@remus said:

@wacov said:

I really noticed the speed increase, especially with textures on. Seems strange they didn't do this before

It does take time you know.

John,

I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble.

The issue appears to be that the SketchUp installer is not able to successfully install one of the prerequisite assemblies from Microsoft that SketchUp requires. The item in question is provided in a pre-built module that we get from Microsoft, so we don't have an opportunity to change exactly how it is installed. My guess is that it may be conflicting with another version of the assembly already on your machine.

I hate to have to resort to such a brute-force method, but you could try uninstalling SketchUp 7 and then install SketchUp 7.1 from scratch. However, there is no guarantee that would solve anything; especially if the error is one which does not get repaired by uninstall (if the conflicting assembly was installed by another program, it wouldn't be touched by uninstalling SU).

We'll put our heads together over this, but since it is in a component that we do not control, I do not expect we will find a quick resolution. If you decide to try anything else, please let us know how it turns out.

Grimjier,

I wrote this part of the installer, so I can give you some assistance here.

Google SketchUp Pro (7.0 and 7.1) require that you have the .NET Framework 2.0 (or newer) installed on your machine. The Free version of Google SketchUp does not have this requirement.

The SU Pro installer is configured to check for the .NET Framework and download it if you do not already have it. This only affects Windows XP users because Vista comes with the necessary version already installed. If the installer is attempting to download .NET Framework, it is because the program we use to check for its presence, which is provided by Microsoft, says you don't have it.

The download should normally be pretty fast, but in some cases, it may take a few hours to complete, or may just hang and never finish. Unfortunately, we use a Microsoft-provided mechanism for this entire operation, from checking for the product, to displaying the EULA, to downloading and installing it. Since it's not ours, there is nothing we can do to improve the reliability of the check, the robustness of the downloader, or the verbosity of the progress indicator. Believe me, I've tried.

Thankfully, I believe there is a workaround. You just need to install the .NET Framework 2.0 or newer before running the SketchUp installer and all will be well.

If you believe .NET 2.0 is already installed, then you would want to first uninstall it from the Add/Remove Programs menu, and then reinstall it. I think the program that looks for .NET bases its discovery on certain registry keys. If for some reason the registry has become corrupted or the keys are absent, that could cause it to want to download, even though you installed it previously.

The easiest and most highly recommended way to get .NET Framework 2.0 is via Windows Update. Optionally, you can either install .NET Framework 2.0, or something newer, like 3.5.

If you have trouble with Windows Update, you can download the .NET Framework directly. Be aware that the download links are different for 32-bit vs. 64-bit versions of Windows XP.

.NET Framework 2.0 32-bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856EACB-4362-4B0D-8EDD-AAB15C5E04F5&displaylang=en

.NET Framework 2.0 64-bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=B44A0000-ACF8-4FA1-AFFB-40E78D788B00&displaylang=en

Good luck and please let me know if this works.

@gene davis said:

My Chief Architect software is able to use Sketchup 6 models via a simple drag and drop. My problem is that I have a new computer, and only have SU 7 on it. SU 6 is on my old machine, in storage. Does Google make available previous versions as free downloads?

Gene,

The free version of Google SketchUp 6 is no longer available for download in English.

I would suggest the method others have recommended, by saving your models from SU7 in SU6 format.

@aceshigh said:

Dunno what is happening. It was a long time that I didnt connect Sketchup with GoogleEarth. But now I decided to make some 3D models for my area... and guess what? Sketchup cant IMPORT GoogleEarth terrain, neither it can EXPORT a model to be geographically positioned in GoogleEarth.

I dunno what to do. Anyone has any idea? I have tons of plugins installed... maybe one of them is causing the problem?

AcesHigh,

I can't tell from your message or your profile whether you're using Mac or Windows. Nevertheless, I can at least say that recently, there was a problem with a release of Google Earth that broke SketchUp integration on Mac. The problem was located quickly and a new version of Earth was pushed out to correct the issue, but not before many customers were automatically upgraded to the broken version.

Let's try manually forcing Earth to look for updates. Perhaps you're running on an outdated version and your problem will go away if you upgrade.

In Google Earth, go to Help...Check for Updates Online. That's what it is on Mac; I can't remember for Windows. If an update is available, download and install it. Then try again.

Let us know what you find.

Andrew

All,

We are looking into this problem, but unfortunately, none of our QA or development engineers has never seen this problem themselves, so we can't use our debugging tools to track it down.

