Dave's method could perhaps be refined:
Anssi
The Quadro NVS video card is not a good choice for SketchUp. It is designed to be a cheap card for business applications with multiple monitors (like computers in stock dealing halls) and has poor 3D performance. I don't know if it currently supports OpenGL (some time ago it didn't). The Quadro name in this case is misleading - the professional 3D cards belong to the Quadro FX series or newer. But SU runs quite well with the "consumer" cards (GeForce etc.) too. Your CPU is also rather slow.
Anssi
@dale said:
Allandale House
William OBrien Jr http://www.wojr.org/work/allandale-house/
This brought to my mind the Ecumenic chapel of st. Henrik's in Turku, Finland, by Matti Sanaksenaho
Turku also has the one of the most beautiful modern church buildings I know, The Resurrection (funerary) chapel, by Erik Bryggman, 1941
Anssi
The Nordic countries have a long, long tradition of youth movements linked to political parties. Also the conservative ones have theirs. And especially between the wars children of leftist parents didn't feel very welcome into the "apolitical" movements like Boy Scouts or the youth organizations belonging to the semi-official paramilitary corps (in Sweden and Finland).
Anssi
@bjornkn said:
I always thought (and have been told) that DWG does not store the unit type in the file.
None of the DWG/DXF viewers/converters I've been using have been able to read the units from the files. It is just numbers.
I don't remember when this was introduced, but newer DWG/DXF files have information about the model unit embedded in the file header. It is in the form of variables:
MEASUREMENT 0 for Imperial, 1 for Decimal. This has existed since time immemorial
INSUNITS 0 unspecified 1 inches 2 feet 3 miles 4 Millimeters .... 20 Parsecs
The SketchUp exporter does not record this information, so when you insert a SU-exported DWG into another in AutoCad, it uses another variable, INSUNITSDEFSOURCE to determine how to scale it - this defaults to Inches 
and is stored in the Registry whereas the two prementioned are within the drawing file.
Anssi
@jdadesignstudio said:
You can also fix this in CAD-in CAD go to format units, and check what they are. If you put it into architectural, then it should import properly into SU if SU is in the feet mode.
Unfortunately not. The SU importer (and exporter) ignores the unit variables embedded in DWG files. The LayOut exporter understands them partly (it creates correct variables if your units are inches or millimeters). Exports from SU use the current model units, but the unit is not recorded into the file, so when importing them to ACAD, you have to take care.
Anssi
DC attributes cannot be transferred between different components, so the thing to do is to put them as subcomponents within a "parent" component. Then you can make the attributes in the "child" ones react to attribute changes in the parent. If I remember right, this works through 2 levels of nesting.
Anssi
The import units (the default is Feet) and other import options are hidden behind the Options button on the right bottom corner area of the import File dialog box.
Anssi
What you describe in your first post has happened to me too. I would guess that it is a bug. I think it went away when I checked the "Show units format" box in the Model Info>Units dialog.
Of course displaying the "mm" text is quite unprofessional, at least in my country
Anssi
I think I read that it was designed by an Italian!
Anssi
Copy/paste from Excel seems to work decently well, not always perfectly. The table will go awry if I try to edit it within LayOut.
Anssi
XP 64 is already a problematic OS. Try, for instance, to find a security package that supports it - the major players like Symantec or F-secure don't. It's not anymore a supported OS for Microsoft Office either, you have to use workarounds to be able to install it. And it's slower than Win7.
Anssi
I am afraid that it is not possible. Every time you make a copy of a DC and alter its attributes, the Component browser acquires a new component definition. Only exact copies of a DC remain under the same definition. Selecting a bunch and applying the same change to all of them creates a new definition for every single member of the bunch, so the only way to keep the bloat in check is to apply changes to only one instance, and then to make copies of that.
Anssi
The artifacts could also be caused by the overall size of the model, or its distance from the SU origin point. Note also that the changes you make in the OpenGL settings only come into effect after you have restarted SU.
Anssi
I haven't noticed any difference. In 2D exports arcs and curves are exported as straight polyline segments.
Anssi
Tried it. To me it looked very much like Revit's Mass functions without the rest of Revit.
Anssi
I have used the (IMO a bit expensive) Norton Internet Security and 360 products for years with no trouble.
Anssi
I just bought Composer but I didn't notice this - I must try it immediately,
Anssi
I have done a similar one too, and I guess that what you request is mathematically not possible.
Anssi
You list two OSes in your profile. Are you trying to run the Windows version of SU on a Mac under Parallels? It probably doesn't work - at least it is an unsupported setup.
Anssi