hi Jamalito! Well I have two answers for you, 1st if yo wanna get deep into SU I recommend you follow up the link to the tutorial: viewtopic.php?f=335&t=34736 (That would be a challenge wouldn't it?), and 2nd if you don't download it from the warehouse: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/ ... b716d03a58 , which by thank you CAntonis but I work with wisdom, which says: (do not teach me how to eat fish, but teach me how to hunt it ) becouse I enjoin here to teach how hunt fish not eat because here all ppl will teach us how er hunt not eat I know what do you say?(This person thinks he is (Plato) when he speaks ) but thank you so much to your Information

Thanks for the quick reply, that is what i was worried would be the response (having to edit every layer)

Of course the advantage of my 'Purge' as opposed to the 'Model Info' one is that you can select NOT to purge the layers...

Go to the material browser > In model folder and right click on your texture thumbnail. There will be an item in the context menu to "Export texture image". IFit is a seamlessly tiling material in SU already, you get the original image which you can use as the source image for your bump map. (And nowgo and ad your avatar.)

Hi Csaba, Rich and TIG, I thank you all for the quick reply. Sometimes you do not see the forest because the trees. I feel like a beginner. Charly

The objects aren't in groups unfortunately. I've decided to write a matlab script to identify the objects automatically in the VRML. I'll still need to simplify it though, as unfortunately this file is formatted to include every point (no curves/cylinders, just lots of fine grained vertexes). Thanks anyway!

SU version 8 has the Foreground Photo feature in PhotoMatch that makes the model look like the image overlay covers it. What baffles people is that the controls for this behaviour are not in the Match Photo dialog but in the Styles window>Edit>bottom of the Modeling settings tab. Anssi

The good thing about the i7 processor is that it has a feature called turbo boost. That means that it can selectively overclock its processor cores when the overall processor load is low. This is a benefit for single-threaded applications like 3D modellers (like SU). I haven't got an i7 laptop myself, but I helped a friend choose one, and I seem to remember that the 1.73 GHz processor he finally chose can turbo-boost up to something like 3 GHz (you can find the exact specs in the Intel webpages). So it is likely that you shall be OK, but that there will not be a mind-shattering increase in SU performance. Anssi

Something like that. Although the surrounding terrain may need some tweaking (the smoove tool is okay for that - or even better would be to get a site survey and make the terrain from contours). Here is a rough example how a stamp should look like - notice that I avoided using the real steps for the staircase as that would not work with the stamp tool. You can add them on that "slope". StampExample.skp

Hi Corey and welcome! Nice ships there (and I agree Rich that you will fit in nicely here) Anyway... You may get to learn those more compound curves (there are some really good plugins for that) but be prepared that it will be much harder to unfold those...