The issue is a graphical thing caused by your model being placed at a huge distance from the origin.

It's more than a kilometer away. Reset the axes and then move your model to the origin and update the camera position for the scenes. for a detail thing like this I would copy the objects of interest into a separate model file so you can keep them close to the origin. An alternative would be to leave the viewport rendered as Raster and remember to disable the Output Override in Document Setup>Rendering.

Here I copied that frame object to a new SketchUp file and placed it at the origin. Then I relinked the viewport to that new file. It now renders correctly and it actually updates almost instantaneously when changes are made in the SU model.

In your model I see you have Length Snapping enabled. This can get in the way of creating accurate models. I would also suggest setting Display Precison higher than the precision you require in your LO file. That'll help you avoid dimensional issues.

In LayOut I see you are modifying the Camera position for the viewport. It would be better to set up the camera position correctly for the scene in the SketchUp model and avoid modifying it in LayOut. That will avoid potential problems that would make your work more difficult.

@ntxdave sorry. @Rich-O-Brien beat me to it.

If you want to use Vray for editing, the Studio subscription is less than the Pro sub and buying Vray separately.

To illustrate what @Rich-O-Brien described, I made a 3D model in SketchUp based on your image.

I imported your image into SketchUp as an image to trace. I made it quite large--200m tall--to avoid the tiny face issue. I used a combination of straight edges and Bezier splines drawn with FredoSpline to outline the letter, draw in the ridge lines and connect them at the various ends. Then I used TIG's Extrude Edges by Rails to create the sloped surfaces. Bybreaking it into a few sections, Extrude Edges is more controllable.

The blue edges show where I divided things up.

Text created in SketchUp won't scale with the geometry. You could create the symbols in SketchUp using 3D Text (it can be created without extrusion) so the text is geometry as is the circle or other shape. Then you can set the scale for the resulting viewports in LayOut when you create the scrapbook page. Either leave them as viewports linked to the SketchUp file or render then as Vector and explode them to create scaled drawing entities.

@tuna1957 thank you. It does seem to be working fine. The original side things on the foot plate were PLA which is brittle and one of them got broken. Easy enough to print new ones. The current ones are PETG and seem to be holding but I got a spool of TPU yesterday and made a new set that are a little flexible. Maybe they won't break. We'll see when I get the opportunity to swap them in.

Did you look at the video on it's ExtensionStore page?
https://sketchucation.com/plugin/1103-extrudetools

I still don't have time to do a video on the entire process but maybe this will help. I copied out the needed edges from the L I already made for this. Note that the straigh edges at the ends need to be divided into multiple segments and welded to make them curves. Two segments is enough, though. Going through the options I chose to no delete the original curves. Since the entire letter gets done in stages, you can't delete all of the edges after an extrusion because you'll need them for the neighboring steps.

It depends on what the details are and how you need to show them in LayOut. It might be easier to model them in SketchUp and create scenes to use for viewports in LayOut. After you've set up the viewports (making sure you do not modify the Camera properties) you could save as a scrapbook so those viewports are available to drag in to your CDs when needed. For 2D symbols and such, it would probably be better to draw those in LayOut as Scaled Drawings than to draw them in SketchUp. Make sure you group the elements of each symbol so they behave as a single object.

I would suggest that you make sure you keep your SketchUp detail model files as lightweight as possible. When you add one of those viewports from the Scrapbook to your CD you are adding the SketchUp file as a reference which can bloat your LayOut file and possibly cause performance issues depending on your hardware. You can see that if you add one of the supplied 3D arrow objects from the Scrapbook.

Another option that may help with file management is to create details in SketchUp and then after rendering the viewports in LayOut as Vector or Hybrid, exploding them so they become LayOut drawing objects instead of SketchUp viewports. This would reduce their overhead in your CDs because they no longer carry the entire SketchUp model.

Different options depending on what you need exactly.

@ntxdave said in Another Machinist's Model of a Steam Engine.:

@Dave-R Very nice sir!

You said all SketchUp. Did you use any plugins?

Yes, I did use a few extensions. For this latest one TIG's Extrude Edges by Rails, Fredo6's Fredo Corner and Round Corner., and TIG's Tangent Tools, Eneroth Solid Tools, and Bool Tools2 is about all.

By saying "all SketchUp" I meant there was no external rendering done.

And thank you!

@HornOxx from where did you delete them? On Windows the shipped materials are in Program Data.

I think Rich is correct that they are also hard coded so they would get rewritten if you delete them. And certainly the folders would be rewritten if you reinstall SketchUp.

@Leggy said in Annoying pop up:

Don’t tell me you’ve never drawn over hidden geometry

I haven't because I don't leave loose geometry in my models. One of the first lessons I learned about using SketchUp, even before learning about Hide, is that the geometry is sticky and new geometry will merge with existing geometry.

@tuna1957 thank you sir.

Click on Download to download the file to your computer.

Thank you gentlemen.

Download and install the Sketchucation ExtensionStore and install it. Open it and sign in. Then click on the bell icon at the top and then Bundles. You should then be able to install the bundle of extensions that you installed on your desktop machine. You can download. As for the licenses, you can access the license page via the Sketchucation menu in the Plugins menu. Download your licenses and activate them for each of the purchased extensions.

@tuna1957 Thank you. Shapers were fairly common in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There are still some in use today, though.

@Leggy said in Annoying pop up:

so just scale down by 0.001 then export and we should be spot on in mm

No. As I wrote:

said in Annoying pop up:

No need to scale those models down.

And as @Box wrote.

I've shown examples like this before. The SketchUp model:

And the 3D printed object.

No scaling of the model required. The .stl file was exported at Model Units (meters). but the slicer reads the dimensions as millimeters.

@Bryan-K thank you very much, sir.

@Leggy said in help with a thread:

where is it?

@HornOxx I'd have a difficult time making one of those legs out of real wood by hand. Getting four to match? Not likely.

Thank you!.

Here's an animation I did as an experiment with scenes, native materials, and Vray.

Footplate Animation2.mp4