Very nice, Thanks for taking the time to make this!

edit->delete guides.

@gaieus said: Cool, I wasn't sure if I got the problem right. A couple of further tips/info: When you just hide the edges, they will still separate the facets i.e. you can select them individually and the whole surface will look faceted. With softening the edges, you'll end up with a curved surface which is still made up of these facets but SU displays it as one,smooth area. The only place it is obvious that it's also made up of these facets is the edges/sides of these surfaces (say the top and bottom of a cylinder). You can manually hide edges by using the Shift + Eraser tool and soften them with the Ctrl+Eraser tool. Smooth surfaces cannot be PushPulled, the texture cannot be positioned on them and some other limitations also apply. You can however reveal the dividing edges (and perform some of these operations) by going to View > Hidden geometry (it will also reveal other hidden things, not only softened edges). Etc. etc... Now that you mention it, I do remember the trick with the eraser. I just had not thought of the smoothing as a solution. Thanks again for the tip.

I think it's the "normal" text tool. Generally you cannot export that as it's not vector (or texture) info at all. 3D Text is different as it is "real" geometry so there's no difference between it and any other geometry like a house of a plant.

Very nice and thanks again.

welcome to SUcation! you can use a mouse or tablet as you like. the first step is modelling. build a good model first. it depends what your objectives are...if you just want some nice pictures, you don't have to worry too much about the internal structure of your model. even a lot of exterior details can be created with textures and bump/normal maps. if your model is for structural purposes, then detailed modelling is everything. if i'm working on a job that needs some renders, i may use one of the many plugins ...podium, IDX, SU2POV, kerky, etc...to export the model and textures. rendering can be time-consuming, so i may start the render process on another computer. then i can carry on working on the model on the first computer. SU can run on linux i believe, but not without a bit of modification/tweaking. some of the renderers run on linux...povray, kerkythea for example. there are lots of tutorials out there, and as rclub says, lots of help on these forums good luck!

Hi Karl, My toolbars allows you to make custom toolbars using many of SketchUp's built-in buttons (and a few custom ones.) It isn't a plugin organizer, but can help you get the most from the available toolbar area by eliminating buttons you rarely use. It can also help the with the crazy toolbar positioning bug in sketchup by having a few, larger toolbars it is easier to set them back to normal.

Thanks remus, this will be a good starting point for me to make a full dynamic solar panel. Arslan

With only a couple of components to reload, the plugin would probably not make too much difference but I can easily imagine that it is a huge time saver when you have dozens of such components and you can even easily get lost in what is updated and what not.

What you "marked" as an error is in fact not an error. Projected texture should behave like that (that's why it's called "projected" as if it were coming from a computer projector; it will be "distorted" on sides near parallel to the "projector rays"). Basically "wrapping" is what you need instead (Remus solution is something like that) although it is rather hard to do on such heavily triangulated surfaces you have (see especially images 3 and 4).

thank you much appreciated

You could also try building a dynamic component. Take a look at the Sketchup 7 example of a picket fence component. As you scale the component the pickets are automatically copied and spaced. To do this with bricks, you would need to build two sub-components: one row with a full brick in the corner and one row with a half brick, so the two rows would be offset. This component could also be used to lay down flooring or drywall.

@anssi said: Even the Sandbox from Contours tool should work OK with curves like these. Anssi NO, it screw up it. Thank you guys, I choosed loft plugin

it goes to 10 percent and the program becomes nonresponsive, i last left it for about half an hour... i tried it with just one section of the house and it worked fine after about 30 seconds. all i needed was that one part anyway..

If you draw your line/do your offset/move your object, then after you've clicked to complete it type in the length of your line/offset/move distance and press return, that should do it.

@charly2008 said: The Problem is that SRMTs and other map materials with higher resolution one can get only from the german land survey offices against much money, so i saw an alternative only in the GE-Terrains. But The GE Terrains are sufficient for my purposes. The sme here, unfortunately. I'm lucky however because there's a geologist in town whose hobby is to research the ancient ground level in Roman times. This, combined with our data from excavations (we do the survey work ourselves) is sufficient for my reconstructions. @charly2008 said: But your note (you can check this under > Window > Model info > Location). I tried this immediately by importing several terrains but in the model info there is only the location which was predefined by me. Have I made any mistake? See picture below. With SU 7, the pre-set location is NOT overwritten by the newer snapshots. The reason behind this is to be able to take several snapshots within a relatively small area (with bigger areas the spherical/orthogonal differences will make you unable to do it properly). So your solution would be to open the Location tab > uncheck the pre-set location > take the snapshot and now that will re-geolocate your model to this new location. Be always very careful with this as if you forget to uncheck the original location it will screw up your model. Best is to use a non-geolocated template.

Thanks Tavi, good find.

good stuff...as gaius says...unique style. keep them coming.

@remus said: ...then i give to you 30 boulders for your continued enjoyment. thanks for the boulders! [image: p8Q1_20090529172518_1m4s.png]

Thanks Chris