Just out of curiosity how big was the Mavericks download? Windows 8.1 was 3.6GB; depending on your connection speed that could be quite quick or in my case several hours!!!

After crippling LO with large custom hatch pattern files I have spent some time reducing the file size with moderate success, they print well enough but the screen presentation when exported to PDF leaves a lot to be desired until you zoom right in to about 600% ! I may yet return to local vector hatch patching

I've noticed in a few of my drawings since moving to SU2013 that in raster mode the display is as expected but if I switch to vector mode lines are displayed which should be hidden. The following extracts are a plan ortho view of roof timbers with trimmers where the bottom edge becomes visible. I also have this happening for stair treads where the back of the riser is visible on the upper surface despite a 25mm separation between the top & bottom of the tread. Anyone else getting seeing this kind of problem/bug?

What's the return on investment?

Careful what you wish for Rich, you might have to accommodate the fillets & chamfer programmers as well!

You may want to seriously consider abandoning DC's if you want to do take offs where there are mitres involved. DC's are best limited to a single component count.

Have a look at the FredoScale plugin which may allow you resizing without distortion and quantity take offs.

+1 to what TIG says.

The only time I would go to that level of modelling would be to show a localized assembly detail. For building construction I would typically limit that to what fitted in a 1m cube.

P.S. If you are detailing, 2D is still a valid graphic presentation technique; expecting the whole building model to show everything is not a realistic prospect yet!

Thanks for the suggestion but I could probably type the entries faster than cut and paste.

Drag n Drop would be ideal. A long time ago I wrote a LISP program to do something similar in AutoBad, unfortunately too long ago to recover the program. I might need to review my notes production method but LO doesn't really cut it as a word processor.

I'm looking for a way to import project specific text from a Word / RTF file and drag n drop individual line/paragraphs from scrapbook into my drawing as labels. I guess I'm sort of looking to import the text file and then explode the contents; any suggestions on how to achieve this?

If you are thinking BIM or model sectioning with all information displayed in LO ready to be labelled, be prepared to be disappointed. Having used 3D modelling for many years and recently dropped ArchiCAD for SU I would suggest that no CAD system is capable of doing this without significant resource investment that will kill any financial return. As an example how much drawing work would be incurred just to change a lintel from PC concrete to steel & brick for each variant of window and would you show the clips, trays, stop ends, weeps, mortar beds; where do you stop? On top of that what are the implications on the size of the drawing and the amount of info the CPU has to process; your average workstation would struggle badly. The harsh truth which the CAD vendors will never admit is whilst it can be done it is impractical to model every detail and no CAD system is sufficiently intelligent to cope with that level of detail. The secret is to know when to break the link with the 3D model and how to use the SU model as a 2D base to locate a detail. You may remember the working drawing methodology of Location > Assembly > Component; it's as valid today as it ever was.

At some point there will be an inevitable requirement to work on a detached 2D or even localized 3D model to show construction detail. At this end of things I now draft directly in LO to produce my 1:10 details. This is where the layout Scrapbook is your best friend. But if a 3D cutaway is required then I build a separate model which can look much like many of the common examples in manufacturer's literature.

Hope that helps,

Trevor

Hi Marc, I guess your first paragraph answers a key point that the images should be as small as possible, I was uncertain whether a large or small image was more efficient in L.O. and also under pressure to get the drawings published at the time. I will have a play based on your advice and see how much difference it makes.

The memory usage was flat once loaded, it just seemed to be a very big hit and enough for me to need a memory upgrade to avoid bug splats.

There's not much point in uploading the files if they are so inefficient and I have a few graphics options to crop the images and lower the bit depth which I will do and then post them as they may be of interest to others on this forum.

One other aspect you may be able to answer... I have a plan with a number of connected straight walls; is it more memory efficient using several (un-stroked) rectangles or a continuous trace to create a single pattern fill?

Hi TIG, I get regular bug splats if the Outliner is fully open e.g. displaying contents. Is there a fix or is this an SU problem? I've noticed with a number of plugs that the Outliner window goes manic with some processes but they don't always splat.

Auto Scale is the ideal solution for dimensioning scenes but if you have added graphics in layout it will sometimes latch on to them and resort to 1:1 scale in which case you need to override Auto Scale and set it to the correct scale e.g. 1:5 or whatever your local units dictate. Are you sure you have set the Ortho Scale for the scene to the correct value?

Hi Tig, I was playing with this last night testing the boundaries. One thing that me is I can create cutting components with complex geometry including projecting groups with faces flush with the cutting plane, but as long as there is an ungrouped "loop" of edges SU cuts as expected. In HPT as has been previously mentioned such a component can cause unexpected displacement if there are groups/components projecting from the cut plane.

I appreciate the "fix", I was just wondering if the HPT would benefit from a requirement for a single loop on the cutting plane and ignore all other group/component and non-cutplane entities which would be more in line with the native SU cutting process?

@tig said:

You need to learn the 'process'... it's not 'CAD'...

Wise words. I abandoned ArchiCAD because SU offered greater flexibility. It does things differently and once learnt it is very capable but as with any software there is a learning curve some of which will be establishing your own workflow.

Apparently a completely fresh COLD boot this morning and everything is running again with both the hacked and original versions of AHL Thanks for the help.

Another excellent tool from the Master!

Hi Tig, I should have guessed the conflict is in add_hidden_layer which is quite useful but it was also a legacy file from here... http://sketchuptips.blogspot.de/2007/08/add-hidden-layer.html. Between the two HPT wins but it would be nice if AHL could be fixed easily.

Hi Tig, just downloaded 2.4 via the SCF loader and auto installed. Worked straight off and everything running as exected, but after closing SU and then restarting I get an immediate bugsplat. I've removed the HPT ruby and SU works (double checked). I see others don't have a problem with SU 2013 pro; where do I start to find the conflict as I would like this in my tool chest?

I've attached my plug list just in case you recognise the culprit

Thanks Jeff if someone hadn't defaulted on my invoice I'd be ordering today

Interesting to see they are still main streaming the i5; do you think they may have some hyper-threading concerns? I'd need some convincing the i7 premium is worth the extra $s for a 0.1GHz clock boost.

Hi Marc, they are custom fills because I couldn't find patterns that would give a sharp or consistent result from those supplied as standard. My drawings are generally vector as raster doesn't always look as clean as I would like when exported to PDF.

I created them using LO with paper 40mm x 40mm (smallest workable size due to some hard coded margin limit) and used a line weight of 0.71pt=0.25mm. The patterns were exported as PNG images at 472 x 472px to achieve 300dpi, retain the line weight and look sharp at x1 scale. They are transparent monochrome but LO outputs as 32bit depth which makes them ~10kb in size.

Hope that clarifies?

Any suggestions on how to make them more workable?

Trevor