Pretty much all laptops use some kind of 'brick' in the power lead. I guess this is the place you found the 110/240 label. If so then the laptop should run OK in Italy. If she hasn't got a brick then it's possible that a switch on the laptop need to be changed to switch the power supply voltage - I haven't seen one of these for a few years now.

There are two basic kinds of bricks - some of the older ones had both the in and out leads permanently fixed. The one in the image below and probably your daughters has a fixed lead to the laptop and a plug in lead to the power socket.

The plugin lead will be have an IEC standard C5 (two pin) or C7 (three pin) to plug into the brick and probably a US plug to go into the mains via an adaptor.

The simple thing to do is to go to the nearest hardware store in Rome and buy a replacement IEC lead with an Italian plug on the end. They come in various kinds (see Type L here) but I'm sure that she can identify what will work in the place she's in. Here in France those leads coat around 2 euros in the supermarket. (The three pin ones are a little harder to find but if needed a two pin lead can be made to fit into a three pin brick and will work fine.)

You can get a little spark when you plug a laptop into a live power supply - shouldn't be a problem - smoke and flames are a different problem!

Good luck to her.

Bob

I guess the Aptana Eclipse PlugIn for RadRails would also work well. It includes what appears to be a good ruby editor and debugger (you can ignore the RadRails bits after installation). The community version is still free and more than adequate as a code editor.

I use the Zend Studio Neon which is a PHP equivalent and, despite some shortcomings, prefer it to the full Zend studio.

Bob

I'm on a PC and could not see the images in the panorama, file size was good but all that showed up were the blue panels. I certainly opened and closed the group and may have tried exploding it.

In the end I downloaded the jpgs, turned on Hidden geometry and was able to select three panels at a time and re-texture them. The jpg names showed up in the edit material display - but the Use Image as texture checkbox was not checked and would not stay checked.

I deleted the existing jpg names, browsed to the downloaded versions and all was well.

Interestingly the skippy is still about the same size so it looks as though the new textures have replaced the old ones.

Bob

Hi,

A bit late after that good looking render but I experimented with another route to a high-poly version. Inspired by monsterzero's approach but not with his expertise.

Bob

Is this Venetian blind example the kind of result you are looking for. I know the modelling is different (ends + center) but the result works?

Bob

Hi,

The error is tiny. My guess FWIW is that you hit a rounding limit somewhere and something went to +1 pixel or +.00001mm instead of zero. As you say if the error wasn't lost in the noise then it wouldn't be possible.

Bob

I've no idea how it happened but if you zoom right in on the corner you can see that it is off vertical.

Bob

Here's an example on a simple curved surface. I imagine that this is the kind of thing that's wanted.

Bob

Tiny tutorial

Hi philem,

You can save a component from Edit | Component | Save As . . .

You can create a component library from the Component browser - click on the Details arrow to the right of the library drop-down. In practice you can save your skippies in any convenient folder and add the folder as a library to your models.

Bob

There are some interesting things going on here - and mostly they follow from some gaps in the specification, what the designer didn't specify on the plan. Those have to be filled in somehow which means that some assumptions have to be made.

The intersection method assumes that the degree of slope is uniform along the projection of the wall, not the length of the wall itself. In the case of jfmalone's wall that isn't going to make much difference, with my example with the sharper turn it will. In effect the end of the wall, which is in the green direction will have little or no slope.

My method leaves the decision to the internal workings of SketchUp and I have no real idea how it deals with that. But it does keep the curve more or less uniform along the length of the wall.

@unknownuser said:

the top cross section line is slanted but here the wall is getting ‘out of plumb’
I hadn't noticed that, both end of the wall top are exactly at 90 degrees, but, as you say, the middle of the wall is out of plumb (see below). I'm afraid I'm going to lay that off on to the SketchUp algorithm, as far as I can work out it should be possible to lower the top surface without any lateral movement.

@unknownuser said:

Neither the intersecting plan method nor follow-me will give you equal heights (90 angles at the tops of the wall).
This is tricky, the ends of the wall do have equal height - for the space in between it depends on where you choose to measure. Because it's a curve the two sides have different lengths and there are no 'right places' to choose to have the right angles. Where they should be is a design assumption - and it looks like the SketchUp algorithm is quite a long way off ideal. Your assumption that they should be equispaced is probably a much better one.

Bob

Hi,

Here's one way of doing it, it seems to be pretty smooth but may not be the minimum size.

Bob

Skippy tutorial

Hi,

The download from the link there is 6.4.112 - as are the actual release notes. Looks like they haven't updated all the version numbers on the pages yet.

Bob

PS The new release installed and ran without problem for me (so far at least).

Hi,

The release notes are tucked away here but it's extraordinary and inexcusable to force the upgrade through a dialogue box with no text or explanation.

To forewarn, if I open SketchUp this morning I see this dialogue, if I click on either 'DownLoad Now' or the Red X SketchUp closes. There seems to be no way past it - except maybe cutting off my internet connection . . .

Bob

Hi, I think the fonts you want are some of these:

'Greene' & 'Greene Greene' nice but pricy; or G&G not so many frills and available in a package with a Greene Ornament set.

Bob