If you don't use the added extra that come with Pro then you've answered your own query. But I do think it merits purchasing from the point if view that the day you need those features you'll tear your hair out. As for rendering choice, this seems to grow everyday and everyone has an opinion. It will boil sown to cost and your user level. My recommendation would be Thea Render as it's cross platform, 64bit and very very very good. But that's just me. If it's some integrated into SU I would suggest TwiLight.

My guess would be that OpenGl compatibility matters most.

Hi Guys, Yes, it was the way I imported it. I got the faces! Yea! So now I am working on fixing some of the faces that didn't get made right. I found the tutorial about this so I'll work from there and see if I can get it together. Thanks so much for your help guys-I really appreciate it. Tamera

I replied to your e-mail Dwain. I'll help you out. Get in touch again. Dave

Thanks Kurt. I am glad I can help. Happy New Year!

Hi Joel, Have you tried projecting your imge onto the shape? [flash=800,600:3s437fii]http://www.youtube.com/v/HHsRRLCAOm8[/flash:3s437fii] If so, then you other option is to UV Map the material in an external application like Blender, Roadkill (these are free) or a commercial application (lots to choose from). Whaat's UV Tools plugin can help for this.

In reference to your latest illustrations, the intersect process will create either solid lines or hidden lines. In MY observation/experience, Sketchup/OpenGL seems to be trying to create logical faces. That is why you see all of those hidden triangles. If you have ever noticed, OpenGL shading(called either gooch or Gouraud shading, not sure which) will exhibit slight shade variations on faces with more than 3 edges, especially on smoothed models. The shade variations are "virtual" edges that will not display as lines, but tend to align with where a logical edge would occur between vertices. Your introduction of the cylindrical extrusion and intersect created virtual triangular faces. [I am not sure at what scale you are working, but it is important to remember that Sketchup does have difficulty with tiny faces, even though this does not appear to be your problem. I only mention it in case scaling also influences the conditions you are experiencing. As recommended by others, scale the model up as much as 100x for the modeling procedure and then by .01x when finished] Again, the above is MY observation/interpretation sprinkled with stuff I have read here and searches on the internet.

Hi, Problems with texturing such curved (or irregular) surfaces have been discussed several times already, like here for example. Apart from texture projecting or wrapping, you might want to consider Dale's UVTools 2: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=23725 His SDS2 plugin - which isn´t available yet - is coming with a new feature - Paint Brush. Also posting a screenshot or a model itself would be a good idea.

I think I've discovered my problem. The models I've been working on were created in SU6 and SU7. Any groups that were twisted after creation have their group axis out of whack when edited in SU8. Thanks for the input.

Todd Burch wrote a free progressbar script that is available to all developers to use. I use it in a few of my scripts. Unfortunately, once SketchUp stops updating the screen (which is when scripts appear to be "hung", that also freezes progressbar so it no longer shows the correct progress. So its a bit of a difficult thing to overcome. Fredo has done something for some of his scripts, and Didier Bur also did something with Component Spray which is nice. But in the end, it appears that it needs to be handled by Google. Chris

I rolled back to a driver that was a lot older (written before Win 7 came out) and it works fine now.... Very strange..

Use the Force, Antsvam, Use the Force! Jim

@rebeltaz said: ...And my experience would be beginner... If you haven't already, I highly recommend watching all of the videos on this page: http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/training/videos/new_to_gsu.html Once you are done with them, here's another video that may help with organic modeling/cartoon characters without any plugins: YouTube - From a little circle, grows a tree... [flash=480,385:klski4vt]http://www.youtube.com/v/XRAL6MhoMB8?fs=1&hl=en_US[/flash:klski4vt]

@wo3dan said: I don't think this is possible, to have it turned off by default. SU checks if there is one single face/with clean loop in the selection (to create the component) that is sharing the same 3D space/plane with a larger face. If that is the case, then 'gluing to' is turned on as option at the time of creating the component. You can still turn it off. I guess I misunderstood the behaviour - what I should have said is that every time I make a component - and I pay attention to the 'glue to' attribute, I turn it off.... i.e. it's my default, not SU's! @wo3dan said: No, editing a component in editing context does not give you this "opportunity", not by choice, nor by mistake. You can change the components property to 'Glue to: .....' by selecting the component in the component browser and by editing its properties right there. Already placed components however will still be unglued. (This is about native SU tools / Ruby plugins can act different.) Thanks for the clarification. While SU is simple in metaphor - a 3d sketching tool - there are many aspects to its behaviour that are not simple at all, because of the multiple interaction of states and conditions of tools, entities, structures and their modifying processes. Unfortunately the existing official documentation is extremely 'thin' is describing the more subtle aspects of SU. As a new forum member, I really appreciate the assistance of people who have that knowledge and are generous in sharing it. So thanks to all that replied to my post. Very helpful, and a good antidote to the occasionally unavoidable frustration of working with such a powerful - and not always intuitive - tool.

Is there a bug report that addresses this? It's still a problem. Just try using the component for this item: Samsung 55" LED LCD 240Hz TV (UN55B8000) That " inch mark trips up the DC code. The temporary fix is to bring up that entity's info and remove the " character. That'll let the DC code continue.

Hi all, Thanks a lot for your precious replies! I ended up modelling a completely different (much easier ) Panthella lamp : [image: k3en_1211471108verner_panton1_orgineel.jpg] [image: NSmH_Panthella.jpg] Panthella.skp So since I very often feel gulty for my nearly void contribution to this community, here's the file in case someone might be in need of it for a quick immediate use. It's not to scale, it's just the approximate shape of the lamp but it's there! Again thanks a lot for everything! P.S. to Shura : I need to find some time to upload this dancing people...

Thanks Sketchdata, I've had a play with the axes change and think I've sussed it out, thanks for the help, it probably won't be too long before I'm scratching my head again and asking for help! So much to learn so little time. benchdog.

I think what you're after is called Texture Atlasing.