Thank you for your information,

If I am not mistaken the vertices are arranged counter-clockwise (right-handed system) if it has not been flipped / it has been flipped by an even number of times;
or clockwise (left-handed system) if it has been flipped by an odd number of times. In other words I can make use of the cross product of the component's local axes (from the transformation matrix) to determine which direction vertices are arranged.

At least that is how I think it works. Please correct me if I am wrong.

BTW attached is the model in the screenshots above.
track.skp

I did try inspecting the vertices of Face.outer_loop although it gave me the same result as Face.vertices. I think the problem is about the orientation of that component since it is horizontally flipped.

Actually is it possible to "temporarily" explode all the components and groups but at the same time not affecting the model (like not ACTUALLY exploding the groups)? I apologize if I didn't express this well enough but I sort of did something like that when I wrote a similar exporter for Blender.

Hi all
I was trying to create a exporter for Sketchup to the .X format, where defining a face requires giving the vertices surrounding that face in clockwise order. After some experimenting I found that Face.vertices is usually given in counter-clockwise order so I made my exporter to output face vertices in reverse of the order given by Sketchup.

The selected object in the following picture is a component with 4 faces, in which I have labelled the vertices of one of them. According to the above logic, the vertices should be given in the order A -> B -> D -> C, so that my exporter would output it as C -> D -> B -> A. (assuming A is the starting vertex)

However the .X file showed the face in the wrong direction. Using the Ruby console I found that Face.vertices of that face is given in C -> D -> B -> A which is already clockwise.

It appears that this component has been flipped along the X axis before, which is likely to be causing the problem.

Is there a way that I can ensure what order will the vertices of a face be listed regardless of transformation?

Hi all,
I ran into a problem when applying partially transparent textures to a sketchup model.
I have two different textures of trees painted onto three separate faces, as shown below:

However, if I change the camera angle so that the faces now overlap, the problem appears.

There are some transparent areas incorrectly displayed so that you can see through all 3 faces instead of showing the second face behind.
Both textures are stored in 32-bit TGA format (with an alpha channel). I have also tried to convert the textures to PNG but the same problem persists.

Draw a circle perpendicular to the first rod, push the circle until it intersects with your first rod
Use intersect with model if necessary ( to create lines around the part where the 2 rods intersect ) but that's up to you
If I got what you're saying then this should work

spent some time searching about this SCF Power Toolbar and I came up with this link:
http://www.special.eclipse.co.uk/_ruby.html
I saw a pic with the toolbar without the 2 tools there
however when I click on the only link in the page, which links me to:
http://www.special.eclipse.co.uk/scf_quarrit/scf_pow.html
The pic in there shows the 2 tools. Strange.
Why dont you use other plugins to replace these tools? I'm sure there are a lot of bevel/chamfer plugins out there

found the tutorial. thanks

I've been trying to use Vray to render a Sketchup model, which is part of my school project. The problem is, when rendering grass in front of the building, it is common sense that displacement will be used especially there are a few scenes where the grass is close to the camera. However, I can't find an appropriate displacement map to make it look realistic - using the original texture as a displacement map make the grass look like green spikes. Can anybody suggest where I can find such a map to make realistic grass? Thanks!