@box said: Tig again. http://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=TIG_DualDims It's a good plugin for batch editing units, but it also edits the text. Linked dims in other units than model units maybe are just not possible, Thank you for the link. It's useful.

@panixia said: the faster way is to symply pick the "tile 1x" option from tru-paint right click menu. (or, if you prefer, type in your vcb "1*" which actually will lead to the very same result) thanks for pointing this out some "not every day" things one forgets so easily

@einstein said: Does anyone know how to install and find Smustard's Camera Controls toolbar? The folder I downloaded contains RB files. I put the entire folder into SketchUp plugins folder but I'm not sure it's the proper way to do that. When I googled CameraControls, there appeared a thumbnail of a movie tutorial on smustard's webpage but I cannot open it. Do yourself a favor and do not install plugins in that manner anymore. Go the the .RB file, create a zip archive with it selected, rename .ZIP suffix to .RBZ

Have you tried selecting an instance of the original [unedited] component > right-click > context-menu > Reload... It should then re-import and use the edited 'external' version...

@juju said: You can try LightUp for creating baked textures, you'll need something else for the 3D PDF though... I tried Lumion RT (as they have a free version), but indeed i can't take the model out from there... i will look to that composer thing

@greenskp said: Just for convention. Something like... "everything does not come in default installation from SketchUp goes to the Extensions menu". For people who love to install multiple plugins, do not get lost when are looking for a native tool. Something that already happens with the Tools menu. Yeah, I feel you here... but once you start using SU in a "professional" manner - meaning that it became your "second nature", you stop dividing things between native/installed. You KNOW what you want to achieve and you go for the right tool... is's a lot about memory, this is true.. the more plugins you have, the memory will be more active in remembering those and their functionality. But exactly here is the catch: once you know what you need to achieve, you don't consider the tool, you consider the mean of doing it. So, I need to DRAW something, is more intuitive to go to DRAWING menu, to look for my tool, instead of digging in Extensions. Is like working in a workshop... i need screws, is better to go to look in the Screws Drawer, rather than in "shopping drawer" ... because I may shop for many things. From screws to napkins... but this doesn't make it better to keep all my shopping in the same place. I can understand that for the new user it may become confusing, because there is not a clear structure in user's mind about what native SU tools can do and whether a plugin is needed. But once you go past this, you don't even consider the software... the software is just the environment. You focus on the final goal and you just need a tool. So, is best to have tools better organized and quicker to find, instead of navigating in submenus.

Still not null match, pilou. Because both sculptris (btw, i use sculptris) and zbrush work wonderful. But in case of SU, both free and pro suffer from the same weaknesses: they are underdeveloped and the pro is still overpriced for what it offers. The point of this topic was to draw attention to how others sell their software: they meet price with quality. I expect by the time when SketchUp will reach the robustness of any other major software to cost like AutoCad. And by robustness i don't mean to be complicated, but to really do properly what is supposed to do already. -proper uv-mapping -fix scenes renaming bug -faster and more responsive LayOut -text mismatch fixed between SU and LO -text mismatch fixed in LO between edit mode and rendered mode -less bugsplats -some really important features introduced by default instead of being needed contributed plugins (like Layrrs Panel) ...and many others. Can you imagine SketchUp's price then? Like $$$$... and this was my point: zbrush can do much better and syill keeping price low. One more thing: zbrush users are a very narrow niche, another reason to increase price. SU can be used by artists, hobbysts, architects, engineergs, teachers, psychologists... etc. And your comparison would have been closer to reality if you had chosen Edison, not Tesla ... because Edison was a prick that used Tesla to make money and didn't repaid accordingly )) ...kind of what Trimble does with SketchUp.

@derei said: Thank you all for the solutions ! Check out my "Spin It" plugin on my blog. It has options to spin the camera and record the scenes.

I have no real info - it is not documented - but would guess in some temp directory.

@dave r said: Did you look at the User Guide? Start reading at the bottom of page 25. Thank you. For some reason I missed this user guide.

Although the Model Materials are the ones you see in the Materials-Browser, SketchUp has two other types of Materials - those associated with Layers and those associated with Images. These cannot be directly accessed using native tools or the API - although there are tricks, like my SKM_tools which has a new_material = image.use_as_material method, which can be used to extract an Image's Material and add it to the Model without Exploding the Image. If you Explode an Image its Material has a database flag reset so it then appears in then the Model's Materials list [renamed]. It seems that in the case of this Image when it was made into a Material that flag was not reset properly. Even saving the texture-image as a PNG and reusing that, it still is missing in the Materials-Browser ! On a PC the only way I found of jerking it back into reality was to edit the group-container, select the face that uses the wayward Material [named "Image1"] and use the right-click > context-menu > "Make Unique Texture" - so now the Material "Image1" is duplicated as "Image1#1" - however, you can then rename it "Image1" with no errors, so the origin has vanished... and now all is well !

@tig said: Googling 'dxf reference guide' return lots of interesting hits - e.g. http://www.autodesk.com/techpubs/autocad/acadr14/dxf/dxf_reference.htm Also there are several RB file plugins in the PluginStore which do DXF import/export manipulation - so using those as 'cribs' would help too... So what more do you want ? Thanks for this... i did a lot of search, but I guess I used the wrong keywords ) never found this. Thanks a lot.

Just a pinky, blue, yellow lights somewhere in the space! The little yellow jacket part! (here green) It's Vermeer!

have you tried Triangulate Cp by TiG ?

Derie: FYI The attached pic shows both the orginal on left and your problem model on right. Each is locked in my skp. You posted model was flattened, then used PP to extrude up to height shown in original and dimension shown at same display resolution for each. As can be seen both correlate. This approach basically replicates your model and one would expect both to be same. However, if the contention SU randomly changed model it seems reasonable errors in x,y which is not case. Detail look at steps in model creation can hopefully find where error was introduced. [image: ByiR_Component_134_original_mac1.jpg]

Very nice renders and a great project, good luck to you.