Thanks for the replies. What I wanted was a line texture that would not result in objects i.e. closed rectangles. I had the notion that an image texture would be less resource hungry than a bunch thousands of lines. At any rate, I created it in AutoCad without allowing the ends to connect and imported. Will turn into jpg later. thanks again

Thanks Cyberdactyl, good read Mike

The BEST solution is to export from Layout7. Its renders are far better than from Sketchup directly and you can specify a line weight without having to use custom styles.

@kwistenbiebel said: I hope the Japanese version says 'Banzai' and the Scottish version 'Skeeeeeetchuuuuup'

@tig said: What you have model so far looks pretty well thought out... except... I suggest you make all of the elements into groups (or components if they might be repeated). [...] O my, I wish I had started out doing this (making each major new area of the model a layer). Trying to select stuff after the fact, group it, and layer it, is pretty tedious and delicate work. However I have done some of this and it is useful to be able to turn on and off entire design elements like Roof, Walls. Thanks for the thought-provoking tip!

i guess gap is the wrong term, i meant distance from the edge of holes to outer edge.

And here is why those faces were missing: http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=36261

If anyone wants to try the Panoramas, the latest versions of IRender nXt have the panorama feature. You can download a trial version from: http://www.renderplus.com/htm/download.htm One of the IRender nXt users, Boothy, has posted a number of Panoramas on his web site. (click image to start panorama) [image: mad_thumb.jpg]

so obvious... and yet. Thanks!!

Good solution TIG, thanks. Mike

Bugsplat is a little program (not from Google) that tries to get useful information on a crash before Sketchup is completely closed. So the Sketchup developers may have some hints in the bug report where the error might be.

Welcome Sanjay, Just jump in a start havng some fun Mike

Hi John, hi folks. The Dimension Tool will auto select a full line or a full arc or a full polygon or a full circle if the cursor is placed on the line or any edge of the other entities. The Dimension Tool, however, can attach dimension lines to points (endpoint, midpoints, center points and construction points). So, for some nice effects, you can add temporary points or edges from which you will use one or two endpoints to attach the ends of a dimension line. When done, simply delete the temporary geometry. Even better, dimension items can be moved and rotated and can also be used with the Move/Copy and Rotate/Copy feature to get linear and radial arrays. Just ideas.

Thank you, all, for your links and suggestions! Much appreciated. I like the visual guide, especially. I have to say I'm very thankful and impressed at the patience demonstrated by all of your responses. Cheers to you all. C.

That was it. Figured it had something to do with the style settings. Thanks much, Team SDA

Im fairly sure you do need the quotes, as the new version i posted didnt work properly without them. And did the exploding and recomponenting thing not work?

@tig said: Another way that avoids 'stretching' is to make the dormer a group/compo and initially to have it as a simple gabled rood at both ends that stretches through the main roof plane. Especially useful on curved or odd angled roof/dormer combos... Edit the dormer, switch the view settings to show only the edited item [hide rest of model] and now select all, pick intersect with model and then you should get the main slope's cut-lines appearing around the dormer's geometry. Erase the unwanted parts of the dormer and close the edit. You now have a dormer that fits neatly onto the roof... Here's a tutorial... [attachment=0:1ewmyq3t]<!-- ia0 -->Intersecting Dormer.skp<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:1ewmyq3t] If you have a half-made dormer with a wrong slope then in a similar way edit it and select all of the sloping edges etc and move them axially through the main roof plane, work with only the edit geometry showing - intersect them with the model and the cut-line of the roof plane will appear; erase the excess part - this way often easier than trying to stretch edges and vertices... Wow, between the original suggestion and now this, I think I've got a great new set of skills to tackle this problem. You're right, the sloped faces are causing a significant portion of my headaches. I think making a grouped/component "double-dormer" and editing it as necessary will save me a lot of grief. I'm so hung-up on having perfect geometry that I get wiggy when I have "junk" floating on the inside of my houses, not realizing that it can actually save me a lot of time if used as a tool. Thank you guys!

Hi folks. I would try this: 1 - Make a group or a component with the object. 2 - Inside the group or component, I would create another nested group that will contain a simple rectangular box having its dimensions adjusted to contain exactly the object. This is very easy to do with the Rectangle Tool and the Push/Pull Tool using the object itself to control the pulls or the pushes. 3 - I would hide this box. 4 - Then, whenever I need to grab the "bounding box" of an object, I would first show hidden geometry and then move the object using any suitable points on that box. Of course, using scenes to memorize settings like "show hidden geometry" or not would help greatly. Just a click on a scene tab and I am set to grab and move. Another click and the box or boxes are hidden. Using layers could also be possible to control the visibility of these boxes. Just ideas.

Guys, when trying top make a group/component using the context menu or trying to flip something, always make sure to select more than one entity otherwise it doesn't work (the menu items are not only greyed out but don't even appear). Make a test this way: create a sphere right click and find that you cannot make it a group/component or flip it. you can still make a group/component from the edit menu or a component from the "Principal" toolbar > Component button (I consider this not necessarily a bug but an inconsistent behaviour and keep reporting it every time a new version is being tested but so far nothing has happened) if you triple click on the sphre so that its hidden edges are also highlighted as selected, you can make group/component and flip it from the context menu. Now as for menu items that should be available but greyed out, I have no idea what causes it. Supposedly it's a plugin (and Thom also suspected that it was his selection toys at a time) but I for instance have never experienced it although I have this plugion (as well as Twilight, which was also mentioned above). Maybe it's not even an only plugin but a conflict between some plugins which of course, would make it even harder to spot.