These might enlighten you on how to use Subdivide and Smooth, Subdivide and Smooth Tutorial Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LcLPPz0fWM Subdivide and Smooth Tutorial Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbdiThh4fio

I think I figured it out. When I imported my CAD drawing the file in CAD was extremely far from the origin. I did not take this into consideration when I imported the drawing into sketchup (didn't know I would have to). So in my component (that I did not explode after importing) had the CAD UCS extremely far away making my component HUGE. I fixed this issue and, thus, fixed the clipping bug. Thanks for your help!

Not specifically in response to this post, but just a general statement about matching product colors. If you try to match a photo to its scene, the colors will not match, yet the overall appearance of the photo will often be judged OK. When as a "new" architect working with an "old timer", I commented on how I needed a color pencil to match the marble wall I was rendering. He smiled and said that I should be trying to render with less pencils, not more. An approach to I eventually came to embrace in line as well as color. I believe the same can be applied to CAD rendering. [image: ZvWO_Temp00.jpg]

Hello all, thanks for the comments. Personally I need all the help I can get to produce a decent image, I'm OK at the building side of things but when it comes to anything artistic I'm usually stumped. Scott, Holy S*** Scott, I'm episodic so only get them periodically, I don't think I could cope with chronic CH's, 14 months @ 7-8/day...boy you must be going through the pure oxygen faster than a rain forest can make it! EDIT: I wrote the stuff below before I re-read Scots post and realised that what he's suffering is measurably worse than I go through, I was going to take it out because I wrote it assuming Scott was new to the world of CH's and some of it would have been/is patronising. I've decided to leave it here in case there is anyone else out there who suffers or more importantly doesn't know that the excruciating pain they get all of a sudden at 3am every day is actually treatable. . . . . . I've suffered from cluster headaches for about 8 years, the first batch were about 6-10 events and as I didn't know they were CH's. I just used regular pain med's putting them down to stress - FAIL! When I got the 2nd batch (15-20 events) about a year later I was straight down the doctors and was very very lucky to have a doctor who had studied neurology and knew them straight away. They are often mis-diagnosed for years in some people leading a number of them to commit suicide. CH's are also known as suicide headaches by the way!! The doctor prescribed me Imigran tablets(Sumatriptan) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumatriptan. These are MAGIC tablets, never have I taken any med's that and have an effect so quickly; about 1/2-3/4 hour from taking one to pain free. Since then I've had them about every 18 months with (worryingly) the last 2 clusters lasting about 2 months with on average 2 attacks a day. For this most recent cluster (40-50 events)I got Imigran Injections, they're like the disposable ones diabetics use that do all the nasty work for you, all you have to do is put it against your thigh and press the button....Ouch! WOW what a difference; 10 mins from pain to COMPLETELY pain free. The only problem with Sumatriptan is that any more than 2 tablets/injections in 24 hours and you run the risk of stopping your heart. I weighed this up on a couple of occasions and chose the chance of death over the CH pain and took once or twice upto 4 in 24 hours!! Here's some links: Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_headache Organisation for the Understanding of Cluster Headache (UK based): http://www.ouchuk.org US Cluster headache site: http://www.clusterheadaches.com

@kumba said: Trying to use SketchUp to create a layout of my house. Managed to work something together pretty decently, but it looks like I accidentally drew the whole thing on the wrong axis. Using the push/pull tool, extruding the walls visually in the right direction reveals I am actually going negative on their height. Yet from what I can tell, I am extruding up along the solid blue axis, which per SketchUp's own documentation is the one going up (otherwise known as the Z-axis to me). I'm either viewing this incorrectly, hitting a bug, or I need to flip my model a certain way. But I can't seem to figure out what is going on with flipping and then switching camera angles. I assume that, if I were looking down towards the layout, the model should appear as a light shade of blue, with the underside appearing whire (if I were to look up at it from under the ground (let's pretend I have x-ray vision for a brief moment)). Thoughts? Your normal model axes are XYZ / RGB with +X/Red to right, +Y/Green into the screen and +Z/Blue up the screen. Click the 'Iso' [perspective] button in the Views toolbar to return to this. You will also need to switch the axes on under View.Axes menu. The -ve axes' direction are colored too, but they're shown dotted. Of course you will orbit and zoom around the model and these will change on screen to face other directions, BUT the model should be aligned to these in its normal placement - typically you put the bottom-left-front corner at the intersections of the axes [the ORIGIN] with the XY[RG] plane [Z[B]=0] as the 'ground' - you can also set the ground/sky as visible colored raeas in you Style settings to help you orient yourself in the 3D world. It's also possible to change the axes and reset them temporarily using Tools>Axes Menu - you use this to temporarily set the axes for something like a roof plane - that way what you draw gets inference snaps to that plane's axes rather than the model's base axes... You can reset the axes back to the model axes this way: first Select 'nothing', then right-click over one of the axes and in the context-menu there will be a 'Reset' item if the axes are 'customized': reset them back to the model's axes, if so... Now let's assume you have the model axes set and visible and your model is drawn rotated in some way from where it should be. Make sure everything is visible [i.e. all layers are switched 'on' and there is no 'hidden' geometry etc - use View Hidden Geometry to toggle hidden things on/off]. Now Select everything by a right-left dragged fence - and make a Group of it - this isn't strictly necessary but makes your life a bit safer and easier... Now we can rotate/move everything in one lump... Select this group and use the Rotate Tool to rotate it so that its floors are 'flat' in the XY[RG] plane. If you have drawn it 'orthogonally' [with its main walls parallel to the axes - even the wrong axes !] you can probably set your rotation tool to a R/G/B plane by orbiting so that it's in the required quadrant of the sky/ground - lock it by holding down 'shift' until you snap on a rotation point; start to rotate in the required direction and type 90.0 to rotate the group correctly. To rotate something about an arbitrary edge drag the rotate tool along the edge and it snaps square to it. Now you should have you building-group rotated correctly - use the Move Tool on it to locate it sensibly - perhaps with it's bottom-left-front- corner at the ORIGIN. If the main floor level is above the 'ground' [e.g. the building is on a 'plinth' or 'veranda'] make suitable allowances for this in the Z/Blue location... You can now explode the building's group... BUT it might be more convenient to leave it grouped, so that when you add a site layout etc they don't get their geometries sticking together - which is one of the main uses of grouping in fact... You can also easily work inside the group to continue changing it - and you can even set the model to not display the rest of itself when editing - which makes accessing things behind others in another group/component etc MUCH easier... Hope this helps...

