Hey Michael,
Windows update's cause me all kinds of trouble. I have no idea if it will help with this situation or not, but after Windows updates I often need to uninstall & reinstall 'Microsoft C++ Distributables' to get my programs functioning again. If Clothworks uses C++ it could be ​affected...?

(After last months update, I lost one of my NVMe drives from showing up in BIOS...and I still havent' got it working again.... (thanks MS))

You may want to check out Enscape. It is about as close to 'plug and play' as you can get. I use Enscape from time to time, and it produces great results for the time you put in, but still mainly use Vray for the high quality photo-realistic renders. Enscape is lacking in a few areas, like metal reflections. I've had to switch back over to Vray when rendering kitchens with all stainless steel appliances because they just werent up the level we needed for super-high-end renderings. Also when we needed advanced multi-layered materials, need the power of a renderer like Vray for that. But still, Enscape is pretty amazing for what it does and how quickly it does it.

To get good results with whichever tool you decide to go with, you will have to learn the basics of materials & textures.  Diffuse, reflections/glossiness, bump/normal maps...and creating good seamless non-tiling textures.   I should also note, Chaos Group has great getting started tutorials....maybe give their tutorial on materials a shot and see how you go.  They also have a pretty extensive library of ready to render materials built in now.  Here are the quick start tuts: [https://www.chaosgroup.com/vray/sketchup/tutorial-videos](https://www.chaosgroup.com/vray/sketchup/tutorial-videos)

You just need to set 'Boundary Corners' to 'Smooth'. With your object selected, click the 'i' in the SubD toolbar to open entity info. You'll find the settings for boundary corners there. More info here: https://evilsoftwareempire.com/subd/manual/entity-info#boundary-corners

@pipingguy said:

Still looks the same.

That is your layer tray. Greyed out means the layer is turned off. Click the eyeball at left to turn layer back on.

Woops. Just read your earlier post and got context of your post. Sorry. Yes, that is pretty light. Which brings me to one of my Sketchup wishes: User interface customization....

Hey Seasdes,
Check out Curic's plugins. He has a lot of tools that will dig down into nested groups and allow you to edit without actually 'clicking' into the groups.

I get bugsplats with everybody's plugins, including Curic & Fredo. It's just part of life if you're a sketchup user (and push it to it's limits). A lot of Curic's tools have become indispensable to me over the past couple years. And honestly, I think Sketchup would be pretty useless to me without Fredo6's plugins.

Look into Curic Drawing Tools.(DIO2,OI,Stretch,Extend). Neat stuff & really useful. You can copy edges, push/pull face and a lot of other functionality and options without even entering any groups or components and a lot without even exiting or re-entering the tool.

Also check out his free stuff. Many useful plugins there, too.

cheers

Update:
I got it to work. exploded, copied to new drawing, etc. All good now.

Hello,
TopoShaper just started giving me problems. I've used for years without any hickups..no idea why I'm getting errors now.

When I select contours and run TopoShaper, I get 'cannot hide layer that is a part of the active path' Error.

This is happening on both office and home pc. Sketchup Pro 21.1.299, Windows 10 pro. error log attached, one from office, one from home office. If anyone has any ideas or has time to check this out, I'd sure appreciate it. Thanks!

Ruby Error - CLEANSING - 09-Sep-21 17_50_56.txt

Ruby Error - CLEANSING - 09-Sep-21 18_00_29.txt

If you select just the edges that you want to connect, turn them in to a group, then draw an edge(or an arc/curve) on each end to bridge to gap to create 'closed geometry', you could then use Soap Skin & Bubble and get a mesh created.

You could also use Curviloft: Select just the edges that you want to connect, turn them in to a group, run 'BZ Polyline Segmentor' to create equal segments on both edges, then run Curviloft to bridge the gap.

PEBCAK

Sure thing. If you run into to one of those more complicated examples, just share a skp file and I'll be happy to take a look and let you know if there are any better workarounds I know of or plugins that could help in a different situation. Cheers! GD

Sketchup does not like when two edges meet at the boundary of a cutting perimeter. For this instance, you could solve the problem by making a group out of the diamond geometry, then trace the outside perimeter(make a rectangle), drop the rectangle down onto the face below, delete the inner face, then drop your diamond pattern into place and explode, if necessary....(or you could just keep it grouped).

I have an idea that might save you time. If you'd like to share the skp file, I'll make a GIF to explain the process visually.

Hello Anton,
I use this plugin so much that I have keyboard shortcut assigned to run it. Problem is that I sometimes accidently run it while nothing is selected....which of course runs FixIt on the whole model. Sometimes no problem, but in very large & detailed models it can be bad news.
So my question, is it possible to add a warning dialog box like, 'You are about to FixIt the whole model. Proceed? 'Yes' or 'No'. Or maybe easier, is there a way to disable running on the whole model, as some plugins won't run unless you have something selected? Maybe snippet of code I can copy/paste into the rb file?

Thank you,
GD

+1

See if 'Fixit 101' will get you where you're going.

Hey Dale,
That is great news. Very interested to see what you can do to improve FFD. I've posted gizmos from other programs. 3ds max has a different gizmo for each transform - move, rotate & scale. Blender also, but they also have a combined gizmo if you choose to use it. You can easily move, rotate & scale without switching modes/commands. In sketchup, Thom has implemented a gizmo in Vertex tools that is also a combined gizmo for moving vertices.
I agree that a gizmo would be very handy to have in FFD. One thing I miss from 3ds max when using sketchyFFD is the ability to select two control points and scale them as a means of moving them equal distances toward or away from each other. If you aren't familiar with that or it isn't making sense, I could post a gif.

Cheers,
GD

I agree with what they said, and will add that the higher resolution photo the better...(hard to place the alignment points when image is too pixelated). But, I think it's good enough to roughly model from then adjust later according to your known dimensions. See if this file works better for you. I aligned to the corner of the desk in the foreground. Not much vanishing point on the red axis, but like I said, should be good enough to help guide in roughing things out.

moje_ambulance - Edited GD3.skp

You need to click the little advanced settings button to unhide the advanced stuff for bitmap settings, then turn off filtering. Do this for both diffuse & opacity maps. Here is file, but I use latest vray so might not be backwards compatible. https://www.dropbox.com/s/vjynl83pk516a9d/Tree%20-%202.skp?dl=0

Try turning off filtering for both diffuse & opacity bitmaps and make sure alpha map is set to linear space, 1.0, and not rendering space, rgb.

also, easier to trouble shoot if you post skp file. cheers

Great modeling, use of Subdiv and cartoon render...but just as important, full of character. Love it.