my biggest gripe with OUtliner is with nested components and being able to hide rest of model, but still reveal the parent of the nested group/component being edited. That seems to me a very easy thing to do, and I mentioned it here a lot, but it doesnt get a lot of play. I guess it's just me. D

There's a couple of good introductory videos on youtube which cover the basics well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LcLPPz0fWM

Thanks for your reply. Picture 1 is what I get if I click on the component and then open Component Attributes. If I then deselect the component and then select it again, I get Picture 2, but nothing is functional. When I click on "Add Attribute", nothing happens. Thank you for your help. [image: MjKW_Picture1.jpg] [image: 17IG_Picture2.jpg]

Has anyone else got stuck on the part where he scales the horn out. It's about 30 seconds into the flexible horn tutorial, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoKwcvm_2r8&feature=channel_page. I haven't figured out how to do the scale like he does with out the inner plane sticking to or intersecting with the outer portions of the model. Here is what it looks like . [image: KImt_KitoRauppsm.jpg]

Yes, that's definitely an antialiasing issue. Not a big deal however as it can be overcome easily as Jeff says. If it'son your screen,don't bother with it. It is video card dependent and you can set the value at Sketchup (Window on PC) > Preferences > OpenGL > Hardware acceleration (if it is checked). It will however only affect how you see it on-screen (I've worked on machines where it was even inaccessible because the video card didn't support it at all). But when you export an image, at the bottom right of the export window there is an "Options" button (at least there it is on a PC) and there you can set AA as well as image compression quality but as Jeff says, if you export at higher resolution and resample the image later, it can give you even better results. If you are intrerested what this whole hassle is about, read this article at Wikipedia about antialiasing. @popple said: first time on your forum and beginner in sketchup. The best combination. We haven't had dinner yet.

ahe thats it Gaieus, thats the topic i was thinking about and I forgot that it was more of a service you pay for and thats why I never used it. At least now I dont have to pull my hair out trying to find it. Im gonna try a few of the suggestions and see how that turns out. Thanks guys.

Sure! With high poly (billions of polys with easy orbiting), multi core, 64 bit, proxy, animation and hdri support and a fix for the shadow bug (actually, a WYSIWYG, real time PR renderer will also be added) They are now writing the exporters for Max, Cinema4D - even Vue - and all because they will be toys compared to SU.

Open the Model - SKP file. Open the Materials Browser window. Pick the Model tab [little house symbol] Click on the icon of the Material you want to extract. Right-click context-menu gives you options - Save_As... Save as a SKM file with its name - into the Materials folder - I suggest you make a sub-folder for these extracted materials so they are easy to find and manage later on... That Material is now saved as a SUp SKM format file that you can access in any other Model, through the Materials Browser by navigating to the appropriate sub-folder in the Materials folder collection... Repeat this for any Material you want to extract from the Model. You can extract materials from any model and save them in this way as SKM files so that they are re-usable in any other model... If you had picked 'Export Texture Image' instead of 'Save_As' then you wouldn't have got a SKM file saved, you'd get a JPG or PNG file - i.e. the image that the material uses as a texture, extracted back into its original form. There is a Ruby script [fast_tw.rb] that will extract all of a model's texture-images into the model's folder - unfortunately there is no equivalent to bulk extract SKMs. The SKM file is a sort of zip file containing the image, its thumbnail and 3 other xlm documents giving colour data etc... To see this, copy a .SKM to your desktop and change its suffix to .ZIP, now open it in your ZIP-application and you'll see the contents listed. No one has yet worked out how to auto-write all of the model's SKMs out of SUp with Ruby... it will happen. Using pop-out 'Save Library As...' lets you bulk export ALL of the model's SKMs into a new folder...

the founder of HDRI http://www.debevec.org/

I have a su feature request to do with this. Being able to toggle selection modifiers on or off would be really nice (ctrl, shift, both ...) I broke my arm recently and this is one of the biggest setbacks I have noticed.

If I'm making a model to be used in SU only or shared then I am weary about sizes and model using symmetry and groups, if I intend to export it to another app for compiling and render then I model as I please with no regard for size as no matter how I model in SU, most if not all 3rd party apps do not recognise SU groups or components so why waste time being conservative.

Mike, Did you ever solve your Hardie Panel texture issues? I also need some Hardie Panel textures, plus some Hardie Panel Vertical Siding SKP models for our solar cabin design projects. Any suggestions for us? Regards, Alan

Thanks Honolulu, I thought Win Movie maker wasn't that sophisticated when I first looked at it, I will take another look definitely. Thanks for the advice. Stan

Dear William, Many thanks for the additional information. Now, back to those tutorials.... Regards, Bob

@remus said: Yea, I think it might be worth mentioning this to the SU team. The problem occurred when the last component of our version number exceeded 3 digits in length. That's why SU6 (.112) works, while SU7 (.8656, .10247, etc.) doesn't. We have an open bug for this issue.

Once the models are submitted, the QA Team decides by quality. Even if there's already an accepted model on the "official" 3D Layer in GE, whenever there is a better model, there's a chance that they replace the old one.