To retrieve tools to use WYZ point files from topographic surveys check out my web page, you will find a link on free downloads via my google Drive, You will also find a SketchU plugin to easily model from a laser scanning point cloud, do not hesitate to contact me, thank you for your attention patrickbiani13@gmail.com

If you are ok with spending a few bucks, FluidImporter Lite imports OBJ and works really well.

I see an extra set of bounding box lines in her screenshot that I don't see in yours. Her blue one is the third one in. Yours is only the second one in. There's no reason it should be different between Mac and PC.

That is very clever! So I turn the surface and drape lines into a component, copy them, scale up e.g. 100X, drape, and the original components will get the cut lines, without having to downscale anything.

Looks like the majority of those come from extensions you have installed. If there are too many menu items you could do one of two things. Remove some of the extensions or only load them when you want them. Of course nobody forces you to install all those extensions so you are in control of that.

Yep, you are correct, in the situations where there is a coplanar connection it will cause problems.

OK, now we are in business, thank you thank you, this is exactly what I need.

@calypsoart said: Still, Quadros are not cheap. I'll be on the lookout for a good used P2000 in the future. CAD graphics card series are not required for your listed applications, actually they are burning money for no benefit. Buy a capable nVidia GeForce GTX 1060 6G and you're fine, as make Asus and MSI are recommendable.

Happy to see you got it sorted.

Another great tool for terrain to be used instead of Sandbox for skinning is Fredo's Toposhaper. A good start if you have not seen it is an older video by Daniel Tal on 3d basecamp. Daniel has produced a lot of SU teaching materials, much of it regarding terrain work. You can search his blogs, videos, and books. I can't find my favorite basecamp video right now. Valiarchitects has some good tools if you are looking for plugins for roads, walls, and buildings. I also use Artisan and Vertex tools for this work.

@pbacot said: @mluy said: @juju said: It is unwise to paint components / groups, rather paint the geometry within the group / component. Thanks but that is also what I tried, it also does not work Even drawing a box or rectangle without making it a component or group cannot be painted Are you saying that you have no materials showing as painted in the file at all? In this case it may be you've set the face style to "monochrome" and you need to set it to "shaded with textures". and in fact, your screenshot leads me to think this as well. That's cool the way it is indicated in SU for Windows. (Another fail on the Mac though) O my goodness thank you so much , you guys are awsome What a silly mistake to make, I am staring myself blind and the solution is right in front of me!!!

Perhaps mesh simplifying in MeshLab helps and does not do much deformation (or almost at all)? Free & easy if the object has no holes (If I remember correctly the manifold has to be closed). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_r-cT2jngk

@jonfar said: thats good to know, because my 100+ mb files lag a bit ...that Sketchup was mostly CPU/RAM intensive... SU is CPU intensive (single-thread performance), nevertheless for a balanced system an appropriate GPU (as well as enough RAM) is of course required too. Don't invest to much in a GPU, at least for sole SU modeling purposes, otherwise you will be disappointed.

Yeah let's hope it doesn't become an issue, I've never seen a preview pane I don't think.

Solved. It was the Material creation window that was outside my PC screen. See this thread for info how to fix. https://forums.sketchup.com/t/cannot-create-new-materilas/12642/3

Thanks all. I actually found it this morning. For some reason, this setting is saved with a scene. I found that turning it off and updating the scene corrected the issue.

Thanks, easy fix!