When I spoke with one of our tech support people a couple of weeks ago, she had an idea that it is related to UAC (user account control in Vista), but nothing concrete. She theorized that disabling UAC might fix the problem, but of course, we cannot be responsible for your decision to do that, so proceed only at your own risk. If you want to try it, Google for instructions with a query such as "vista disable uac". If you do this, please let us know the results. If it works, you may also try re-enabling uac after the first time you run to see if it behaves any differently afterward.

I just sent word about this problem to a second tech support rep and hopefully he'll have some ideas as well.

I'd like to reiterate that SketchUp 7 Free and Pro should both work on XP (32-bit or 64-bit) and all editions of Vista (32-bit and 64-bit).

For those of you who are interested in more technical details, keep reading. Otherwise, ignore the rest.

Although the error message is cryptic, it is clear that whatever problem is occurring terminates inside the Windows system library Secur32.dll, which is a built-in module that assists with Windows security. As everyone is aware, Vista has far more security devices than XP, so it's likely that the added Vista security items are the source of the problem (no one has reported this problem on XP).

Essentially, whenever SketchUp (or any other program, for that matter) needs Windows to do something on its behalf, it makes a "call" into one of many system libraries that are built into Windows. It is by using these system libraries that programs get access to things like manipulating the registry or files on disk, determining the time of day, or finding out who is currently logged on, among thousands of other things. Evidently, in the course of trying to start SketchUp, a call is being made to a function that lives in Secur32.dll and that call is failing. The failure is probably due to a prerequisite not being met (an attribute being mis-configured before making the call, or something of that nature), or the function being given bogus data (probably because it isn't properly configured beforehand).

In order from least to most likely, the failure can be due to a bug in the library itself (Microsoft's fault); due to a bug in SketchUp (out fault); or due to a problem in a third-party module such as a graphics card driver, in the event that SketchUp calls the driver and the driver calls Secur32.dll (third party's fault). In any case, the inability of Secur32.dll to take the requested action causes Windows to forcefully terminate SketchUp.

We've briefly looked at the startup code that we know makes calls into Secur32.dll and we are unable to locate any problems with it. Since we cannot duplicate it however, we can't use our more robust tools to try to diagnose the source of the error in real time. Although it's possible the problem is in our code, I currently believe it is related to a bug in a third-party program such as a graphics driver (or, much less likely, a problem in Secur32.dll itself).

I was just about to submit this message, but the tech support person I mentioned earlier has just written back asking me to provide the following link, which shows a discussion about this very issue. Perhaps that will shed some light on the situation. http://groups.google.com/group/sketchupissues/browse_thread/thread/c99ddb127a18a933

Note that the link above provides several other links to folks complaining of this problem. In their cases, it appears to be isolated to HP hardware.

Please read the links, decide if you want to try the uac workaround, and then ultimately respond and let me know if any of the additional material sheds light on your situation(s).

All,

I suspect the problem in Mark's case is due to a quirk in the way Microsoft Windows Installer technology is processing the SketchUp installer package. I don't think it has anything to do with our installer, but rather, with something going wrong with the internal components in Windows that are used to install our package.

I've sent Mark a PM with something to try. If that yields any results, I'll share some of the findings in this thread.

@verikon said:

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: SketchUp.exe
Application Version: 7.0.10247.0

I'm sorry to hear of the trouble you're having. I've forwarded this to our QA team who will take a look and let you know if they have any suggestions.

We're looking into this problem. In the meantime, I've sent Fletch a PM with some additional things to try. We'll update you if we figure out the cause of the problem, but this is the first I've heard of it, so I don't think it's a common issue.

@chris fullmer said:

Hey, could you employ that same trickery to over-ride any authorization needed so I can install it on my school computers when I have no admin priveleges at all?

I like your thinking, but unfortunately, no. The trickery is to require the user to authenticate at install time, which allows us to perform future licensing operations without requiring the user to choose "run as administrator".

@gaieus said:

Oh, sorry, Tom, the "administrator" thing with Vista and SU was kind of obvious to me (and definitely not SU 5 speific) that I didn't even think about it first. Sometimes you even need to run SU first like this in order to get Vista to believe it is legitimate.

But at least you have it correct now.

<Shameless plug>
In the latest version of SU7, this problem is corrected by some trickery we perform at install time.
</Shameless Plug>

@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.

