It's probably your internet cache not internet history. When you access a web site some content is stored locally so that when you hit "back" the page doesn't all have to be reloaded. Google "Temporary Internet Files".

For WinXP the location of this folder is something like..

C:\Documents and Settings<username>\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\

That folder might be hidden and I think XP puts up a warning if you decide to unhide system folders.

More info here on how to empty the cache..
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/260897

Thanks for that, very helpful.

1. The horizontal weatherboarding lines were done in a hurry and some ended up stood off the surface by an inch in the plane of the window frames rather than on the surface of the walls. Could to better if I tried.

2. I didn't know about front and back surfaces so thanks for that. I've been looking for a problem with the materials or something like that to explain the colour difference!

3. Yes I built it slightly oddly. Basically I built a plain box then fitted an oak frame the same size into it so there will be coincident faces and lines that aren't merged properly. That's ok for my purposes.

I'm doing ths model because I need to get approval from my local council to build it. They only want 50:1 elevation drawings and an isometric sketch to approve the appearance. Sketchup's sketchy line styles will be great for the isometric. Once the basic style is approved I'll probably go back to an earlier version which has the frame seperate to help with the design of that. Currently the roof has no structure.

Regards,

Colin

Humm ok, I guess switching views is the answer. Not a big deal.

I'm still very impressed with SU. I'm an infrequent CAD user so I can't justify buying a really expensive product. Other free progs I've tried have been hard work. If anyone is interested here is my first project. It's not perfect and there are a few things I'd do differently if doing again but I'm happy..

Stable and fencing

Thanks for the reply but the shift key only seems to work if the new rectangle is in contact with geometry from which a vertical inference can be taken. Doesn't seem to work if the rectangle is free standing. I'll have to experiment a bit more.

I'm familiar with using the arrow keys when drawing a line (eg to keep the line parallel to an axis) but I have a problem doing a similar thing when drawing a rectangle ...

Say my viewpoint is a bit high and I'm looking down at 45 degrees onto an empty scene.. I want to draw a vertical rectangle (like a door) but sketchup infers the horizontal plane. Why don't the arrow keys work like they do when drawing a line? It's easy if there is other geometry around, guide lines or axis to infer from but not otherwise.

I can fix it by moving my viewpoint so I'm not looking down quite so much but then I have the problem with horizontal rectangles.

Am I missing something?

What Remus said...

To draw a rectangle 8 foot by 6 foot..

1)Click where you want a corner.
2)Move pointer to roughly the right direction as if drawing normally but do not click mouse.
3)Type "6',8'" (without double quotes) and press enter
4)Rectangle will be completed.

No need for other mouse clicks. No need to click in the VCB as typing 6',8' will automatically overtype whatever is in there. Note you can mix your units. For example you can type 6.5' to "mean six and a half feet" or you can type 6'6". If you are working in metric it does the conversion for you as well.

Turorial here...
http://www.liv.ac.uk/abe/students/sketchup/05b_output.shtml

I found this works fine for printing something like elevations of a building at 50:1 but had problems printing a drawing of a 1 inch square at 1:1.

Ok tried something new. If I draw a larger object say 10 feet x 10 feet and then print it at a smaller scale it does print correctly and the right size. It's just small objects that it seems to have problems with.

Edit: Oh B%*%%$er now even that's stoped working. Last week I designed a stable block thats a 16 x 16 foot and 12 foot high. Printed out fine to scale on one sheet of A4. Can't get it to do that now.

Will try reinstalling sketchup incase something has gone wrong.

@gaieus said:

No, background settings have nothing to do with printing to scale. Are you sure you only have an 1" x 1" square in there?

Well I created a new file, selected and deleted the man, drew a rectangle entering the dimensions via the keyboard. Unless there is something else on a blank document?

Edit: Tried again this time using Edit -> Select All -> delete then drew the square. Still 18 pages.

Went to Printer setup and selected A3 paper and then print preview says it can fit on 9 A3 pages instead of 18 A4 pages.

Humm. Could this be anything to do with the sky background? If you have the sky enabled that turns up as a border around the object in print outs. I've got it turned off but perhaps it's not really off, perhaps it's trying to print a large white boarder around my little 1" square?