I also have another script called loose geometrry to groups that you mighr find useful. I wrote it specifically for what you are doing. It finds a face, then takes all touching edges and faces and turns that intoa group, then it moves on to the nect face that has not been added to a group and repeats the process. It is handy for quickly making groups of zillions of entire extruded buildings. I wrote it for the same process you are describing, something I was soing a LOT of at the time at work. I also have a snippet of code that I developed that takes a selection of faces and extrudes them by a given height, and a given amount of extrusions. It is used for selecting a bunch of flat building footprints then specifying how many storeys the building will have and how tall each storey is. And I even built in the ability to have the first floor be different than the other floors, since that is a common practice in planning to have a tall bottom floor with shorter upper floors. Let me know if that would be a useful script in your workflow and I'll clean it up and post it on Monday. Chris

@kiddieboy12 said: Life is all good!! install C++ redistribute 2005 sp1 and C++ redistribute 2008 SP1 and you should be able to install, please close. Hello. I'm sorry I didn't get back to you sooner; things were very busy getting our last release out the door over the holidays. I am glad you found a solution to your problem. Installing the VS 2005 SP1 redistributable is what I would have suggested if I had been able to respond in time. The part I find curious is that you also installed the 2008 redistributable. SketchUp is built in Visual Studio 2005 and therefore, that's the version of the redistributable package you need to install. Did you install 2008 for fun, because you needed it for another application, or because you thought SketchUp needed it? I'd really like to know because I can't think of any circumstances under which you would have needed 2008 for SketchUp to function, so if you did, I need to investigate it more closely. Thanks, Andrew

Thanks guys. I have a second PC in the office on which I can try it next time I am there (snowed in at home at present) and see what happens.

Hi Tom and welcome, This is where you can join any public usergroups (including woodworkers): http://forums.sketchucation.com/ucp.php?i=167 but I have added you now in the admin panel.

Thanks for posting this Gaieus, really inspiring stuff in there.

Whenever I download a new build (and I do have a couple of them! ) I generally rename the installer file to the version number I get from the Help menu so that I can always tell what is what.

This plugin: http://www.smustard.com/script/Drop

What you say Chris makes perfect sense. The seller would have to be selling lock stock and barrel

@greensaints said: ... This is the section I noticed which didn't look like it had any elevation. Attached is the .DWG I imported. I noticed the text didn't turn up either? You should either Explode such 'grouped/blocked' things in the CAD drawing beforehand, OR after it imports into SUp as a component, BUT before you make any surfaces... SUp doesn't import Text [or Dims or Hatching etc]... Since what SUP imports is limited it's best to strip down the CAD file to just what you need and purge/audit it before the SUp import - it'll import much faster and produce far fewer unwanted things in SUp that you'll need to Purge [Model INfo > Statistics] - there might still be some unused layers, components etc [e.g. the block 'arch_tick' if there were any dims] that get imported - you need to Purge the SUp Model of these to keep it 'trim'...

@arcaterra said: Hi Thanks for the explanations. However in my experimentation with the answers, unsticking the line seemed to work with this process: Selected the line > selected the move/copy tool > selected the end point of the line with it > then pressed the control key to move/copy. Pressing the move/copy tool while pressing control key only kept the stickiness. I have version 7.1 Does this process seem correct? Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Select the Line and then Move press Ctrl [don't hold it down], you should get an extra "+" sign on the cursor [press Ctrl again the + goes...] - this shows it's in Copy mode. Pick a point and the copy of the line is moved to where you next pick. If desired Erase the original Line. Alternatively Select the Line and Group it, Move if [no copying this time] and put it where you want - You need to Explode its Group when you're finished... You can 'Move' several things at once using these techniques...

can be interesting but now seems I miss something with the Jim's LEGO importer! Nothing append when I make Menu Plugins/LDraw Import/Import file I have made a folder c:\ldraw and put a .dat file inside but... So I test my model with the 3DS exporter from Leocad : no problem (it's Bryce's Shoes at the top image [image: ptR2_moto.png]

These are all great ideas, guys! I, like Dave haven't really thought about using endpoints in this way..... A bit to you fellas!!!

@tig said: "Gaius Nimium" Is what you should be... "One Who Rejoices Too Much"

Many plugins install just a wee bit of code in the Plugins directory and install the main code in a subdirectory. Uninstall everything, then use your .zip utility to extract to the Plugins directory. You'll get a Plugins/webconsole directory populated correctly.

Sketchup itself is the perfect BAT tool @unknownuser said: A long time ago I downloaded gmax, to creat buildings for simcity 4. After a while I mentioned that this program is really hard to work with. Yesterday I read somewhere on the sketchup website that it is possible to use sketschup for the creating of buildings for simcity 4. The one who wrote that tekst did not explain how, and I couldn't find his emailadress either, so I can't ask him. Is it possible to export sketchup moddels into gmax? @unknownuser said: Its a bit more complicated but it will work indefinetly with the free version of SU. First you'll need a copy of blender. Then you need to export your model form free SU as a google earth 4 file. Once youve done this, find the file and change its extension to .zip (.kmz files are actually just zip files in disguise.) If you then open up the zip file you'll find a folder called 'models', in there you will find your model with the extension .dae. This file format can be imported in to blender, and then from blender you can export your model as a .3ds

Frontface.rb is useful too. Chris

Thank you so very much TIG. I tried it the way you explained here and............now it works!!!!!!!!! I don't know why it didn't before but now all is good. Jim

If you have some Groups with weird origins then use the Outliner to highlight them in turn and the Explode and immediately Group the them highlighted contents. Sketchup will put the new Group's origin at the limit of its geometry not where it was... Step through Groups in the Outliner until all are done - quickest if you assign shortcut keys to Explode and Group...

Thanks for the reply Jean! I'll try it without the length snapping to see what happens. I'm using the snapping, because I want everything "on the grid" (or a whole number). Have you heard of some way to have all points within a certain distance auto-merge? Maybe this is a question for the Ruby/Scripts forum?

Thanks all for your suggestions. I guess a picture is in order here. The landscape was not derived from sandbox tools - the client wanted to clearly see the contour graduations so that is why I chose this method. But editing that is a mess, IMO. The hard sloped area is the point of contention. He has a beautiful vista looking out over a river and wants to maintain that visibility but also does not want his little kids rolling down the hill to their death We are experimenting with various scenarios to show the client. 2D plans just do not do this any justice and he was very pleased with my feeble efforts thus far in SU. So, that is my dilemma. Thanks again! Rick [image: x3Du_Landscapechanges.jpg]