@glenn505 said: ......a project for me, but something I have been working on for years, and I think it's the biggest leap forward since the original Sturmey Archer AW4 hub, matching that hub in all areas, and bettering it in several. My design is less complicated than a Rohloff, equally efficient mechanically, and automatically shifting by torque, with no ancillary cables. Point is, I need at least some direction on drawing (still somewhat complicated) gears, interfacing in multiple planes, on multiple axis. So far I haven't even been able to get the gear plug-in (Ruby code) to work in Sketchup 8, so I'm rolling backward to 7, but still a little lost in this thing. Pointless asking you to share the sketches. No, I haven't done any serious modeling of gears in the past other than trying out what the native tools are capable of and how I would approach/tackle such a "problem". So I just downloaded gear.3.rb into sketchups plugin folder. You say it does not work for you? Unlike the info on the site, the options are presented in the 'Draw' menu. (So the tools are NOT in the 'Tools' menu). Both 'Involute Gear' and 'Key Involute Gear' do work for me.(in SU8pro!) I can only say (from what I see) that the teeth tops partly do 'share' the same 3D space when two wheels work togheter. Not as it should be. So you would still need to work on those teeth corners. You did not specify where you get stuck with specific SU problem(s).

If you want to use Follow Me, draw a plane that passes through the skull on the centerline of the headband. Intersect it with the skull to get a path for Follow Me. Select all of the edges in that path around the skull and weld them together with Weld.rb. Make sure the path is in the same context as the profile for the headband and run Follow Me.

Yeah, I tried ishowu as well; I can't remember why I went with Screenium instead. Thanks for the info. ***thread hijack off ***

Hi Berry, I'm almost in your neck of the woods. I used to live in St. Paul before committing matrimony and moving south a few miles. I have looked at a number of different mice and came to the conclusion that for me, simple is best. I use an inexpensive Microsoft "Wheel Mouse Optical" USB mouse on my PC and the least expensive Logitech wireless mouse on my Mac. In neither case are there any special drivers loaded. I just use them as plug and play and they work flawlessly. Probably 99% of my SketchUp work is woodworking-related. I think you'll find SketchUp is a great tool. As Marcus said, check out the Woodworking forum. Dave

Hi guys. Thanks for the links Jim. I checked them out. Very cool. Gotta try some of this stuff as soon as someone links to a physics Ruby for MORE TIME @unknownuser said: What is the source of that animation that you show above? Hey mitcorb. Sorry it took a while to get back here. Too many irons in the fire. But here ya go.... http://fireuser.com/articles/solids_vs_surface_modeling_what_and_why_you_need_to_know/ I did some more research though, and I'm curious about NURBS now. I recently purchased a new i7/975 computer and am in the process of researching GPU's for SLI as my motherboard is an EVGA 3xSLI Classified. I want to get into Rendering stuff, but lack of $$$$$ keeps getting in the way. In the meantime I'm researching which way to go for Sketchup/Rendering vs $$$$$ vs 2x or 3x GPU's vs overkill vs budget. I'm actually holding off on downloading anymore plugs for Sketchup untill I get my new computer GPU upgraded and my apps loaded. Which may be a while. So, for now I just have to keep modeling simple stuff on my old P4. Well, enough babbling. Time to get to work. Thanks guys. fitZ

Maybe you will find inspiration in this: http://www.steelfalcon.com/macrossmecha.html

Which render application do you use? I guess the distortion you are talking about is keystone correction? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_effect

This is not needed any more as SU has already made large address aware which means it can use up to 4Gb of memory on a 64 bit system - but for many people, this is still not enough so for this particular issue (rendering large scenes with many, high resolution materials etc. inside SketchUp) a true 64 bit version seems to be the solution.

@agamemnus said: Eyeballing? Doesn't sound very accurate...... It is'n't accurate indeed, but often quite enough to cut out the image part you need, say for a new 'Face Me' component. Then inferencing other than 'On Face' gets in the way. That was my point. I can't think of another time disabling inferencing would help at all. The main reason for answering here was that other axes (as in the question by OP), like R/G/B with 60/60/60 degrees is possible. If you would like to exchange suggestions about working around the orthogonal axes as mentioned in this thread: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=34690 let me know in that thread. (here we are to much off topic, sorry) Unfortunately, in that thread your uploaded image contradicts what you are writing. So I'm not certain why you cannot just do what you are after without disabling inferencing to axes or disabling whatever.

Thanks for fast answers like allways!! I study this!

Oh thank you very much. Some things are very easy if you know how it works

@pbacot said: Hi Agrazdi, I don't know but choose the paint bucket tool and hold down the command (apple) key to get the eyedropper. This picks up textures and colors. You can use the magnifying glass to pick up colors on the screen, but I don't trust this for a match of solid colors. Don't understand that part. hey peter.. the magnifying glass is part of OS X and it's available systemwide and in all of the color picker palettes.. it's used to sample the color of a pixel anywhere on the monitor exactly as it appears.. notice in the screenshot, the one green material has three different tones due to sketchup's shading.. the mag.glass doesn't consider the shading and will give the color as is.. using the magnifying glass on the cube will give me 3 different colors. if i use the su eyedropper (brush tool + cmmd) then it will sample the material as it appears Prior To having shading applied.. [image: ywfU_color.jpg]

I think you may have discovered the "average file size" for your system. The simpler the mesh, the smaller the file. Ways of reducing the file would be to inspect for duplicate faces, edges and so forth and to delete these where not needed. Use xray mode to check for internals. The greater the "physical" distance from 0,0,0 the more likely you will have navigation problems resulting in delays. Also colors/materials/textures have an influence on the file. Where repetitive identical geometry occurs, these could all be instances of one component rather than separate components. I think you can help reduce the layers by exploding then renaming the components one by one. Then look in Top Menu: Window> Model Info> Statistics, Button: purge unused, and optionally button: fix problems. You may have to specify the components to be on Layer0, I am not sure. I am not as practiced with layer usage. There may be simpler ways of doing what I suggested. This is just how I would do it given my knowledge level. There may even be scripts/plugins for some of these operations.

Ah good, thanks for the solution (should anyone else need it)!

good tutorial bro.. thanks

@hburns said: Simple when drawing the geometry hit the ctrl key and it will switch to the circumscribed or Apothem method. Yes. It is simple since SketchUp 2015 was released. Prior to that and when this thread was active, SketchUp didn't have this option as a native feature.

Liking the videos Jeff. Make things seem so easy!

Is this what you are looking for?[image: 7aWF_ex1.jpg][image: nFWu_ex2.jpg]ex1.skp If yes,then u need skin.rb plugin(to make the mesh between the beams) and joint push&pull plugin(to give thickness to the mesh).

Looks to me as if you'll need to update to a gmail account for you to be able to access your page.