@harley monster said:

I have found the problem.
Can anyone teach me what "Use Model Extents" means? I have no clue what this is for or how you would use it. Any commments?

The 'extents' are the farthest points in all directions that contain any model elements. Ordinarily, what is printed is based on what's on the screen. If you choose to print to the model's extents, that means it will shrink the model down so that the entire space fits on the printed page, instead of printing according to the current view.

Andrew

@chris fullmer said:

You might have to get more specific. I'm not recalling the exact problem. Did it probably have something to do with exporting the model for rendering?

Chris

Yep, specifics would be good. None of the developers here know what this issue is about...

Andrew

@akibobot said:

I can't practice either Google Sketchup 6 of Google Sketchup 7 on my laptop. It used to work then but suddenly an error came and it kept going and going like that even though I tried to install and re-install.
here's the prompt from my Windows Vista OS laptop
SKETCHUP APPLICATION HAS STOPPED WORKING
A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available.
damn, I really need to learn Sketchup, I need it in my daily job, lolz. How could I practice if it is not working in my laptop. Somebody help me...tnx.

Bobot,

I'm sorry to hear of your problem, but I'll try to help. Are you saying that both SU6 and SU7 are installed on your machine, but neither one works now?

Let's start with SketchUp 7. When you reinstalled, did you download the newest available file directly from Google?
Free: http://dl.google.com/sketchup/GoogleSketchUpWEN.exe
Pro: http://dl.google.com/sketchup/GoogleSketchUpProWEN.exe

To make sure you're running the newest version, please use Windows Explorer to navigate to C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 7. Hover over SketchUp.exe. The tool-tip text should show the following:
Description: Google SketchUp
Company: Google, Inc.
File Version: 7.0.10247.0

If you find you don't have the right version, or if you think you may have installed a file that you got from somewhere other than dl.google.com, try uninstalling SketchUp, and then reinstall it from one of the links above.

You may be able to solve some problems by running the program as administrator. That shouldn't be necessary, but the support folks tell me that they have seen some problems for Vista users where the program doesn't work properly from non-admin accounts. To test this theory, right-click on SketchUp.exe and choose "Run as administrator".

Unfortunately, if you really are having problems with both SU6 and SU7, it is almost certainly a problem with your operating system installation or a rogue piece of recently installed software corrupting files that are required for SketchUp. SU6 and SU7 can both run on the machine simultaneously without any problems and there is no overlap between them for what is installed into the Program Files directories. If they're both broken, it probably means something external to SketchUp is the cause.

Try the steps I mentioned and let me know how it goes.

Andrew

@unknownuser said:

Looks as if I have lost the ability to make components. Recieved the following error code, however, not a bug splash.
Google I hope your out there.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Ken

Ken,

Unfortunately, this is a very generic error message that is generated by the Windows runtime system, not by SketchUp. It may reveal a bug in SketchUp, but it also may be a configuration problem with your machine.

I can try to look into this, but I need a lot more details.

What version of Windows? What version of SketchUp? When did the problem start occurring? Have you upgraded the system recently or installed any other applications? (That is important because another application might have accidentally modified the C++ runtime libraries, which would adversely affect SketchUp). Please also provide a specific list of steps to perform that result in seeing the error. If possible, save the model before you perform the action and send it to me in a PM so I can try it on our systems.

Thanks,

Andrew

@unknownuser said:

Hi Guys,
I've recently captured my house from Google Earth and modeled it on SU7. The file is attached. My question is how do i get the part i modeled to sit on the sloping site that i live on? Things like the fence, house and shed are ugly when i use the stamp tool. And when i try to smoove terrain it gets messy? If i have to start again it's fine but I'd like to know if there's a video out there that can explain what I'm trying to achieve?

Hi, rclub24,

Thanks for modeling for Google Earth. We always appreciate seeing more user-generated content (UGC). I have several recommendations for you, which I obtained from one of our best SU/Earth trainers and in-house modelers. I also spent quite a bit of time fixing up your model to demonstrate the topics I'll mention below so that you will understand what I mean. I'm hoping this note will help not only you, but other users in the future, which is why it's going to be far more detailed than you expected.

First and foremost, just last week, we launched a new website dedicated to UGC modeling for Earth. It has a great intro video by my friend Alex, as well as some wonderful tutorials. I think spending 10 minutes at that site will make the following instructions far clearer, so I highly recommend you go there.

http://sketchup.google.com/yourworldin3d/

Seriously, go to that site!!

