My copy of SketchUp 2018 Pro on my laptop no longer shows my mapped network drives in the window when I select to load a file. I can drill down to the needed shared folder, even though that folder is set up as a mapped drive. This used to work but has changed recently, not sure what update did it. Anybody have his issue or a solution?

I have taken XYZ measurements of my heated bed and would like to create an object that matches that data. Is there a way to import XYZ data into SU18 for sandbox? I tried using cloudV8 but it gives an error upon opening SU. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I hate to bring up an old post, but I finally looked at what it would take to upgrade my 2017SU, and I guess after more than 10 years of using SUPro, I'll have to stop upgrading. For a non-commercial user as myself, $240 is more than I'm willing to fork over now, and with $120 a year in addition for annual upgrade and "support", SUPro has become too expensive for me. I have only ever used support once, and that was with a licensing issue, so having to pay for support I don't need doesn't wash with me.

I bought SUPro originally after I retired from a government IT job, and wanted a little more than SU to use to design my woodworking and renovation projects. I still use and will continue to use 2017SUPro in the shop (at least the renovations are finally over). I now also use it to design things for 3D printing, but Trimble can count me out of their of their income stream. End of rant...

The actuator and arm are not the issue, they work well together. The problem is the stud that is attached to the gate (door). The gate moves linearly and the arm pivots at the bottom. The slot in the arm also pivots, but relative to the stud, at a different rate (linearly) at the beginning and of its arc.

This setup is to open the gate and turn on dust collection for my router table. This is a short post I did on this: https://ezsmart.blogspot.com/2017/11/semi-automatic-dust-collector-blast.html

I'm glad that this will help in continuing to develop Animator.

Take care,
Dik

I didn't tweak it, that is the result from your plug-in. I guess I'm just picky, but the post that is part of the gate should stay centered in the slot in the arm, and it doesn't. Anyway, I have tried to post or send the file every way I can think of and I always get a server error. The zipped file is only 4,284KB.

Try this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B_3KP1W09NjeR0psd1BwWktyZHc?usp=sharing

Yeah, I had to right click, copy and paste into the address bar. This is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R8BlZueUNY

I guess until the next release, I'll just have to live with the lack of synchronicity.

Thank you for such a great plug-in and all the others that I use all the time...

Dik

Fredo, I like Animator far more than the other animation plug-ins I have for SU. I have made a number of animations in the past, but have not had the time of late, but the other day I was designing something for my workshop and decided I wanted to make another animation. I had installed Animator a while back, but had not had a project to try it out on. I am very impressed, It didn't take me neatly as long to create a video and the process was not only easy, but the control I have is marvelous.

I do have one issue that I cannot resolve. I have an object moving linearly in sync with an object moving in an arc. I assumed I could use easing to match the liner motion to the movement of the arc, but I cannot figure out how this can be done. As can be seen in the video, the white post does not stay within the slot in the rotating arm.

This happens a lot, with files that are on either of my internal drives, my 500GB SSD or my 1TB HD. The current file I'm having problems with is 58MB.

I am running SU Pro 2015 on a Windows Pro 10-64 bit Alienware AURORA R3 with an i7-2600 at 3.40GHzwith 12.GB RAM. It seems that when I'm orbiting or moving an object when the auto save starts, SU hangs and I have to kill the process to continue working. This leads to some lost work and is very frustrating. I have noted that when this happens, there has been an empty x.skb file created (x=,1,...), thus I assume that it is beginning auto save and this is a temp file. Any idea what gives here?

I've been away a long time, but am glad I came by and found this thread. I have been using SU to make animations for several years now. I started with simple 3-4 scene animations to answer questions put forth in woodworking forum I'm involved in. Too crude, not satisfied.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aktvJLNnud8

I then moved to doing cells by hand for smother transitions. Way too much work and still not satisfied.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYVg3Vg9A34

I tried SketchyPhysics. Easier, but not that easy to get things to work right in SP. And the quality was not there since I had to use screen capture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSBFMZpVb1c

I then discovered SU Animate and was able to do things much more easily. I produced a bunch of animations with SU Animate and thought it was my answer to creating decent videos without so much manual work. But there were issues with the movements along the path, you didn't always get what you wanted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRjMt9ZLMr0

Then I heard about Keyframe Animation while doing a quick look-see here. Tried it and liked it. In fact I think it is the answer for me and what I want to do. There are some things that have yet been incorporated; hidden layers and components for instance, but I've been told they are in the works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVek9wMdD9o

I recently purchased the latest version SU Animate because it is supposed to have key frame capability as well as handle hidden layers and components. So far I have been disappointed, as the learning curve is extremely steep, at least for me. So much so that I have yet to produce anything.

As to my work flow: I create everything in SU (of course). I then start putting together a table with proposed scenes (video, not SU), which gets modified continuously. Using the table I start making the key frames (scenes - SU). Once satisfied with the key frames for a scene, I have the tweens generated. Since I have a fairly old/slow machine, I only render the tweens with SU. The resulting PNG files are then compiled in Sony Vegas Movie Studio. Where I also add titles, music, sound effects, and the occasional voice over.

I have a new machine coming later this month, so I will finally be able to try better rendering. I would love any suggestions as to which renders I should look into.

Now that you are sufficiently bored, please return to your regular activities.

I keep noticing that the every once in a while the Component window doesn't show anything, like it is collapsed, and will not expand. At the same time the Outline window shows the components in the model. Later, it is working just fine. Has anybody else seen this behavior?

Thanks, I haven't been on the forum in quite a while, guess I need to visit more often...

I have a face that when I extrude it, I don't get a solid. Any idea how I can find the "gap" or what ever is stopping it from making a solid? I'm running ver. 8.

When you extrude the face in this model, and create a component from the result, the component is not solid.

I think I have run into this problem before, but if I resolved it, I no longer have a clue as to what I did. In the attached test file, the animated object should move in an arc (which it does), but at the end of the arc, it moves linearly. The arc path was derived from a circle. What am I doing wrong? Is there a better way to draw an arc path?
I have SUAnimate 3.1.

ArcPathTest.skp

Thank you, thank you, thank you...

This will really save time.

Gaieus,

You were right I guess. If I don't open Movie Studio while exporting, I don't have a problem. I guess SU or MS doesn't play well with memory.

I'm glad to be back in...

The scenes range from, 2-200+ frames. I have 3G of RAM so I hope I'm not running out of memory. Nothing else seems to be effected, the frames (files) that are exported are simply empty (32K). This behavior started just recently (the last 2-3 weeks).

Help...

I have an issue with SU exporting animation to PNG files that I want to get help on. After I have exported four or five animations from different files, the files that are then exported are blank. I have to close SU and restart it, and then it works for 4-5 more exports before it starts exporting blank files again. Since I'm trying to work on a video that has hundreds of these exports, I really need to get this fixed. Any one seen this? Is it a known bug? I have searched but haven't found anything.

Thank you Scott and Simone!

I'll jump on this as soon as I can.

Unless I have missed something in the previous post, it is simple to have multiple animations in one file. What I do is name each group of scenes to be in a unique animation with a unique prefix (i.e. S12-) and then add sequential numbers to the end for each scene (i.e. S12-001, S12-002, etc.). It is then simple to scroll down the Scene window to the starting scene, select it then scroll to the last scene and shift-click it. Then click the "Include in animation" box and you are set to export. Of course, this assumes that you do not have any other scenes set to include in animation.