@unknownuser said:

Phone Todd to stop his script!

Both scripts are very different, each serves a different purpose. I am already thinking of a couple of creative uses for Todd's script, both related to Greeble... You have to see beyond mere colors and into the selection possibilities of these tools.

And Pilou, you don't need to worry about entering precise values when using "Random Painter". Just click on the Red box and input "1", hit Enter, then "2", hit Enter, then "3", until you have the number of colors/materials you want. And then replace those "placeholder colors" with Any Colour You Like, one by one, with the Bucket tool + Shift.

Almost forgot: Here's the SketchUp file of "Greeble City":

SketchUp 7

Here are a few more views:

And here's the thread that inspired this exercise:
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=15785

This should have been a tool in SU from the very beginning, thank you wikii!

Wow, thank you, Chris!
In a minute I'll show you what I wanted this for...

All faces are double sided in SketchUp.
Press B, select a solid material, and apply it to one side
Now select a "traslucent" material, apply it to the other side, after that click on the "Edit" tab of the "Materials" window and drag the Opacity slider to Zero.

To ensure you will not have trouble when rendering, make sure to apply the solid material to the white side of the face, and the translucent one to the Purple side of the face (i.e. the "backside", might be grey instead of purple)

Wow, thank you, Chris, This script will save everyone a lot of work when creating cities via Greeble and random push/pull...

Good tip, Anssi. Sending CAD files for printing can be quite messy (different CAD versions, missing plotting configuration files, scale/alignment, etc), so converting to PDF is almost always a streamlined option to traditional "plotting".

BTW, you don't need Adobe Acrobat Pro to make PDFs, you can use the free PDF creator, which installs as a printer and allows you to make PDFs from any program that allows you to print:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Depending on the shapes you want, you might also need "Soap skin & Bubble":
http://www.tensile-structures.de/index.html

@unknownuser said:

Seems last at the end are false!
Not a big deal than you can erase it but... perfection is needed

Actually, it would be really cool to also have a script that orients the profile just like that final face... It could be called "FollowMe Slide", as it would not keep the profile vertical, but instead place it perpendicular to the curve, like in Playground slides, or toboggans.

Wow, thank you wikii...
So many responses in so little time... This just shows how much we needed this.

@gaieus said:

(BTW I don't even have a printer so I don't know why I am worrying)

What better way to save ink than using no ink at all? I gave away my A3 inkjet printer two years ago to a religious organization, and haven't looked back.

Now I exchange info with clients almost exclusively via e-mail, rapidshare, CD/DVDs and USB sticks. Only when absolutely necessary (i.e. the client is not computer-savvy) I print out some drawings in a small b/n laser printer. If they need color output, they simply go to any Xerox center or cyber cafe. Most of my photos remain unprinted, too. We prefer to watch them on a 70" screen with an HD projector than in 6"x4" paper.

Hello, everyone.

I want to random-color a group of disconnected faces... Perhaps with four or five different colors/materials... Is there a way to do this? There are soooo many scripts... Perhaps there's already one that can do this.

If there's not one to do random coloring, is there one that can do random selection, so I can do the coloring myself?

Thank you in advance. I promise to learn Ruby so I can help, too.

Until follow_me_and_keep is ready (which will save all these following steps), here's a workaround:

• Go to Camera > Standard Views > Left

• Draw your profile within the plane formed by the positive blue and green axis, touching the origin.

• Erase the face leaving the lines, and make it a component.

• Select your profile (it must be a curve or a polygon, if it isn't, first join the edges with the join tool by Rick Wilson in the SCF Power Toolbar).

• Use the "copy along distance" button on the SCF Power Toolbar (also a script by Rick Wilson) and play with the distance until you're satisfied.

• Select all instances of the component and explode them. You can use Rick Wilson's script "select all instances": http://www.smustard.com/script/Instances

• Click on the "configuration" button of the "Skin" script by Darrel to "By order". Leave the other options blank.

• Execute the "skin" command and keep pressing "Enter" like crazy until the full object is done.

• Add soften/smooth edges to your taste.

You can download the "skin" script from this post:
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=1306&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=skin&start=105#p101209
And you can browse the rest of that thread for the latest version of skin.rb, too, if you want...

Yeah, it's a lot of extra work, that's why all await for follow_me_and_keep.

Thanks for the heads up, I've just installed it...

Pros: Text is very readable, at least coming from my laser printer, if you don't look too close, at which point the holes begin to distract you. I guess this was designed with inkjet printers in mind... On those impressions, ink bleeding would cover the holes.

Cons: When using it, zooming in your Word Processor becomes a lot slower.

A BIG Plus: You can tell your clients that you used an "eco-font" in the dimensioning.

Yes, I also realized that most people have their file extensions hidden, so I edited my first post...
BTW, thank you for pointing me to the location of this data... I didn't know it before . Now I can input all the cities in my country and have them all handy .

I'm not sure to understand your request, but you can edit the locations.dat file in any text editor.
Open Wordpad (Found in All Programs > Accesories in WinXP), go to File > Open and select "All documents" as filetype.

Within the file, every location is a line, and it's pretty easy to understand.

Before opening, make a backup of the file with WinRAR or simply make a copy with Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.

Just a footnote... We almost always say "latitude, longitude", but inside the locations.dat file the order is the opposite:

"Country","City",longitude,latitude,time zone.

For Guayaquil, for example, you should insert the line:
"Ecuador","Guayaquil",-79.898,-2.186,-5.00

Wow, SketchUcation is extremely visible in Google... Every single time we start discussing a new app, a representative comes here in no time.
I'll check the Bonzai videos. I remember dissin' SketchUp for years until I sat one entire day, from morning to late night, to watch all the 28 tutorial videos, and then started to design immediately. I had never before learned to use a 3D app in a single day! I hope Bonzai3D has a similar learning curve... I said hope.

Hello,

I can't see the images you posted. Please attach them to your post so they stay here, using "Upload attachment".
I think I can help you with the arch problem. Please post your .skp file so I can find a workaround.

However, the features you need are already in MoI, and AFAIK, MoI can export to SketchUp almost flawlessly.

Has anyone figured how to orbit the view and how to do a marquee selection?