And if you fancy more details, please see another site, which happens to be user-contributed.

http://sites.google.com/site/sketchupsage/google-earth#TOC-Tips-for-modelling-buildings-for-Go

Those are really great sites, but you wanted some advice for your specific model, so here goes.

I see five basic problems with your model so far. Some of them have to do with your terrain issues; the others are major problems that will preclude your model's acceptance into Earth if they're not fixed.

1. The model has far too many faces.
2. The model should be photo textured.
3. The model currently contains a single-face terrain that needs to be removed.
4. The model has a level straight fence and wall that doesn't touch the ground.
5. It may be necessary to add a foundation for the house or introduce a skirt around it to match the terrain.

First, I want to address the major issues that will prevent your model from being accepted into Earth.

• This was the most difficult thing for me to personally accept when I started Geo modeling, but the simple fact is that there's a HUGE difference between what makes for an appropriate architectural model versus what makes an acceptable model for Google Earth (GE). Primarily, GE buildings need to have as few faces as possible and they need to be photo textured. The sooner you get used to this paradigm, the sooner you'll be able to see your models accepted into GE.
• We used to never accept models into GE that are textured with SketchUp materials, although we have begun to make exceptions. The very best way to texture your home is by photographing the outside of your home and pasting those pictures onto your home as textures. You can actually model directly from pictures using the match photo tool, or, as in your case, you can simply pin up textures onto the building you've already created. You can find tutorials for doing this online, including at the sites I mentioned above. Note that by using photo textures, there is no need to model any of the details of windows, gutters, doors, etc., which will contribute to reducing the face count, as I'll explain next. We do sometimes accept non-photo-textured models now because we have loosened the rules, but photo texturing is still preferred, so do it if you can. I just learned how to do it recently, and it's surprisingly EASY!
• We have a pretty strict limit on how many faces a model is allowed to have for submission in Earth. This is understandable, I think, since you already know how 3D apps bog down when there are too many faces. It can be a nightmare to navigate through a densely populated city otherwise. Your starting model is already over the limit in terms of face count. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I spent a couple of hours playing with your model and reduced your face count from around 5,000 to under 1,000 by changing the fence and flattening architectural details such as the gutters, windows, doors, and framing. Instead of using geometry to model these things, you get far superior results with photo textures instead. Zoom in on the buildings in any major metropolitan city we've modeled to see what I mean (try Vancouver or New York, for instance). Even if you don't photo texture, you don't need all of those details for modeling in GE.
• The fences increase your face count tremendously when you take the time to actually model them. The same goes for the 3D wall. The trick we use for our in-house models is to take a picture of the fence and save it as a PNG with transparency. Use Photoshop or a similar program to remove the everything except for the actual fence rails and make the background totally transparent. Then for the fence, just use a simple 2D face with no thickness, and apply the fence picture as a texture onto both sides of the face in a repeating pattern. This will make the fence appear properly from most angles (except from straight above it), and it will have several thousand fewer faces than you have now! The same goes for the brick wall. This is the single fastest way to fix your specific model's face count problems. I'll talk some more below about how your fence should be fixed to match the terrain.

Now, to address the question you asked, regarding terrain.

