This is something that the manual should mention. I'll add it to the list.

@al hart said: The locked feature on groups and components is marked as SU 6. If it was added that recently, I wonder why they didn't invent some kind of owner/password scheme for it. (Of course, it they had, someone would have had to find a way to remove the password - e.g. save as DAE and reload.) I just checked with SU5 - no locking feature. Though, the manual never reports anything less than SU6. The Locking is like you'd use in Photoshop, Illustrator etc, as Jeff mentioned. Also in AutoCAD. It's not to prevent other people from ever from editing it. It's just a safety mechanism to protect you from yourself when you're being a bit zealous with the selection tool and eraser. I use when I import CAD plans into SU to model from. I lock the imported plan while I model on top of it. That way I ensure that I don't confidentially move the plan around and mess things up. Password protecting it would be going a bit far. Locking is just something which forces you to be 100% conscious that you actually want to edit/delete an object.

Hi folks. I use small icons to be able to fit more tools in less space. Being 56 do not means that I necessarily need large icons To choose the size of icons you can also use Menu Window --> Preferences --> Workspace. Just ideas.

@maxim1000 said: Since ComponentDefinition is inherited from Drawingelement, calling visible? and hidden? seems not to be some incorrect operation leading to undefined behaviour. Yes, they may not represent actual state of geometry, but this shows that visible? is not the same as !hidden? at least at implementation level, and thus can it be safely assumed that they are the same in all other cases? http://code.google.com/intl/nb/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/drawingelement.html#visible= @unknownuser said: The visible= method is used to set the visible status for an element. This method performs an opposite function to the hidden= method. Might be that the definition class causes an abnormality. Testing against any other DrawingElement derived class that actually is placed in the model they behave as expects. Though it is odd it should return true on both for definition. In practice - they do refer to the same thing though.

I don't know but after trying so many rendering plugins for SketchUP, IREnder nXt is the overall winner foe me! It is not the best quality, nor is the fastest and easiest, but as a whole rendering solution hands up! I'm testing it - You double click on a material in the frame buffer to edit that material - really sweat!

@davidboulder said: I do a lot of panoramic work, there are plenty of free panoramic options there to view panoramas, as well as to create them. But It appears that O3D also does other things. Can you give us some hints on good ways to go from equi-rectangular panoramas to web page display? O3D could do some other things. But I'm not sure what would be useful for a Panorama - while you are looking at an image pasted to the inside of a sphere. Perhaps adding hot spots to link to things? (An, of course, the ability to put a page on your site which will display panoramas directly from the .JPG or .PNG. Do any of the other solution let you pass an image to a single web page for display?) We keep looking at 03D just in case it every catches on or does something good. You would think it would work properly on the Mac browser. If you get the O3D to work, try using the "?file=" mentioned in the first thread of the post to view one of your own panoramas and send us the link if it works well. Are you creating Panorama images from SketchUp?

@thomthom said: Doh! I never noticed that method! Nor is_curve? or single_object?. I know. I searched the SCF first, but never thought to try to search the Ruby documentation. (I kind of assume that if something is important we have discussed it here already.) Actually their search works pretty well. (even better than that) if you go to: http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/index.html And use their search box for something like "Curve" it displays text from and links to pages in the SketchUp documentation containing the word curve. (Just what you might expect it to - but I also suspected that it might search the whole universe for the word curve) I need to use it more often.

If you get that, just press the back button and try to send it again.

For the next Rendering Workshop, I have chosen some basic Kitchen items - which will "highlight" reflections. (excuse the pun). Rendering Workshop - Reflection This Workshop will be too easy for the master renderers on SCF. (It is intended for new users who want to learn more about reflection). But drop by anyway and offer your tips. [image: file.php?id=37922]

By popular demand I have replaced this Exterior Houses Workshop with a Still Life Workshop. (You can still upload your Exterior renderings to this Workshop if you have made one) The Still Life workshop is at: Rendering Workshop - Still Life [image: file.php?id=36541]

I have received some negative comments about this post like: @unknownuser said: It'd be really useful if you were trying to recreate Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield or similar... Just kidding - I'm sure it may come in handy at some point and will try it out! @unknownuser said: his is a terrible idea. By associating the position of the lights with the camera instead of the scene you would make your lighting arbitrary and probably ugly. Learn to light the scene correctly - there is no shortage of information on the subject out there. and @unknownuser said: everything in the scene needs to be addressed separately in order for your scene to be successfully lit. I still think that some scenes, especially by beginning (or perhaps lackadaisical) renderers, can be easily improved with some camera oriented lighting. But maybe the is a lot to be said for learning how to position lights well.

Vielen Dank'

Voila une petite animation rapide [flash=640,480:276rfov2]http://content.screencast.com/users/c.plassais/folders/Jing/media/6d4b95eb-1106-4a29-bb03-a9f8bd7ba4f9/Peau.swf[/flash:276rfov2] Christophe

@thomthom said: :thumb: Good stuff. Though, I have a thought: Why not define the trace method in a Trace class, and then include the class to the methods you want. That way you don't have multiple copies all over the place? Good idea, I could include it in a module of functions. But I would still have to distribute the trace module with each application. And there might be a problem with versions. When a user had installed more than one RPS application, say a new version of A and and old version of B, then A might wind up inheriting from the B version of the module, if the B version was loaded into SketchUp after the A version. At one point we considered having a common set - called RPS_common. But still the problems of installing and uninstalling became difficult.

@kwistenbiebel said: I hope the Japanese version says 'Banzai' and the Scottish version 'Skeeeeeetchuuuuup'

If anyone wants to try the Panoramas, the latest versions of IRender nXt have the panorama feature. You can download a trial version from: http://www.renderplus.com/htm/download.htm One of the IRender nXt users, Boothy, has posted a number of Panoramas on his web site. (click image to start panorama) [image: mad_thumb.jpg]

@jim said: Al, would you mind splitting this trace code off to its own thread? It's useful, and being in its own thread would make it easier to find. Thanks. Will do