Similar approach to Pete - I click 'New Posts', go to the end of the list and middle-click to open them all up in new tabs (or in batches of 20 or so if there are a lot). Then I click through the tabs - I have the forum set up to show the latest post first. If it's not of interest I close the tab, if I want to know more I'll scroll down to see all the new posts in the thread.

Bob

After I rendered the cobbles I remembered TIGs Matrix Proximity script. It allows you to create an array of components with some variation in size, placement and rotation. It adds an extra level of 'difference' if you need it.

Bob

PS For some reason about half of the cobbles turned over on dropping so I had to make both sides rounded.

Excellent, thank you - that is so clever. Especially grabbing the SketchPhysics model before it resets

Bob

PS I pulled up the surface with vector push-pull to create a mortar bed and ran a quick render.

I played around with backlit leds today. Here's a little array. The visible part is a transparent cylindrical component with a plexiglass material. The lighting is from five small rectangles that are coloured emitters hidden just behind the cylinders inside the 'work surface'. Just an idea, not to scale.

Bob

As Remus said there's a good beginner's guide on the Kerkythea site, and you might well ask in the SketchUp forum there too. Here are a few thoughts from my experiences with KT.

Probably the most important is that Kerkythea knows nothing about shapes - it only understands materials (actually material names). If you want to have control over your model in KT then you must think through the material names in SketchUp and make sure that you distinguish them. If you use 'black' on a slider control and on a door-handle KT will treat them as being connected and you will be unable to move them or change the materials independently. Instead name one 'black_slider' and the other 'black_handle' and all will be well.

Kerkythea only sees the front-face of SketchUp materials so make sure that all your materials have the 'white' face exposed.

If you have truly identical objects then use Components in SketchUp and export them to Kerkythea as instances. This will make the export quicker and lighter. The downside is that instances are a little fiddlier to work with in KT untilyou get used to them.

Think through your lighting strategy - particularly for the LEDs. You may be better off using small light emitting surfaces behind the led lenses rather than many point lights. Depending on the location one rectangular emitter mesh may be able to illuminate many leds.

Start small. Select and export a small section of your model and play with that in Kerkythea while you get used to the exporter and the KT controls. Run several 'Quick' renders to see the effect before committing to a major run.

Good luck

Bob

It seems to be OK now with the current releases of both FF RC3 (I think) and Gears 0.3.24.0

Bob

The bottom right hand corner is not square. Here's a zoomed in view of that corner, you can see that the vertical isn't blue. The two guidelines were drawn parallel to the red and blue sides to mark the true corner.

You could use the move tool to put the vertical in place and redraw the curve in the end plane - but it's probably simpler to use the push tool to push the opposite end right through.

Bob

Here's a version made by taking sections and realigning them to a curve. In this version the secions are normal to the curve - not sure if that's what's wanted or not.

Bob

Fantastic piece of work, congratulations. I have a lit clos in the sous-sol but it's not as elegant as this.

Bob

PS and greeting from the far west of Bretagne !

I seem to remember that hoppers often vibrate to get round the sticking problem.

Bob

If you want to create a hull to use in a model then I'd seriously suggest that you look at the free hull modeller DelftShip. You can create a hull there and re-import it into SketchUp to build on.

Bob

Later: fixed link to http://www.delftship.net (not .com)

There's another possible approach from Limon in this thread

Bob

Congratulations on the Prize!! France quakes . . .

I've been playing with this model, mostly blindly groping. Exporting directly to KT seems to lose the UV mapping, the textures are still there but the scaling is badly out. Exporting via obj keeps the textures beautifully but some other artifacts appear in side the arches.

Bob

Fredo6's Bezier tool includes a polyline. Does this do what you want?

Bob

Later: edited to attribute the script correctly (I hope).

Interesting . . . scratches head . . .

Bob

Julius, have sent you a pm.

Have you checked the replies to your earlier post?

The same thing applies here - use the inference engine to create your half your shape, make it a component, copy and paste in place then scale the copy by -1.

The last image is the two components exploded and the dividing lines deleted - you can't do this unless the parts are coplanar.

Does this do what you want?

Bob

Most likely you need to select "Export default UVs" as 'Yes' when you export to Kerkythea from SketchUp. If the UVs aren't exported then KT uses settings of its own.

The picture on the left has the default settings and some textures are large and others small. The one on the right uses the SU mapping (though some textures are missing in this case - it's the earlier version of he model posted below).

Bob

The FFD plugin might do it for you see the video in this post

Bob

If you orbit so that you are 'facing' the red-blue plane i.e. looking along the green axis, then it's more likely that the inference engine will pick up the red-blue plane to draw on.

Bob

Thanks. Screen grabs and callouts with SnagIt; you have to use screen grabs or if you want to show any of the SU controls. Edited the final image in Xara because it make sit easy to re-size and shuffle on the page.

Bob