• GE terrain isn't perfect. It's averaged over pretty large areas and it also doesn't always reflect reality when earth movers and backhoes have prepared land for a home's foundation. Even so, it's imperative that your model look reasonably good in the presence of that terrain.
• First, remove that big green face you have for grass in your model at present. The reason the smooth to terrain feature is not working is that in order to work, you must begin with a surface that is comprised of many triangle faces so that each can be bent as a mesh into the shape of the terrain. With just one large face, it doesn't work. You're better off deleting your ground face than trying to fix it; I promise.
• Let's pretend the terrain is correct, or at least close enough, and consider how to fix the problems with the house. Begin by turning off X-ray mode, then move the house downward in the blue axis until it starts to impact the terrain. Stop when that occurs. Orbit the house and use the tape measure to determine whether the terrain all the way around is close enough to make it look reasonable. In your case, unfortunately, after I did that, the front door is on the ground, but the back door has a 4-foot drop before it hits terrain. That leaves us three choices: 1) leave it alone, with the building floating; 2) create a larger foundation to prevent floating, and ignore the 4-foot drop out back; 3) build a skirt to simulate the proper terrain.
• According to one of our in-house UGC judges, it's usually better to leave the house floating or build a foundation, than to build the skirt. This is due to several issues. 1) If the terrain in Earth is updated someday, it may fix itself; 2) if the skirt is so large as to intrude into other surrounding property, it may overlap with other UGC models in the future; 3) building a skirt requires you to do complex snapshotting of the color satellite data from Earth and paste it onto the skirt, which is complicated, and won't benefit from being updated when the satellite makes another pass in the future, so it's discouraged.
• In your case, I would concentrate on fixing the photo texturing, redoing the fence, and lowering the house and shed so that they impact the terrain at their lowest points. After that, I'd let the rest of the building sit on an artificial foundation that impacts the terrain without hiding any of the house. This may sound silly, but if you go look in Earth at the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder, you'll find that several buildings there are floating, due to changes in terrain that were made to GE after those models were built. In the case of the Coors Events center on that campus, you'll see that hills and other terrain were included with the model, because it was introduced before GE supported terrain properly. Some of those models now look terrible as a result, which will eventually require someone to go back and make additional fixes. Nobody wants that, which is why I suggest you just use the foundation.
• If you just can't stand the notion of leaving your building floating in mid-air and want to ignore the warnings I gave above, then go ahead and build a skirt. I'm not going to give complete directions because you can find those on one of the sites I mentioned. But in general, you basically attach a surface of connected triangles hanging off of the building that eventually smooth out to touch the GE terrain. Then you have to go into Earth, take a screen capture (NOT a snapshot into SketchUp), to capture the color terrain, and paste it as a texture onto your skirt. It's very time-consuming and difficult for first-timers.
• Now for the fence. You'll find I've taken a very rough shot at doing this in your model. You can either leave it or improve it as you see fit, but it illustrates the point. I started by tracing a line around your existing fence, all at one height. Then I removed the original fence you had. After that, I used "Drape" from the sandbox tools to trace that line directly onto the terrain where the fence should be. Following that, I selected all edges created by that trace and copied them 4 feet off the ground to represent the top of the fence. Then I simply drew lines at the corners to create faces. In the end, I have three faces, one for each length of fence on your property. I then applied a generic fence texture that has a transparent background, so if you look closely, you can see through the texture as needed to give the look of a real fence, even though it's just a 2-D face. After applying the texture, you want to use the position texture feature to pin the texture appropriately to make it follow the terrain. You'll note that if you make each side one large face, your texture won't fit perfectly, as evidenced by the model I modified. This is because the angle of incline is not steady across the entire span. To fix this, you could draw a line every 6 or 8 feet to represent your real split-rail fence, and customize the fit of the texture on each segment. That was too much work for me in this case, so I left it alone.

I think that's it for now. It's taken a few minutes every day for the past week to get this put together, so I want to finally get it sent out so it may be of some use. I know this is an absurdly long response, but I hope you find it helpful. Please respond on here at some point and let us know how you progress.

Best of luck modeling!

@gaieus said:

Copied from the [url=http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=17702:3snm1fbi]quoted post below[/url:3snm1fbi].
Please, don't post questions and such here in this topic - or actually you can do but then they will be split off. We'd like to keep this "sticky" topic as a "reference guide" easily browsable.

@henriquebsoares said:

Hello! Really need help...
I'm working in an office and in my computer I do not have administrator priviledges. I'm using Google Earth 5 and Google SketchUp 7 but when I try to import a terrain from Google Earth into SketchUp, Google Earth asks for a file called GoogleEarth.msi to complete the installation.
My administrator has already updated Google Earth and the import/export process works perfectly on his login, but on mine it keeps asking for the .msi file.
Even if I can find the .msi file (which the Google Earth installer apparently deletes), the dialog does not allow me to edit the folder path to retrieve the file and the preset path is some temp folder in the administrator folders, where I cannot access files.
Does anyone have any solution for this? Thank you for any tips!
Henrique, from Portugal

Henrique,

The problem you are experiencing is related to the Google Earth installer. I passed the information on to the developer who created the GE installer and he is looking into it. Since the problem is apparently very rare and complex, I can't promise it's easily fixable, but at least you know we are aware of it.

Andrew

@csilewski said:

Does anyone know how i can get style builder for sketchup 6 pro?

Hi,

Style Builder is now bundled with SketchUp Pro 7. Google briefly made a beta version available over a year ago, to customers who already owned SketchUp Pro 6. However, having been superseded by the full version included in SketchUp Pro 7, the original Style Builder Beta for 6 is no longer available for download.

