Good job, Adam. I was going to post some things about "manual" roof modeling and drew some around the garage. But I found some of the discrepancies and ran out of time. Looks like you figured it out fine.

Peter

My 2 cents about exporting:
Export as texturized single3ds object. Then in Max run 'detach by material' (found at scriptspot). Believe me it's a completely different world- blazing speed!
BTW there's also 'attach by material' script (caution: memory hungry).
Hope it helps.

Also Ponoko.

@TIG I am thinking of using it in land drawings, it is an equitable distribution, Autocad lips meet the current situation at this address, dear,Tig. I probably can't use this in Sketchup.https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ptateu3rkrh9mo/Separate Area.VLX?dl=1

I will work again as you described, I kept you busy, thank you. Dear tig.

Maybeis to late, but, perhaps still work for you http://www.imsidesign.com/Products/CADCompanionProducts/pdf2cad/tabid/1722/Default.aspx?cid=422390

I suspected as much. A general solution would spend more time inspecting than processing I suppose. Grooves on a single (non-extruded) face should be quite simple, but I imagine the code would vary from solving the edges that turn corners. Edges that support co-planar faces and turn corners is a different procedure than those that turn corners and support non-planar. Also edges that form a "C" as opposed to closed loop would be processed different as well. Could there possibly be a prompt to help the script identify the situation before the process runs? It appears there is an overwhelming desire and need for the (universal) script, across many different industries, but I certainly understand the nature of edges in sketchup and the inability to identify them as they have no "normals" like faces do. I'm however, still hopeful for a solution.

@Earthmover
can You do a quick explanation video tutorial?
thanks!!

looks good... maybe try and HDRI image as environment and maybe some depth of field

Well light slider does not do anything...only dark slider does. I cannot detect any lighting (including sun) only GI.
Btw nice model and render as well. If you want some presets please come to Podium forum. We have released optimaLEM.xml this week.
As far as 2d clips we have released Podium Plants and Trees as alpha png so you should have good looking model in SU as well. No more need to have seperate clipmaps.

Now wouldn't that be cool? I do this frequently so automating it would be good. Perhaps the user would be asked to define axes of symmetry so a component could be halved, quartered or "eighthed".

Thanks Sam, I'll give it a shot and report back. Looks perfect. 👍

@dale said:

This is great to see, I hope you post right through to completion 👍

I second that. To tell you the truth I enjoy viewing real on-the-ground projects much more than renders or movie animations.

Previously I was hand tracing the perimeter within a group. I need to do this on every project as a means to combine the home and newly designed structural elements with the imported geolocation terrain. An automated process would be a huge time saver. 👍

The current method involves (shown in the video I posted) -

Gleaning the Perimeter Outline via -
1 Selecting and grouping the model
2. Moving the model upward on the Z
3. Creating a WorkPlane on the ground http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=31204
4. Processing Silhouette to Plane - http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=31204
5 Deleting the work Plane
6. Exploding the Silhouette to Plane Group
7. Running EEbyVtoObject - http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=37515
8. Deleting all but the top edges

Merging it into the Terrain
9. Moving to the Google Earth Terrain
10. Cut/copy the Perimeter Trace
11. Opening the GE terrain group
12. Pasting in Place the Perimeter Trace
13. Selecting the Grouped perimeter and the terrain together
14 Running Instant Site Grader Pro - http://www.valiarchitects.com/sketchup_scripts

(Perimeter Trace can have NO truly vertical edges, or the Site Grader plugin won't work)

If at least the first 8 steps could be cut down by combining some snippets of existing code, that would be awesome. If it's a hassle....I'm more than grateful for the tools you've already created that make this possible in the first place! .....and it's still a lot faster than tracing it by hand! 😄

Also, I think Instant Site Grader is great, but I don't like the linear fashion in which it grades the terrain into the perimeter trace. It seems it takes the footprint and offsets it by the user input, does some intersecting and deleting and then performs a "from contours" type operation to skin it back together. Perhaps using the perimeter trace to do the first part manually and then using Extrude Edges by Rails, would grade the terrain in a way it can still be sculpted. (just thinking out loud) Perhaps Bezier Patch will also be available soon. 😉

My TIG.centerorigin moves all geometry in the current SKP so that it's centered in the XY at the origin - the Z is unchanged but can be centered too by # out a line as explained... It means you need to process the SKP for each layer exported, but it pretty quick...

Good find. Thanks for sharing. 👍

nice tutorial thanks 😄

Good find, for general modeling knowledge.
After about 10 mentions and close inspection of the user interface in the movie, I finally figured out that "toosnoo" is Turbosmooth.

very impressive earthmover...I agree about the people and some of the camera movements are a bit "jerky" but I still really enjoyed this. Why not render the animation in 3ds max though? Is lumion a lot faster?