Posts made by blackdogsketch

Thanks guys

Trying various approaches to get a takeoff on area of any given material in a model.
The specific application is getting takeoffs of glazing, spandrel panel, wall surface, etc.
SU native Area> By Material...will not "seek" all instances of a group or component (that includes the material) and total them. it only "Sees" the one instance of the group or component and you have to be IN it.

Also tried TIG's Component Reporter, but I can't seem to understand how that works or see take-offs on a material.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Maybe I'm missing something, but for a tool that's supposed to stay On Surface, this seems to have a tendency to pop onto the z-axis constantly.
I sue this tool to trace jpegs of site maps, and trace contour lines, for example. the plane I'm working on is solid, with nothing underneath. The vast majority of the linework I want to create is non-orthogonal (the contours)...but the tool is constantly snapping to x or y axis...which is merely annoying... but all of a sudden it will pop way out on the z axis and I'll discover it maybe 6-12 segments after.

Is there any way to turn off orthogonal and produce ALL linework on a plane?
Also, it's sort of annoying that every time the line command is interrupted, the tool reverts to dashed line and I have to manually hit the icon for line to get it back to solid again.

It's still a useful tool, and maybe I'm missing some user parameters. All constructive crit...thanks for all your efforts for us!

"why buying a lame/old graphics card today?

if disabling "Window > Preferences > OpenGL > Use Hardware Acceleration" fixes the problem, the OGL support of the used video driver and/or the OGL performance of the used GPU is flaky. Drop the card and buy something capable as e.g. a GTX 960 (or better) ...besides the case is to small or the PSU to weak."

I'm not the IT guy at work. The IT department purchases and installs hardware. I'm no expert on computers or graphics cards. What do you mean "the case is too small or the PSU too weak"?

SU Pro 2015
I have several large files with various styles and shadow modes. (almost 140 megs on one model and 45 megs on another)
I've been having a lot of problems crashing when printing to Bluebeam PDF or exporting a jpeg. There are two crash modes.
Mode A is the monitors just go black. When I get them on again, I have a graphics error window. Here's the deal:

Try to print to Bluebeam PDF. Several seconds later the monitors will just go black without warning. It's a graphics issue. I hit ENTER and I get the monitors up and running again.
At that point I see an error window:

NVIDIA OpenGL Driver

The NVIDIA Open GL Driver lost connection with the display driver due to exceeding the Windows Time-Out limit and is unable to continue.
the application must close.

Error code: 7
Would you like to visit
http://nvidia.custhelp....blah blah blah

Mode B is that I get an actual Bugsplat.
If I try to print to pdf again, I will get a bugsplat again.
If I close sketchup and open it again,. open the file, print to pdf, it will be OK.
The second attempt hwoever, even the same scene with the same settings and same pdf settings, will result in a bugsplat.
If I open sketchup again, I will get one chance to print again...after that...crashes.
At some point, it crashes all the time and I have to reboot my machine. Then I am back to the one-and-crash scenario.

This is really, really frustrating and not a satisfactory experience from a professional program worth $500 with a fast current and well-RAMMED machine.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on? I just had video card upgraded. does it need even more memory on the card??? Does it need a new driver?

2015 SU Pro.
Dell with Intel(R) Xeon (R) CPU E5-1620 v2 @ 3.70 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 64 bit OS Windows 7 Pro sp1
video card: NVIDIA Quadro K4000...dviver version 9.18.13.3182
driver date . Driver date 11/11/2013

I'm having this same issue. Try to print to Bluebeam PDF. Monitors will just go black without warning. It's a graphics issue. I hit ENTER and I get the monitors up and running again.
At that point I see an error window:

NVIDIA OpenGL Driver

The NVIDIA Open GL Driver lost connection with the display driver due to exceeding the Windows Time-Out limit and is unable to continue.
the application must close.

Error code: 7
Would you like to visit
http://nvidia.custhelp....blah blah blah

2015 SU Pro.
Dell with Intel(R) Xeon (R) CPU E5-1620 v2 @ 3.70 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 64 bit OS Windows 7 Pro sp1

I've been running Pro for a couple of years. When I get complex models...many components, file size over 40 megs...speed is horrible. Obviously it's impossible to navigate around with shadows on or any graphic style active. But even if those are not on, speed is just incredibly slow at some point. Even hitting the File menu causes the wait/spin circle for over five minutes. I've got one of the more powerful machines in the office with a good Nvidia card. If I go over to a lesser machine running Make, the speed is WAY better. Also generating jpegs is WAY better. On my good machine I lose all Styles attributes when generating a jpeg. On the cheap machine with Make, the style are preserved and the jpeg is generated fast!

What is up? Can it be that I have too many extensions installed? Will that slow normal operations this much? I'm not talking about RUNNING extensions all at once...just the fact that they are INSTALLED and I have toolbars for them on my working screen. totally confounded here...any suggestions would help.

SU2015 Pro on a Dell T3610, 64 bit, with Xeon ES-1620 v2 @ 3.70GHz, 16 GB RAM, NVIDEA QUADRO K4000, running Win7 Professional.

Thanks TIG
Sounds like there's no clear method of getting more ivy to "stick" to the wall.
Hey-While I'm here...thank you for all your incredible work for the SU community!
You make my workflow and professional results better.