The upgrade to SketchUp Pro 7 is $95 for those who hold valid licenses for SketchUp Pro 6 (purchased from Google). A free trial is available to allow you to try before you buy.
http://www.sketchup.com/store/google-license-upgrade-to-su7.ep

Andrew

@unknownuser said:

Hi Guys,
I've recently captured my house from Google Earth and modeled it on SU7. The file is attached. My question is how do i get the part i modeled to sit on the sloping site that i live on? Things like the fence, house and shed are ugly when i use the stamp tool. And when i try to smoove terrain it gets messy? If i have to start again it's fine but I'd like to know if there's a video out there that can explain what I'm trying to achieve?

Hi, rclub24,

Thanks for modeling for Google Earth. We always appreciate seeing more user-generated content (UGC). I have several recommendations for you, which I obtained from one of our best SU/Earth trainers and in-house modelers. I also spent quite a bit of time fixing up your model to demonstrate the topics I'll mention below so that you will understand what I mean. I'm hoping this note will help not only you, but other users in the future, which is why it's going to be far more detailed than you expected.

First and foremost, just last week, we launched a new website dedicated to UGC modeling for Earth. It has a great intro video by my friend Alex, as well as some wonderful tutorials. I think spending 10 minutes at that site will make the following instructions far clearer, so I highly recommend you go there.

http://sketchup.google.com/yourworldin3d/

Seriously, go to that site!!

And if you fancy more details, please see another site, which happens to be user-contributed.

http://sites.google.com/site/sketchupsage/google-earth#TOC-Tips-for-modelling-buildings-for-Go

Those are really great sites, but you wanted some advice for your specific model, so here goes.

I see five basic problems with your model so far. Some of them have to do with your terrain issues; the others are major problems that will preclude your model's acceptance into Earth if they're not fixed.

1. The model has far too many faces.
2. The model should be photo textured.
3. The model currently contains a single-face terrain that needs to be removed.
4. The model has a level straight fence and wall that doesn't touch the ground.
5. It may be necessary to add a foundation for the house or introduce a skirt around it to match the terrain.

First, I want to address the major issues that will prevent your model from being accepted into Earth.

• This was the most difficult thing for me to personally accept when I started Geo modeling, but the simple fact is that there's a HUGE difference between what makes for an appropriate architectural model versus what makes an acceptable model for Google Earth (GE). Primarily, GE buildings need to have as few faces as possible and they need to be photo textured. The sooner you get used to this paradigm, the sooner you'll be able to see your models accepted into GE.
• We used to never accept models into GE that are textured with SketchUp materials, although we have begun to make exceptions. The very best way to texture your home is by photographing the outside of your home and pasting those pictures onto your home as textures. You can actually model directly from pictures using the match photo tool, or, as in your case, you can simply pin up textures onto the building you've already created. You can find tutorials for doing this online, including at the sites I mentioned above. Note that by using photo textures, there is no need to model any of the details of windows, gutters, doors, etc., which will contribute to reducing the face count, as I'll explain next. We do sometimes accept non-photo-textured models now because we have loosened the rules, but photo texturing is still preferred, so do it if you can. I just learned how to do it recently, and it's surprisingly EASY!
• We have a pretty strict limit on how many faces a model is allowed to have for submission in Earth. This is understandable, I think, since you already know how 3D apps bog down when there are too many faces. It can be a nightmare to navigate through a densely populated city otherwise. Your starting model is already over the limit in terms of face count. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I spent a couple of hours playing with your model and reduced your face count from around 5,000 to under 1,000 by changing the fence and flattening architectural details such as the gutters, windows, doors, and framing. Instead of using geometry to model these things, you get far superior results with photo textures instead. Zoom in on the buildings in any major metropolitan city we've modeled to see what I mean (try Vancouver or New York, for instance). Even if you don't photo texture, you don't need all of those details for modeling in GE.
• The fences increase your face count tremendously when you take the time to actually model them. The same goes for the 3D wall. The trick we use for our in-house models is to take a picture of the fence and save it as a PNG with transparency. Use Photoshop or a similar program to remove the everything except for the actual fence rails and make the background totally transparent. Then for the fence, just use a simple 2D face with no thickness, and apply the fence picture as a texture onto both sides of the face in a repeating pattern. This will make the fence appear properly from most angles (except from straight above it), and it will have several thousand fewer faces than you have now! The same goes for the brick wall. This is the single fastest way to fix your specific model's face count problems. I'll talk some more below about how your fence should be fixed to match the terrain.

