It's nice to have an excuse to say what is obvious to all users here about the virtues of this place, and I'm grateful you have done it so nicely that I don't have to tax my brain to do so.

I'll just thank you all as well cause you are it and it is you, and ever the twain shall meet.

Great tips for even experienced users. And as TIG says the quickest way to solve this is to post the model or even a small piece of it so it can be examined in detail. Some us live to find 'bugs', but are faced instead with the frustration and relief provided by the 'real' model.

Thanks, Dan. Yes, I was just editing the one and the assemblage is made up of only instances of it and maybe the sphere faces upon which Chris' fabulous 'component onto faces' PU was invoked on. What fun to watch the thing morph as the one compo is edited! Cheap thrills, for sure.

Many thanks, again. I think my problem with not accepting what is obvious to an experienced lofter is that I think the routine can see my intentions when in fact there are too many options to parse, so it must be done in pieces where the choices are more inevitable. As you have been saying. Thanks also for your patience.

Select all within component > select only guides > empty selection? But there are guides galore within the assemblage of this component. I want to get rid of the guides, as interesting as they may be. When I select the guides of the assemblage, the components are picked, so they are parts of the components. ???

Nevermind...found it: the horizontal across the top, clearly visible.

Great job, guys.

Now what will be done and why.

I appreciate your corrections, as possibly irrelevant to the crux of the issue as they may be. And I mean I do appreciate them. However, the problem remains. Skin it, loft it, mesh it, please. Herewith a model with the faces perpendicular to the path at the ends, spiral with perpendicular half circles for lofting.skpand my last, best attempt with the flaws not visible and another with obvious flaws.
(Jeff, you get a pass (A+) on this one since I'm not really sure if your model was exact apart from the slightly pointed arc ends. I will review, which I can't say why I haven't thoroughly except also for the fact that it seems it should be able to be done in one pass rather than 4.)

This is not new, it's old, real old. Please put it out of it's misery... Here's a model, just a spiral path and 4 half cicles to be swept to make a skin (use as many as you like), by some method, any method, preferably many several methods available here. It's easy, only I've failed (except to make an approximation. I'm looking for an accurate, proper model). Then I'll go away for awhile.

Please.

golden spiral with half circle edges for skinning.skp

@jolran said:

"Hatchfaces"
If you don't feel like waiting, anyone trying to turn this into a plugin

I thought you were saying we could try your plugin if we wanted to risk it...

Where is it, if so?

If not we will continue to be very, very patient. I once took three years to renovate a small house and it really wasn't very tricky. My bad, not yours.

You're sweet, Jeff, and Pilou, but there's no boulder in your future.

(Because you don't want it so, for one.)

Yes, component bumping appears to have been the problem.

For me there are some issues.... job does not complete, perhaps owing to component bumping?

Merci, Pilou for your nice image tut, posted earlier.

Having a hard time now. Rarely is anything being sprayed, no matter the setting. No groups or components on the receiving end.

FloatDomainError?

I saw a twitch in this horse's left nostril. Besides, chambered nautilii really don't look like this. This one is with 'follow me and rotate': settings: rotate 0, scale 1.03; 24 segment face flat helix.

follow me and rotate-settings-rotate 0 scale 1.03 24 segment face flat helix.JPG

This is a somewhat cleaned up failure, which I believe you have also in your collection. I think it is very cool.

follow me and rotate-yin yang clam-1

It would seem that a good part of Trimble's interest in SU is as they said: to incorporate the engine in their products. We all know the value of that and of growing the beast rather than letting it stagnate. Similarly, as folks have observed, there is no reason to assume there will be no flow in the other direction, from their other SW into SU. Right now, just a bucket of possibility. Here in the northern hemisphere, it's spring time.

Perhaps there is a plugin for reversing faces that are 'wrong' facing, granting that there may be some disagreement about exactly what that means, but I guess the parameters could be set so that it worked well enough. Matter of fact, TIG has probably written it.

Well, Tim, I 'achieved' what you achieved (that interesting large giant clam shape). Do you want to try some more? If so it would help if you show your initial entities which you can easily do by simply moving the creation off to one side, make the picks and invoke the routine again, which will then still show the settings you used and we can see the before and after all in one view. And then we can 'help' you. Ha.

Merci, Pilou, for that very useful alternate.

Max, Can you show more of the problem? I have no experience with MP only replacing images in a model via right click, which of course in easy if they are the same size.

Did you try page 1: far.rar?

C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Google SketchUp 7 or 8\Plugins\FollowAndRotate_en.rbs

Called by name in plugin drop down menu...