@unknownuser said:

@TaffGoch : you rocks
I believe that the Chris Fullmer plug can make the trick (inside a geodesic Sphere)but you must adjust the module component position after running the plug
if you have made the module without attention
It's the internal axe of the module component who makes the différence!
(so edit the module component

It would seem that you are correct, professor, and I had some success at relocating the component axes for the purpose of using the component on to face plugin to exactly place the 20 pieces, but not nearly good enough.

Did you ever figure it?

Alas, professor...

Thanks to Taff, who likes to make you learn a bit...

Now to skin it... that is, to add a skin.

Thanks, Gilles.

I've sampled Taff's wonderful models several times over the years.
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=40874&p=362816&hilit=geodesic#p362816

@unknownuser said:

That particular truss will only produce a sphere if 20 copies are used, rotated around the correct axes, by the correct angles. I did exactly that, in less than a minute

Variety is the spice of life and a well stocked draw menu is enabling feeling.

My main reason is that I'm looking for more equally sized mesh faces, though I guess there are other good reasons.

@unknownuser said:

Basics Q: Quads or tris when modeling?

"The sphere on the left has 360 faces, the one on the right has 320 faces.The one on the right has more curve and more uniform curve."

Just a moment...

(community.secondlife.com)

Just interesting:

Cubic Globes

"Although mapping into the regular hexahedron (an ordinary cube) is prone to pronounced distortion, the nonsensical notion of "Earth-in-a-box" has long fascinated me. Once I plotted and folded such a map by hand alone, using an arbitrary compound of cylindrical and Collignon-like projections."

progonos.com

(www.progonos.com)

The voting is over, Pilou. No luck here.

I mean in the 'z' direction: up/down, vertically in SU, rather than x,y. So in plan view, looking down, moving a logo group or component in the 'z' direction would move it in frot of or behind other entities; likewise any opaque or semi-opaque masks used to hide parts of the drawing, which might be on otherwise visible layers.

@dave r said:

Have you tried setting up the path so it is not in contact with the profile? If you do that, you won't have to clean up the group that results from the extrusion operation.

I either neglected to see this, Dave, or couldn't fit it in my little head, or it simply didn't compute for some reason; not sure.

Now it does. I'll try it. Thanks.

I use a separate 'sheet' (and layer) positioned at an appropriate Z for each view which I wish to print or document. This actually works quite well for me once I learned some little tricks, like making masks of various transparencies placed again at appropriate Z to aid in the process. I've set up plans, sections, elevations, etc. in this manner. It ain't perfect, by a long shot, and in that sense, a lot like Layout. Dave is happy with LO, though, as are many and perhaps it would suit you.

Thank you. I really don't have the time to render... I just wanted to add some light sources to some fixtures I've designed and was misled by the assertions here that it was free. The spreadsheet needs to be corrected. I'll try LuxRender.

There was mention of this plugin some time ago but little discussion. It performs operations which are performed by other separate plugins, but may have the advantage of doing many with a common, more easily understandable interface. It seems to have its own limitations, naturally.

spirixcode

The Chaos Trilogy: Better Life Through ACME Available in Kindle format and paperback from Amazon. Spirix Plugin for SketchUp (works with SketchUp 2015, 2016, and 2017) The Spirix Ruby plugin allows you to revolve or extrude any 3D sequence of edges (both open and closed loop) about or along the

(sites.google.com)

@unknownuser said:

Basically, the plugin allows you to revolve or extrude any 3D sequence of edges (both open and closed loop) about or along the z-axis while rotating, scaling, and/or morphing the selected edges using various interpolative functions. The code utilizes linear, sine, arc1, arc2, arc3, arc4, log10, parabolic, and cubic transforms independently applied to the scaling, axial, radial, and morphing operations.

Any interest? Comments?

Still not working though with another with transparent areas. Same error. Please attach your image file so I can try it. Perhaps the png conversion by FastStone is faulty; I'll try another conversion program.

Didn't work with Irfan as the converter, with three different settings.. The checkerboard is how your prog is configured to display transparency; it can be balck or white or some other, I believe. I'll crank up PS for an other go.

Ah..., merci. You are right that my image had no transparent areas though it was a png, though I don't know how you could tell.

Hopefully I'll have something to show.

Bon voyage.

Strike 1: "unexpected token:513"

I am new today to rendering, which I'm using to see how some light fixtures I modeled perform. Twighlight saves in demo are limited to 800x600, quite small, and partially covered with the brand stamp. Why is it called 'free'?

Pilou.... Like this?

1. download 'Processing' http://processing.org/download/
2. install it.
3. a data folder will thus be created. Put your image in it and copy and paste the code also in the data folder, in a file called what? or what?
4. run processing; load your image

I like your way because it has the rotated sheet (corner up). I cannot do it faster than EEbyR, though.

It would be very nice to be able to snap to component axes origin (without there being any geometry there).

@brooksl said:

@unknownuser said:

brookefox wrote: Perhaps the reason the rectangle tool doesn't work with the standard inferences is that it requires two directions rather than just one, so any single inference is not enough.

Uh, my original post referred only to setting/forcing the inferred drawing plane, not the axis for the second reference point.

I see. I guess the same thing goes, even though I understand what you mean. The more literal use of the arrow keys is to define a direction not a plane, so to have them define a plane rather than a direction would involve a stretch of the meaning, perhaps something the SU programmers are not willing to do. A ruby author might, though.

Matt, Thanks very much for this and for the detailed instructions and explanations at the top. Very helpful.

I wish folks would post example pics of how they are using this.