Can you 'save as' the components in question with all layers on and hidden geometry revealed, so as to understand exactly what they consist of and experiment a little more easily with them. Explode them...

Don't redraw.....yet. The components don't look too large to post, I don't think, but I have little experience with that.

Well, I thought I had tried it before posting. Must have botched it somewhere.

Thanks.

That does not seem to work for me Chris, whether I continue in the direction of the existing bits or change the angle of the next segment. I remembered there was an easy way.... (other than weld.rb (?)), but it is lost to me now.

edit: Oh... draw the new segment from an internal break point...of course.

Is there a way to make a set of a component 'unique' so as to edit that set and not the remainder? Use: You want to try out changing a set of a component but have others of the originals unchanged (as opposed to making one unique, editing it and then replacing various instances manually).

Am I being thick?

@unknownuser said:

By "Both Managers" do you mean Scenes and Styles?
Yes.

@unknownuser said:

The styles manager would be annoying if it warned you everytime a style was changed.
I take that update arrow circle thingy as a warning, and then one might even be explicitly warned if that setting is in place.

Thanks, HDT. I'd like to keep all as high res HDR PDF for printing (so I don't want to save as another image format and come back to PDF, though my reader does not allow this anyway: I can only save a copy or save as text. Perhaps you are using Acrobat or another Adobe program?).

So far, no go with either of these. Free Foxit is a reader only, I think. PDFill tools has a merge, as in add pages, but not cut and paste, and as it is menu-driven it is very hard to know what your input will produce: you are driving blindly. For example, to crop a PDF you specify margins without ever seeing the page or a ruler. Even accepting the limitations and the results for me were inconsistent. With experimentation maybe one could come up with something, but I'm skeptical.

Anybody use these tools, or others, to cut and paste areas of two or more pages into one?

Thanks, Gaieus. That little warning I am not fond of, though it fairly reveals the entanglement. I'd like both managers to advise that changes have been made to their own realms, and as well the nature of those changes.

Red - do you draw the disappearing grid, which I understand you want to use strictly as a guide?

I don't think the Foxit product will do cut and paste, but I'll give another look.

I actually have PDFill PDF Tools installed already but found it somehow lacking. Must re-try. I'll report back.

Thanks much for the leads.

I've searched here and elsewhere and will continue, but was hoping for a shortcut in finding an open-source (or otherwise free) PDF editor supporting cutting and pasting of PDF graphics (as well as text) so as to enable the creation of one PDF doc from two or more (for post-SUF processing, aka Cheap Man's Layout).

It would be nice if the style manager advised as to what has been changed and thus why the update icon is overlaid; and that the scene manager advised similarly when and if something has been changed, perhaps with a similar device ("next he'll be asking for something to tell him exactly how the scene has been changed").

I know that is really a request, and sorry for the t e d i u m n e s sof it all. I think I can manage; it's really not that complicated. We can only hope that I am done.

Thanks, Chris.

@unknownuser said:

So lets you you are using the default style, and you make a scene. The default style is assocaited with that scene. But not lets say you turn off edges. Now you have altered the active style.
Got it (though I would prefer that I have simply changed my display rather than the style (not 'in' a scene, not 'in' a style), but I have not updated my scene, so I should be able to reload my scene and have the original unaltered style in effect but it does not work that way, the un-updated style, with the changes, tracks through even though neither has been updated. If I load another scene and come back, things are as they should be, the un-saved style changes have been discarded. (I'm glad I'm not in a position of having to decipher this little hill of glass noodles.)

Thanks, Chris. I think I have been on board with your advice, I just seem to get odd behavior at times.

Thanks for the reminder that style changes will apply to any scenes using that style, and that perhaps a new style is more what is wanted. I agree very much about the utility of scenes and that is why I would really like better scene management facilities, but I guess that is another subject.

The very common 'odd' behavior is such that when layer visibility is set and a new scene is being created, upon hitting <enter> for the name change from the default supplied 'scene X', or in the immediately following picks, the layer visibility is changed so that some which were here (visible), now aren't. Resetting same can be a little time consuming, subject to error and very tedious. I think one problem is that there may be 3 places where a scene name may be displayed and picked at a give time and that there may be conflict or confusion about which is active or being monitored for input or which is governing: at the scene tabs, and at two spots in the manager: at name entry text box and at the list of existing scenes. I understand that they are supposed to be the same, generally, unless a new one is being created.

Something I haven't come to grips with is the odd glue entangling scenes and styles. In a scene (one is always 'in' a scene?), if I change a display mode (face style) SU takes it that I want to change the currently active named style, but no, I don't, I want to change the display, for the moment at least, just as I have indicated. Now you are likely thinking, there is that setting as to whether I want SU to 'help' me manage my scene / style settings ("warn of style changes when creating scenes") or just royally ignore what I want and do what it wants, with insufficient notice, in my view. It seems like if I say I don't want to make any changes to styles it instead ignores the scene changes I have made and attempted to save (usually regarding layer visibility).

I think this is how I believe SU is telling me it will act: Any change made to any setting able to be set in the scene manager will be interpreted as a desired change to that named scene active at the time. If instructed to let the user manage style changes, it will not prompt to save said style changes but will perform scene changes as may be requested at that time.

Sorry for my poor articulation... This is either a simple little whine or a lack of understanding, or more accurately, a whiny lack of understanding.

Thanks only. Pity the poor saps like me making building sections by hand, albeit an SUF hand...
(Duh... must try the native 'creating grouped section slices' sometime.)

The fortunate ones stumble on, perhaps to eventually find a real hand up.

Thank you, Chris. While I read the main threads and hope to check cgScenes out with your model first, my more immediate needs could, I think, be met by something much simpler. I wish you good luck and will try to stay tuned.

Given the vast utility of scenes in both model creation and display, the manager is rather lightly empowered. Simple directory control would add a lot. I am new to understanding outliner and have yet to make use of it, but it seems to have this.

(I did a search for this wish and have to think it is here somewhere, but if so I missed it.)

@unknownuser said:

I had that problem a while back [also with photoshop] And found a solution for photoshop that also fixed the SU thumbnail.

Did not work for me. Perhaps a reboot will enable.

Though for me Vista 64 MS Explorer does not display skp thumbs, xplorer does, and XnV does. XnV says it will preview as well (the larger image in the third window) but does not for me, now it just shows the thumb in the preview window. Working on that one.