SOAP does look interesting but what I'm going for is having an interactive color choice system for all of our models and it seams like with SOAP it would have to be set up specific to each model and we just don't have the time to invest in setting up SOAP every time. furthermore, I need to supply the user with a list of eight color choices, not allow them an infinite number of choices. Thanks for the suggestion though

hi mead, thanks for you answer. i bought it in December 2007, it's a white one. it's an OS-X 10.5.8, 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2. Ram 2GB 667MHz DDR2 and the monitorchip is a GMA X3100. I have 36 GB available. So as you said, it's more than probably that's monitor-chip fault. it's weird that su 7 (this is the version) doesn't work whilest cinema4d works ok. well, i should change the chip for working smooth with it. thanks a lot

@gaieus said: Hi Al (and Rich), I don't think 3D PDF would become outdated soon. PDF is one of the most cross-platform and even cross-browser format (when embedded), can be easily sent by email or carried on a small drive since you can (almost) make sure that wherever you go and take (send) it, the other end will be able to see it. thanks for the comments Gai. PDF will probably survive, of course. But they have replaced the U3D format we use with a proprietary format. However, we suspect they will always have to display U3D, because otherwise legacy PDF files would stop working. We struggle with U3D because it never really worked properly. But Rich has made some improvements this past month and we will continue working with it. I think will will add an embedded html page creator to the existing plugin - using PDF first. The advantage it that it will be fairly easy for people to modify the page we create for their own needs. (It is much easier to modify a web page than to create one from scratch). This should work pretty well with embedded PDF and PDF is well supported. Also, we never learned as much about Flash as we should have. Perhaps a Flash/Collada option would work as an option. The O3D/Collada route is interesting, if Google gets behind O3D. Unfortunately, my experience is that Google often releases an interesting software application - usually in Beta mode - and then never decides to continue it. (Witness Google Desktop). On the other hand, if they do get excited about something they throw a lot into it - (e.g. YouTube). We are hoping they see a future for O3D and want to go comewhere with it.

thank you =]

It's good news that at least the Ati FireGL cards can be made to work with SU. Google has been somewhat cautious about all Ati cards lately. Anssi

Thanks TIG! It worked perfectly! Great service around here! s

An nVidia GeForce 9600 GT (1 Gb memory).

Thanx v much Jeff and Modelhead Good explanations and videos I've been off the job but will try this tonight Cheeryble

@remus said: If you go window->preferences->openGL then select the setting with the highest anti aliasing, that may help. it worked, and looking awesome. Thank you!!

@unknownuser said: reminding myself "group", "group", "group". I think the ease of use of SU lulls you with its simplicity - then suddenly you realise you have created a spiders web of complexity Isn't this why they gave us OUTLINER? Not that I think OL is the end-all beat-all of organizers, but it has helped me in these very conveluted situations once I got Used to using it.

@hpw said: When it is possible to write a small ruby to draw text in SU, then it should be a easy to make an AutoLisp-utility to write such ruby out from AutoCAD. I used such approach to restore block-infos on SU components which get lost during import. It is indeed relatively easy for Ruby to parse the 'Text' data out of a DXF [then you won't need AutoLisp] and then to make bits of '2D Text' from it in your SKP... It's just having time to do write it that's the pain...

I have this problem also and it's very frustrating. In some sense my edges must be planer because I can generally break the face into smaller and smaller triangles, all of which become individual faces, until I finally coax the final rectangle to become a face. Then I go back and delete all of the triangle lines except the original outer perimeter and I have a face. It's frustrating because the outer lines are planer or they're not. If SketchUp can finally make a face after I've broken it into many triangles it is planer but for some reason SketchUp doesn't 'know' this until I've gone through this process of breaking it up into smaller and smaller triangles.

@jiminy-billy-bob said: @glro said: I came to the conclusion i needed such a plugin too i didn't find anything simple already made Layers Panel does that : http://sketchucation.com/plugin/751-layers_panel yes, i tried but it doesn't work on my computer bug related to IE v11, it seems...

Hi Mike, hi folks. Make sure that the values that you will import are not too small. SU has problem creating faces with edges smaller than about 1 mm. It is best to import using meters as units and/or scale the points after import, if you want to make surfaces with them. Just ideas.

I worked CA with Mortenson as the contractor on a couple of projects way back in the day (actually had a hand in the hand drawings for the project it was so long ago :`) and they were quite progressive back then...this extensive use of SU doesn't surprise me a bit.

if you want to render the image, just use a normal map (or bump map) with blurred black stripes on white background for your material. If you want more detalied effect, and your rendering engine allows it, you can use a displacement map. If you don't want to render the image, you can just make a texture with desired visuals... Trying to model that, will result in lots of polygons and SU might just not be able to handle.

Since you're talking about animation export, I did a small test yesterday with Pibuz's warehouse. I made this video to answer a question about post-production motion blur in another forum, but I got an interesting result in render times: [flash=640,505:1e3wj8kn]http://www.youtube.com/v/iNVqKh2k164[/flash:1e3wj8kn] The reason for this seemingly absurd result (Twilight being almost as fast as SketchUp) is the same you noticed: During animation export in SketchUp, CPU use was just 25%. This is because the Core i5 has 4 physical cores. Who knows, perhaps when desktop CPUs with 8 physical cores arrive, we'll see biased raytracers become faster than SketchUp's native renderer because of its lack of multi-core support. Please note that I'm not complaining about SketchUp; as has been already mentioned, it's a modeler, and has never been marketed as a render solution. BTW, in the Twilight test I used an HDR as the sole light source, that's why you don't see hard shadows. Of course, you can use both HDR and Sun at the same time in Twilight. The variation in frame height was my mistake, before you ask.

Pilou, Could be wrong but I thought I tried to re-component it, though that did not seem to matter. Gai, I was able to re-position the image after I moved the face, but not at the same time. I think I can do it by making a blank workspace, inserting the old component, exploding it, then regrouping, and saving the new component. Next time I will position the image properly before cutting out the alpha. Every time I do this, I forget some step, and mess up. Takes less time to cutout the alpha then to get the name, etc. right:-) Another reason pro is the way to go. Thanks, all.

Fixed it. If I extrude the face by a cm or two, then apply the texture, it works. Then using the push/pull tool, push the face back to it's original height/ position.