Your absolutely right Rich I've always been aware that my card is not up to par but it's the hole unit that needs upgrading I'm just not sure which way to go.I can make complicated models but I have to keep away from using textures. Thanks again for your help

"Bingo" that did it, Thanks Rich you were the right person in the right place at the right time.

I'm running XP Pro. gigabite sis661fx onboard graphics card. Yes its when I toggle hidden geometry I don't see the hidden geometry. All works fine untill I open it the next day and after I've Set it up. I'm wondering if it could have somthing to do with plugins I copied across from Su7 folder but they all seemed to work well untill the next day. Thanks for the reply

I've got a problem with Su8 It seems that hidden geometry works fine when I first download it but when I open it up for a second time hidden geometry no longer works. Which is to say it won't show hidden geometry
I still have SU7 installed and it workes fine
any surgestions would be greatly appreciated

I had a little play with your problem and found that if I extended the cut out arc a little the round corners plugin worked better and looked more like what I think your after. I'm all ways trying to get smooth transitions through multiple surfaces and I often have to alter the angle of surfaces a bit first and return it after the tool works.

One thing I've noticed when working with SP is that I have to pay a lot of attention to what stage I'm up to if I want to just try something even to the point that I create something unrelated just so that I know where to go back to. It would be nice to have an actions counter that can be zeroed to make returning to a previous state easier.
If there is something like this already please enlighten me.

After adding a couple of motors and hinge to a group my object has gained a semi ignore status where it will fall through some groups yet interact with others. Any ideas on whats happening here.

I went back and looked at this again and its convex hull that this happens to not other designated shapes.

Like killing zombies just keep choping bits off till they don't get up no more. If it works it works

I've just started my first serious attempt at a real model rather than just play around with principles only to find that my springs would bottom out as if they weren't connected So I built a test bed to suspend the offending section and found that even though they were indeed connected they were far to weak so I added a couple of zero's to the accel to find that it only had a minimal effect in frustration I added three more 300000 Bingo.
Which makes me ask what are the max and min parameters for the connections.

I've heard that you can run into problems with copied groups but I need to know if that means groups with sp components attached or any copied group before you add motors,hinges,etc. I want to bring an old su model to life but it was made with a lot of copies of groups and copied components. Plus its a sixteen wheel all terrain vehicle thats slightly larger than life size should I scale it up first.

Your right it certainly doesn't like it. I'm sorry I can't help you with this as I'm a real new to this but I'm surprized that no one else has been able to give you some insight.

I've had this problem too, the best advice I can give is to treat it like a real animation if you want to have a man take five steps then you need to make five men in different positions first then place them where you want them all on the one layer. Then assign each of them to there own layer. After this turn off all you don't wont to see and make a scene, turn him off and the next in line on and make another scene and so on. Don't work with scenes and layers at the same time it can get real frustrating, its not a strict rule, the ants were added after the centipede was up and running with no problems but other modifications have unexpected results and figuring out why is frustrating . This is an animation I made with this method however because each centipede occupied almost the exact position I had to go about it slightly differently. Save it first

Centipede and ant last.skp

It did and you gave me some insight into how to work with certain parts of it. thanks again. Steep learning curve though

I'm still trying to work out how your pathways relate to the platforms and site so I came up with this. I'm still learning about sketchup and any puzzle is fun to me so please take the time to look at this and put me on the right track, cheers

bare-site-contours 2.skp

I'm not realy sure what your after but I've attached your file with a change to find out if this is the direction your aiming at.

bare-site-contours[1].skp

Thanks for the sugestion on the plug in I'll check it out

Thanks Gaieus I've learned a lot about Layers in this project but I have to admit that there are things I just don't get yet and others I doubt I ever will. I'm sure I'll be back.

I made this animation using surgestions from Remus ( rotation point ) and Gaius ( camera position ) But during this I had a problem.
I placed one object on say layer 1 and another object on another layer 2 , I could view both with both layers ticked but when I tryed to view them separatly one was not on it's layer even though it was clearly defined by the layer manager as being on that layer. Was this a glitch . it drove me crazy for half an hour till I deleted that layer and made a new one

Centipede.skp

Thanks Remus I have Been playing around for the last couple of hours with a similar method with a rotation rig inside the ball and accessing it with layers but this is far superior

I want to create a ball and socket joint and rotate the ball section from the centre of the ball which is easy to do when there is only a ball as a group, however if you add arm to the ball it changes the rotate point, is there a way to keep the rotate point in the centre of the ball. hinge joints are easy.