Nice idea, but I think the idea of requesting specific models doesn't play too well with sites offering free, unsolicited material. The reason why there are maybe 201 variants of a Murcielago on the 3DW is probably because they are all different mods of the same ripped-off commercial model by Dosch, or whatever....mostly done by teenagers who couldn't produce an original model to order if their life depended on it. There's obvious advantages in the model challenges, as Pete points out, but I find it hard to imagine a dedicated bunch of specialists churning out free model requests just for the kudos. A request means working to a brief; and most of us have enough of that at work...we prefer to fly our own kite in our free time. FormFonts will model to order...you can request a specific item of furniture, or species of tree, or person engaged in a particular activity. Up to a point you get it "free" as part of the subscription, but that's the point; it will cost you the price of a subscription. People here at SCF do occasionally oblige with a plea for a specific model, but I don't see it ever becoming more than an ad hoc thing...that would smack too much of the work treadmill.

I changed the axis location after creating the component. I made 3D Text components, rotated them to vertical and changed their axes to determine the insertion point.

I did not have too many, but can I remember a work-around that I think I used. This may not be the one that worked [when traveling, I always remember the route to how I got lost and end up getting lost again] I set up a new drawing using styles, model info, ect to get it how I like, I than used Mass Materials Importer to get them into the drawing, Save as template, use for default. Then one by one over time, when I used one of them in my models I saved them into my materials folder. It means you have to use colours in models a lot for a while and it's annoying if you purge your drawing and then need one that you haven't moved, but you can always open a new drawing from templates and import the model over. anyway without being able to check my memory...

@mojo said: BTW to ThomThom - those are the coolest glasses.. what the heck are they? I have not idea. Found them in the kitchen one day. Months later suddenly found that photo hanging on out photo wall in the kitchen. Student house you see.

There is a "Custom Toolbars" plugin by Jim Foltz: http://sketchuptips.blogspot.com/2008/06/custom-toolbars-release-08-06-01.html Read the instructions he provides on the plugin page. A bit of a hassle to set it up at first but then you don't have to worry about them any more.

Hi Ray, Does it do it in any model of yours? Like when you start a new one for instance? I am wondering if there is not a clipping plane somewhere. What is your FOV set to in that model? (Select the Zoom tol and press the shift button and start dragging it up and down on the screen with the left mouse button pressed). Also what if you toggle between perspective and parallel projections?

Hi Guy, Thank you for the welcome and the help, I am importing perfectly now. Devo

Menu Window/Components/Shapes or load from 3dwarehouse some geodesic volumes [image: iJxu_ball.jpg]

I just ran across this idea myself, but I guess it wasn't original. At any rate, I have a SketchUp file demonstrating this and some sample screen shots. [image: VZEM_sectionshadow-a.png] [image: n1ZL_sectionshadow-b.png] Shadows in Section Cut Seems it would be a pretty easy ruby script. User starts with section cut selected. Ruby copies all objects in active group to a new group. Changes materials Pastes section cut in place reverses section cut direction. If any geometry is changed the script has to be re-run.

Select more than one component at a time, and then right click and choose "Make Unique". It will make all selected become a new unique component. Of course this only works when you have selected only intances of the same component. Chris

Thanks ever so much Tommy, will be sure I check it out.

Yes, I used only the line tool - but then also deleted all the edges that could be deleted. If an edge cannot be deleted without losing the face with it, it means that it divides two, non-planar faces therefore necessary. At times like this you have two choices - check where the model went wrong (it could even be the elevation import) or silently soften that edge and don't talk about it.