Thanks you two, very helpful! Cheers, Jeff

Well, I do not know what you can achieve with V-ray but I guess displacement could work just fine if done correctly. With displacement, you can even use coplanar meshes without serious Z-fighting - one mesh could be textured with a wireframe pattern withOUT displacement while the other with the continents (and the rest transparent) WITH displacement (but this is only my theory - I have not tried).

Ah, cool! Thanks!

@wo3dan said: Alphabetic order up or down gives two options. Visibility order (visible=)up or down forms the other two.. Aha I got it now.... Sorry to waste your time folks, I feel like a dummy now. I had my layer box not wide enough so I was pressing the visibility option all the time, not realising that the( name) panel to the left was an actual panel... thinking it was just a header for all the layer names...sheeesh Maaaan, almost two years using sketchup and such a basic thing ...... anyhoooo, all is well now and I learned something new today ...Always a good thing Thanks for setting me straight... :O)

I generally do not care with the exact depth of the stamp tool while stamping. When you are done, you can just select the stamped face and use the move tool to accurately position it to the desired height. Way easier than suffering with the stamp tool (that's only good to make the stamp outline and offset it in the surrounding TIN)

Isn't the "reset workspace" inside the "preferences" window? Have you tried re-installing it?

Thanks Mitcorb. Now added. (Note that it's the old, SU 6 Guide but there's simply no good description in the current manual and also whatever there is, it is hard to link to) Rich: what? Are you not forgetting things sometimes?

There are a few commercial tools where developers have only made a 'Windows' version... Without more info we can't take it further... Why doesn't he contact the originators and ask them ?? You can't easily change a PC tool to a MAC tool if it's using Windows sockets, dll files etc...

Seems to be working again - without needing updating, so a server side issue? Excellent!

that's rendered in the game... sorry.

So to speak, this is the first plugin one installs when there is a new SU version (well, I usually just drag and drop all but this WOULD be the fist...)

Will it be the same on the other side, too? In that case, just delete the line I drew in the middle and instead of selecting that curve, select the whole middle face with a single (or double) click before running the tool.

You can do that but if you need to fiddle around anyway, why not just do it once?

I managed to create what I want! Thanks for telling me the plugin line2cyl.rb.

Great! Thank you

Hi Joel, Well, yes, when you upgrade, you need to do all these. Copy all plugins (be careful not to overwrite the ones that come with native SU), copy your components folder, your materials folder, your custom template, set your toolbars again and export/import your custom shortcuts. But then there should not be any issue your SU 7 installation will be in this folder: C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 7\ while SU 8 in this one: C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 8\ and they can nicely co-exist on the same computer (I have everything since SU 6 - even SU 7.0 and 7.1 separately, I think - or maybe not on this computer any more). Your system will always try to open skp files in the version you used last but I guess you will not want to keep changing what you always use.

Thanks TIG. I just discovered this and I'm shocked - this can be what I have been looking for a long time - to put a data in the groups, but without the hassle of the components!

Thanks. p