I'm not a parent, but I would say in general today's teens (here at least) are spoiled. Go by any school here and you'll see they are all driving new cars, usually expensive ones too. They shop at the expensive stores for clothes, they all have cell phones glued to their ears, not to mention all the other expensive electronic gadgets that society can't seem to live without. And they all seem to expect their parents to buy all this for them (and since they have it all, I guess they were correct).

...yellowish complexion and bulging eyes."

Those look great, allanx

No need to cringe - it's awsome. I wish I had the time, software to do that (maybe, one day....). BTW, did you make your orangutan?

Checked out your website, Solo. Ultra cool V7 vid! What programs did you use to create that?

I've made a few decent models for my university work, that I would love to post. One model was very instrumental in selling them on the design. But they are an important client, and they requested I don't post their projects

Oops! My bad I'm not supposed to post my university work.

Congrats!

My solution...I didn't have much time to experiment, and didn't know if I'd need any close views, so used a few FormFonts people, cloned them, changed their shirt colors, and made group components. Not perfect, but the client was happy.

those look great, Fernando.

Susan,

I've juried enough students to know there are quite a few students (and by extension there are probably professionals who fit this bill) who, when required to produce their projects on the computer they are limited to what they know. In other words, if the only way they were taught to create stairs was in a straight run, then that's all they do. They haven't figured out how to apply those same skills for a different drawing/modelling task. It's quite possible some of your students are doing the same - they aren't trying to figure out how to apply the skills you taught them for a new task, but want you to tell them how to do it. They might have a particular "conceptual design" in mind but haven't made that leap of figuring out how to model it themselves.

Daniel

Roger,

What program(s) did you use to create the rendering. Besides the blurry tree and grass in the foreground, to me the lighting on the building itself appears too brght, especially on the left side. All other elements indicate the scene is late sunset, with the light coming from behind the building and to the right. I would also get rid of the bush in front of the palm tree on the right - it is identical to the bush on the left, so it doesn't look realistic, and you have a clump of landscaping there already, so not sure you gain anything by adding it. This is my overly critical eye - ti's a beatiful image. I'm sure your client would love it the way it is.

Daniel

I don't know what they mean by that, either. The only thing you can teach them is how to use SU, and how to create things such as a rof, door, window....it's up to the user to use the SU tools to create the "conceptual architecture."

With the excepttion of site plans, I rarely import cad drawings. If we are in preliminary design, there usually aren't any elevation drawings, or it's just a hand drawn sketch. Then, my cad elevations are generated from the model. Should there be detailed cad elevations, my experience has been that too much time is spent cleaning them up (especially since someone else probably workd on the drawings), and it's quicker to use them as a reference and build the model from scratch.

I leave it on, with the default set at blue, so I don't have to worry about adding a sky later.

"Hi Mom. What are you doing here"?

Tilt the hanger antennae more to one side, and add a Beta cassette player.
Looks great.

First off, let me make it clear I am not a computer whiz. What I know about virtual memory is that it is used for "tricking" a program that a block of contiguous working memory is available for it's use, and I assume (but not entirely sure) available virtual memory is related to your RAM.

Glenn, the suggestion of 1.5xRAM is probably okay for most applications. When you access the virtual memory window on your computer it will inform you what is available. If needed, you can set it to the max in order to export a larger jpeg, and reset it back at a lower setting when done.

Virtual memory is not the only factor affecting this problem, I am sure. There is also your graphics card, processor, and probably even RAM.

At work I have Pentium 4 3GHz, 1GB of Ram, and NVIDIA 4200 series graphics card and it does okay. At home I have Pentium 4 3GHz, 3GB of Ram, and NVIDIA 6600 series graphics card and is a big improvement (large models I end up working on at home). I recently tried SU on my dad's laptop with VISTA, IGB RAM, and no dedicated graphics card - it wasn't a pleasant experience . I just ordered a laptop with XP Pro, 4Gb of Ram and NVIDIA 8800 series card...can't wait to see how it performs.

Charlie, SU (and other programs) are 'quick' to use virtual memory simply because said programs are memory intensive. If your computers are two years old you might want to look into upgrading their graphics cards and/or RAM. Like I said, I am not a computer whiz, but I do know from experience those things make a difference. Unfortunately, it isn't very long before computers become somewhat obsolete.

Those look great. I'm curious about the size of the files. I recently modeled my dining room chairs (with some complex curved shapes) and they are somewhat large file sizes for a component.

If the steel were strong enough to resist warping/twisting (from a foot exerting a force on it) the curve would prevent it from rotating downward.

Nice model and rendering.