Wow. This is awesome. Thanks so much.
Two questions:

1. Maxing "Adhesion" still leaves a significant amount of branches moving away from a wall surface. Is there any way to make the branches stay in contact more? Or to have a may zone that the branches may occupy (say, 6" thick, like real ivy)
2. Is it possible to add user-defined jpegs for leaves and bark textures?

The sketchucation warehouse is very easy.
Using Preferences/Extensions/Install Extension...is very easy.
Buying extensions from Smustard is a PITA! I know they were the first but this business of having a zip folder...extracting the files manually...and having to guess which of the four different locations Sketchup 2015 now expects extensions (oh- plugins? Because 2015 STILL calls them PLUGINS!)..
Is it App Data\Roaming\Sketchup2015\Sketchup\Plugins folder? Programs data\Sketchup\Sketchup 2015\Sketchup\Plugins? Why cant Trimble finally put an end to this insanity and why can't Smustard update their delivery system to standard rbz FILES?

I've spend hours on this stuff...probably my chief gripe about the whole sketchup platform. The whole CONCEPT of Sketchup is that you really need scripts/plugins/extensions...but installing them can be confusing. And I'm not a rank amateur either.

A new machine was set up for me last month.
I already had a problem with not having an autosave available after a crash when I needed it.
I know how to set this stuff. Although it's very odd and not rational, the file path for the autosaves is in one place on the menus, and the autosave on/off and intervals are set somewhere else.
So my path is correct...right to a pre-created folder on my C:\drive.
The autosave is set for 15 minutes.. . checked.

But, when I crash..there's no autosave. Despite working on the new machine for three weeks, there's nothing in that folder whatsoever.
I just lost an hour and a half of work.

What's annoying, and REALLY puzzling, is that I can see the little "blue save-circle" going off every fifteen minutes at the pre-sleeted interval. but there are no files being written.

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

Now it's 2015 and I've got the problem.
Have a TIN from GeoLocate Google Earth.
New TIN fresh from GeoLocate, all is fine.
Modify the tine (with Artisan in my case) and bugslpat when draping even a simple rectangle down to the TIN (using Super Drape).
It seems to be that modifying the TIN makes SU unable to deal with draping. Can this really be the case? Daniel Tal is doing this stuff all the time. Why are we getting crashes? Any help would really be appreciated.

Sorry for bugging everyone. Again, I'm set up on a new computer and my Flatten to 2D command is gone. Is this supposed to be native to sketchup? I can't remember. If it's not, is there an extension that will simply take some linework and push it all to 2D? I used this a LOT previously when trying to draw road lines, for example...something might be off somewhere by some tiny amount and faces would not close. Flatten to 2D would , well, flatten everything, and then it was easy to make faces.

No-not the eneroth...the native one. for some reason it was not showing up...now it is...go figure...

I just transferred to a new computer. I used to have a tool whereby when I had a face with a texture selected, I could context-right-click and get options for positioning the texture. (not merely "
Align to Edge, or Rotate) In this way I could alight, for example, a brick texture right to the outside edges of the wall manually.

Now that option has disappeared in the new copy of sketchup and although I have an extension called Texture Positioning" loaded, it does not actually have any way to move or position the texture relative to the face.

This seems so simple and something that should be stock in Sketchup, but apparently not.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

I've been looking everywhere but cannot find anything that's SEAMLESS and LARGE. Architectural-style preferred over three-tab. Although the "stock" Roof-Shingles-Multi is a decent texture, it's not large enough and the repeat/tiling can be easily seen at every scale. I've tried going thru all the major sources for jpegs. Any pointers would be helpful. thanks.

Plus, what I don't get is that Bikerchris has a file that's 201Mb. (see his "progress dialog box" screenshot) Not 2GB!
You can't even get a 200 MB file generated from SU??? That is FAR from a large file when you're talking about video.

I know this is a year old, but I'm having the same experience. And it's truly frustrating...no error message...nothing. Just no file to be found.
What I don't get is how Windows Movie Maker comes into play. To me, I ask Sketchup to generate a file.
This means it goes and gets Movie Maker to do it's work?
Why is sketchup so lame- even Pro- it seems year after year the capabilities do not increase.
It's hard to believe that I cannot get sketchup to make anything over 1GB video file out of the box. I've got to go back to my team and tell them I cannot do this.

So I need to go and spend more money on a video making program? And then what happens, sketchup automatically looks for that to make the video? there are no options under "export video" to select the video engine.
Maddening.

Nobody else experiencing this...wow.
Jpeg output from SU looks good to you guys?

I am SO SICK of this problem. I've been dealing with it for ten years! Sketchup/Trimble just will not fix it. Each version of SU that comes out I keep hoping for a fix, but it never happens. Yes- I import CAD, I have to as part of my working procedure. Yes- I have large areas of google earth terrain. And I'm NOT going to delete this stuff - I need it!

Even with PRO SU- every year- almost nothing get's improved. Just the same problems. I've actually been having more bugsplats in 2015 t5han ever before.

I'm sorry for the griping but sometimes it just get's to me. I need a real solution to this problem- not cute little tricks that don't really work.