Hi Bob, and welcome to the forum

The DWG importer in SketchUp is unable to see the special objects (like walls and roofs)created by ADT, so you must export them in a format that SU can understand. ADT has a function for this, called Export to AutoCad. The results of this operation depend on your current view in ADT. From a plan view, you get a 2D plan drawing, and from a 3D view (isometric, for instance), you get a 3D model.

When importing the DWG, check your import options (button in the right bottom corner of the Import File dialog box) and check the "Delete coplanar edges" box. That will save you a lot of cleanup work, and the imported model is not so heavily triangulated.

Anssi

The bus... hmmm... On which side of the street do they drive in Canada?

Anssi

It's going to be beautiful-and the images are too (except for the too wide camera angles, my pet peeve).

No chimney on the sauna? Here in the "homeland" of sauna a separate sauna like that would generally be wood-heated, or equipped with both a wood and an electric stove. The extreme thing is a "smoke" sauna that has a wood stove without a chimney, but as it poses some fire hazard it is generally built more apart. The sauna roof form is also somewhat problematic, the high part will gather all the steam. A flat or less steep insulated inner ceiling would perhaps be better. Overall the sauna appears too high, of course I cannot be sure.

Anssi

@stuartb said:

thanks Wo3Dan . . I tried the google groups method but didnt understand it!
The cameratilt ruby works fine for me BUT it will not accept a tilt angle less than 1 degree. This means that it is almost impossible to align my building 'square' to my screen.
1 degree error is actually quite a lot.
Thanks for all the feedback so far . . my search continues. I still think a 'Ctrl+Pan' feature to allow you to manually 'spin' the current view would be simple and perfect.

I would guess that the SU camera is not designed to that kind of precision. Even modeling is limited to 0.1 degrees precision.

What I would recommend is that you model your building using the standard SU coordinates, and then make another file for the site, and place your building into that as a component, rotating it to the correct angle. Then you can choose in which file you create your plan views, according to the use they are put in. Updates to the house are a simple "reload" in the site plan model.

Anssi

Brad, Rob,

What Brad says is valid for 3D model exports from SU to DWG, but in 2D exports the origin gets placed in the middle of the current view, and there is no way to place it elsewhere. Maybe making a scene and reverting to that always when exporting would produce accurate enough results? Must make a test - wonder if the results are consistent across different displays, computers and SU window sizes.

Anssi

At the ArtLantis forums someone asked how to make a lampshade. I tried for hours to make one without success(maybe I am just dumb). It was a no-brainer in Indigo thanks to Whaat's excellent presets...

Anssi

If you look at my previous examples closely, the latter is of course much grainier as I stopped it so soon.

This is grainy too, after 2 hours, but I like the light. It's an old model that I once spent a lot of time rendering in ArtLantis or Carrara without getting it just right. This one was again with the standard SkIndigo settings. Next I have to start tweaking the materials...

Thanks for all the help!

Anssi

Thanks again for the tips Whaat!

Here are two tries using exit portals. I guess that having more than 20 of them makes that the improvement in speed is not very dramatic. It seems that it goes much faster using Path Tracing instead of MLT (both bidirectional).

The first one used MLT and was stopped at about 8 hours:

And the second was with PT, 2 hours:

BTW, The wording about the face direction of exit portals in the tutorial is a bit ambiguous, it made me make them face the light at first until I realized that they blocked all the light...

Anssi

I am still trying to learn to use Indigo. My first experiments were perhaps a bit too complicated. These two are stripped of all difficult features. No glass, no lights. The default SKINDIGO settings (except size that was 800 x 800) The first one came out OK, although the interior is still grainy after about 9 hours:

This one ran for 18 hours, and I am still not very pleased with it. Some overexposure and still quite grainy.

Cheers

Anssi

I like the presentation very much. The design looks in some odd way older than the existing building, and by introducing a symmetry of its own makes the old look like a slightly unsuitable addition. Just an uninformed opinion, though.

Anssi

For me, the "Log me in automatically" button does not seem to work-at least such as it did at the old @Last forums.

Anssi

Ross,

There was even a "professional" version of Claris Draw called Claris Cad. It had some simple scale, snap and dimensioning features. Not bad at all, and it worked OK on a Macintosh Plus.

If I remember right, the creator of Mac Paint was a guy called Bill Atkinson, who also invented HyperCard that is the thing I most miss from the older Macs, almost anything could be done with it.

He was also the inventor of the Marching ants, Menu bar and The Selection lasso (according to Wikipedia)

Anssi

So nobody remembers MacPaint? It was black and white, and I loved it. The application, together with MacWrite and the operating system fitted on a single 600 Kb floppy, with space left over for documents. The year for me was about 1986-7

Anssi

Whaat,

Thanks for the advice. My setup is very similar to yours, a 2.8GHz P IV, no HT, 1.5 GB of memory. I was trying to render 1600 pixels wide, with the exporter's default settings. It must be the glass. Also now that I started a new test, disabling the IGI files seems to speed it up too a bit (and I don't know how to use them anyhow).

What is meant by "thick glass"? Must it be two parallel faces close to each other, or must the sides be modelled too?

Dave, sorry for hijacking yout thread. Your renders look fabulous!

Anssi

Hi
I must be doing something wrong with Skindigo, or then everyone else has a supercomputer! My first interior test below, after rendering for nearly 30 hours. The result is still very grainy, and the renderer had reached only less than 90 samples/pixel by that time
Anssi

Susan,

Don't give up on the email format issue. Why should we be cramming our messages with useless formatting? I always use plain text if I can choose. And those HTML messages have far more potential security loopholes.

Anssi

Giovanni,

I think it is a matter of both local convention and structural strength. When I was taught about framing (half a zillion years ago) I was told to put the beam vertically. So from my point of view this should be correct.

Anssi

It's going to be beautiful-and the images are too (except for the too wide camera angles, my pet peeve).

No chimney on the sauna? Here in the "homeland" of sauna a separate sauna like that would generally be wood-heated, or equipped with both a wood and an electric stove. The extreme thing is a "smoke" sauna that has a wood stove without a chimney, but as it poses some fire hazard it is generally built more apart. The sauna roof form is also somewhat problematic, the high part will gather all the steam. A flat or less steep insulated inner ceiling would perhaps be better. Overall the sauna appears too high, of course I cannot be sure.

Anssi

@unknownuser said:

I think my problem with this type of model is the inaccuracy... while it's beautiful... in reality would not the planets be on the other side of the park? and would the whole piece be for educating children? well I'm prolly just anal... it is a beautiful model though...

In fact they have built this to scale in Helsinki, with a much smaller Sun and planets, and they still don't fit in a park, but are scattered over the region. The Saturn is about the size of a baseball, it is near where I work...

Anssi

From Help:

MEASUREINIT system variable

Type: Integer
Saved in: Registry
Initial value: varies by country

Sets the initial drawing units as imperial or metric. Specifically, MEASUREINIT controls which hatch pattern and linetype files an existing drawing uses when it's opened. Also controls which template is used.

0 Imperial; uses the hatch pattern file and linetype file designated by the ANSIHatch and ANSILinetype registry settings

1 Metric; uses the hatch pattern file and linetype file designated by the ISOHatch and ISOLinetype registry settings

Anssi