another way (posted by susan sorger) is to create a template with a large number of disabled layers. thus when you create new geometry or dimensions/text just put it in one of the disabled layers, enable it and create a new scene. it will show only in the new scene.

Thanks again to all. Very informative. Rick

@unknownuser said: Does your above mentioned dxf file arrive as a 3d entity when you use the version 12 export, when exported in plan view? Do you have to export using an isometric view? Yes, always as a 3d entity, independent of view. @unknownuser said: although I first thought that having each wall for instance as an individual component a pain, Once I have the walls on their own layer, I usaully explode them all and reform them all into one new group, leaving the windows in their own individual groups/components. Same with the entities that form the roof...explode em and reform into a single group

Thank you for the tip Wo3Dan, I'll keep those tips in mind for the next time. As my file kept crashing by using the drape tool, I handed it over to a colleaugue who did it in 1 minute using Rhino. The trouble with the sketchup drape tool is that it is basically a ruby, and thus has difficulties with large amounts of geometry....and in a lot of cases, DWG site imports are full of it. Friday was really a day of Sketchup frustration. Anyone sells a SU stress ball?

its a very complicated thing, and only really learnt through a lot of practice. This thread might be of interest, though: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=2650 If you search the tutorials forum, there should also be some more specific tutorials in there.

I figured it out right after posting this thanks

Or when you have bunch of back faces, you can select them all (Shift + select = toggle selecion, Ctrl + Select = add to selection, Shift + Ctrl + Select = Deselect) then right click on any of the selected faces and do the reverse operation per Remus' method above. If you have a neatly and cleanly made model and it's not too complex yet, right clicking on a front face and choosing "Orient faces" may work as well since it should turn all back faces to front faces. There are a lot of factors that influence this however and often unwanted results may occur.

Ive done a few from here. http://www.latech.edu/tech/physical-plant/buildingabbr.html

I vote for mm. If I ever use anything else but millimeters it's meters when the models are of a large scale. Cm might be closer in number to inch, but it doesn't feel like a natural unit to work with. In architectural offices the default unit is mm. Same for engineering.

That looks great. There a bunch of .vob waterfalls that came with Vue on the extra content CD as well. I didn't realize that up until now. It's amazing how I seem to find something new everytime I play with Vue.

Thank you

No,it hasn't changed. A component can only have one gluing/cutting plane at a time (since the axis szstem defines it and there can only be one axis system at a time). There are workarounds but not an ultimate solution.

Hi Greg, This seems to be some video card / driver related thing. Can you try to disable hardware acceleration at Window > Preferences > OpenGL settings? If it "seems" to fix the issue, you should make sure that your card is fully OpenGL compliant and has the latest driver. What video card do you actually have?

I thought is had something to do with WedDialogs, but I can't remember the specifics. Was it the Instructor window?

Dont worry I worked it out myself, thank you so much for your help, this will make my model/render so much better!

Then instead of positioning, select the "Projected" option instead.

There is amassmaterialimporter.rb plugin in the Ruby Library Depot. I don't know how (well) it exactly works -note that it was written for version % first and since version 6, SU handles materials differently. Yet it says 5+ so itmight work. Maybe you still have to scale your materials properly?

Thank you for your support remus. This forum is a joy to belong to. Andrew I believe you are best placed to decide what best suits your particular workflow requirement. Dynamic Components may or may not feature in your preferred tool set. Fortunately there are enough features in SketchUp to satisfy most user preferences.

Brilliant - that ruby (the one by Didier Bur) is fantastic - will save me loads of time - big tx and a happy new year!