Now, to address the question you asked, regarding terrain.

• GE terrain isn't perfect. It's averaged over pretty large areas and it also doesn't always reflect reality when earth movers and backhoes have prepared land for a home's foundation. Even so, it's imperative that your model look reasonably good in the presence of that terrain.
• First, remove that big green face you have for grass in your model at present. The reason the smooth to terrain feature is not working is that in order to work, you must begin with a surface that is comprised of many triangle faces so that each can be bent as a mesh into the shape of the terrain. With just one large face, it doesn't work. You're better off deleting your ground face than trying to fix it; I promise.
• Let's pretend the terrain is correct, or at least close enough, and consider how to fix the problems with the house. Begin by turning off X-ray mode, then move the house downward in the blue axis until it starts to impact the terrain. Stop when that occurs. Orbit the house and use the tape measure to determine whether the terrain all the way around is close enough to make it look reasonable. In your case, unfortunately, after I did that, the front door is on the ground, but the back door has a 4-foot drop before it hits terrain. That leaves us three choices: 1) leave it alone, with the building floating; 2) create a larger foundation to prevent floating, and ignore the 4-foot drop out back; 3) build a skirt to simulate the proper terrain.
• According to one of our in-house UGC judges, it's usually better to leave the house floating or build a foundation, than to build the skirt. This is due to several issues. 1) If the terrain in Earth is updated someday, it may fix itself; 2) if the skirt is so large as to intrude into other surrounding property, it may overlap with other UGC models in the future; 3) building a skirt requires you to do complex snapshotting of the color satellite data from Earth and paste it onto the skirt, which is complicated, and won't benefit from being updated when the satellite makes another pass in the future, so it's discouraged.
• In your case, I would concentrate on fixing the photo texturing, redoing the fence, and lowering the house and shed so that they impact the terrain at their lowest points. After that, I'd let the rest of the building sit on an artificial foundation that impacts the terrain without hiding any of the house. This may sound silly, but if you go look in Earth at the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder, you'll find that several buildings there are floating, due to changes in terrain that were made to GE after those models were built. In the case of the Coors Events center on that campus, you'll see that hills and other terrain were included with the model, because it was introduced before GE supported terrain properly. Some of those models now look terrible as a result, which will eventually require someone to go back and make additional fixes. Nobody wants that, which is why I suggest you just use the foundation.
• If you just can't stand the notion of leaving your building floating in mid-air and want to ignore the warnings I gave above, then go ahead and build a skirt. I'm not going to give complete directions because you can find those on one of the sites I mentioned. But in general, you basically attach a surface of connected triangles hanging off of the building that eventually smooth out to touch the GE terrain. Then you have to go into Earth, take a screen capture (NOT a snapshot into SketchUp), to capture the color terrain, and paste it as a texture onto your skirt. It's very time-consuming and difficult for first-timers.
• Now for the fence. You'll find I've taken a very rough shot at doing this in your model. You can either leave it or improve it as you see fit, but it illustrates the point. I started by tracing a line around your existing fence, all at one height. Then I removed the original fence you had. After that, I used "Drape" from the sandbox tools to trace that line directly onto the terrain where the fence should be. Following that, I selected all edges created by that trace and copied them 4 feet off the ground to represent the top of the fence. Then I simply drew lines at the corners to create faces. In the end, I have three faces, one for each length of fence on your property. I then applied a generic fence texture that has a transparent background, so if you look closely, you can see through the texture as needed to give the look of a real fence, even though it's just a 2-D face. After applying the texture, you want to use the position texture feature to pin the texture appropriately to make it follow the terrain. You'll note that if you make each side one large face, your texture won't fit perfectly, as evidenced by the model I modified. This is because the angle of incline is not steady across the entire span. To fix this, you could draw a line every 6 or 8 feet to represent your real split-rail fence, and customize the fit of the texture on each segment. That was too much work for me in this case, so I left it alone.

I think that's it for now. It's taken a few minutes every day for the past week to get this put together, so I want to finally get it sent out so it may be of some use. I know this is an absurdly long response, but I hope you find it helpful. Please respond on here at some point and let us know how you progress.

Best of luck modeling!

I made modifications to rclub24's original model, to illustrate points made in the associated forum post.