Thanks chaps, I shall have a look now.

PS: by "hints of colour" I mean something along the lines of a watercolour painting where the colour within the enclosed surface is very imprecise and maybe doesn't go to the edges, or maybe even goes beyond - though I doubt the latter is possible. The main SU "watercolour" isn't really what I'm after, so the search begins!

Hello again.

I was wondering if you could let me know of any other places that I might be able to download some additional "styles" from other than http://sketchucation.com/shop/styles ?

I'm after a kind of 'arty' style with hints of colour ideally, something that would be nice for gardens etc.

Thanks in advance.

G

... ie. using some software as a go-between, maybe AutoCAD for example? I've a pal who bought Vectorworks years ago but then never bothered learning how to use it properly. She presently sends me a screen grab of the extremely basic plans that she draws up using Vectorworks and I start from scratch drawing it again in SU. It seems a terribly long-winded way of doing things so I'm VERY open to suggestions.

@box said:

In the shadows dialog box, un tic Display on ground.

Perfect, thank you.

@box said:

It looks like your model is placed below the ground plane.

You're correct and this is intentional due to excavation work, but why does it have this effect when the "Google Earth Snapshot" layer is turned off? What can I do to fix it other than make the garden higher than it will actually be?

This problem is a new one on me. If you look at the attached image you'll see that I have two floating "footprint" shadows - one on the bbq and one leading to the door. What have I done wrong to cause this to happen?

Thanks as always,

G

@gaieus said:

No worries - I have presentation bundle (on one of my broken hard drives ) so I remembered.

Good plugin bundle, too, although nowadays I do not do much animation inside native SU.

Thanks as always chaps. Gaieus, what do you use as an alternative to animating in SU?

Hello again.

I suspect that my request is not currently possible, but I'll make it anyway because you lot are always full of surprises.

I know how to set the transition and pause timings in animations presently, but it would be brilliant if there was a way to have a custom setting for particular scenes (ie, scenes with lots of information that might require a 5 second pause, whereas the other scenes would usually have a pause time of 0 seconds). What would be the best way to achieve this?

NB: All I can think of is to use screen capture software and manually pause the animation at the relevant time - but this seems a bit haphazard

Thank you Cotty

Normally I like to learn by 'trial and error' (in reality this ends up being 'error and error' more often than not), but I need to learn how to use the features and functions of the sandbox efficiently asap. Can one of you point me in the right direction please?

@tig said:

'Flattery' works on PC [and probably MAC].
Are you extracting/installing it properly ?
It is an Extension and needs activating etc ?

Also look at:-
Jim's simple "jf_UnfoldTool.rb" http://sketchuptips.blogspot.com/2007/08/plugin-unfoldrb.html
and MattC's "AutoUnfold.rb" http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&p=342121#p342110
There's also the similar "unfoldtool.rb" by anon, that I have but can't remember where from...

The error was something to do with "encryption", I just reinstalled it, clicked "OK" a bunch of times and it seems to be fine

Thanks for replying as I'd probably have given up on it otherwise.

Hello everyone.

I'm hunting for a plugin that will unfold sheet metal models. I've just downloaded one called "flattery" after reading good things about it online, but I'm not sure if it only works on Macs as I get errors as soon as I try to extract it. Please can you suggest a good alternative?

Thank you.

@mitcorb said:

You may be aware that another Trimble owned company/software is Tekla Structures, which I think is a BIM application. Perhaps Trimble plans to integrate the Sketchup modeling process into this application in some way?

I was not aware of that, but you can certain that I soon will be much more familiar with it

@gaieus said:

@grizzler said:

I typed "BIM" into the search bar and nothing came up...

Unfortunately the forum search engine does not "react" to anything that is 3 or less characters long.

I know it sucks. This is how the software is programmed however so we cannot do too much about it.

You needn't worry about that restriction Gaieus, as the rest of this forum is top notch!

I typed "BIM" into the search bar and nothing came up, so I just wanted to ask whether anything is being done to address BIM in SU? I would imagine that it would be a big change if it was to be integrated and therefore a new SU version rather than a series of Rubys to bridge gaps bit by bit - but then again, I'm not sure if Trimble want to take SU down that path at all.

@jim said:

Have you tried to delete the entire SketchUp Registry tree? You seem to have done everything else...

Normally I would not recommend messing with the Registry, but you don't seem to have much to lose at this point.

Doing this will nuke all your SketchUp preferences: shortcuts, toolbars, file locations, etc EVERY setting. Everything, as if you have installed SketchUp for the first time. You'll have to decide if it's worth the effort to start from scratch.

Make sure to close SU first, then open a command prompt and type:

reg delete HKCU\Software\Google\SketchUp8

You could backup your shortcuts first, though.

That would be horrific to have to do that after how long it has taken me to find my feet and get things how I like them. Luckily I loaded the drawing to my old laptop where there are far fewer tweaks made to the original program, and the problem was exactly the same. I tried my two most recent drawings, but as I get a bit more skilled with each piece of work the size of the file becomes larger, and these 2 largest drawings both had this issue. I tried an older, smaller drawing and it was fine.

I'm not sure how to reduce the drawings down any further, they are 19500KB and 40000KB - is this too large?

I am unable to geolocate at all without it crashing (I've never needed to do this before so it hasn't been a problem until now)

Edit 6 feb: this isn't funny now, I've updated, rebooted, cleaned, defragged and scanned with every bit of software I've got - and it still won't let me do it... Bug splat every single time

@unknownuser said:

@grizzler said:

I've just read through the entire thread and I just wanted to say thanks for all the info'. This kind of stuff is invaluable to us Newbies who are only just gtting to grips with Push/Pull .

There seem to be 2 front runners in the "Ease Of Use" category, Podium and Maxwell. I'd be interested to see which of these two most of you think is actually the easiest to use (not necessarily the best at rendering, but simple for someone with my very limited skills to use)

keep in mind grizz that this thread is nearing 5 years old.. while much of the info still applies today.. some of it doesn't..

NNOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!

I've just read through the entire thread and I just wanted to say thanks for all the info'. This kind of stuff is invaluable to us Newbies who are only just gtting to grips with Push/Pull .

There seem to be 2 front runners in the "Ease Of Use" category, Podium and Maxwell. I'd be interested to see which of these two most of you think is actually the easiest to use (not necessarily the best at rendering, but simple for someone with my very limited skills to use)

@cattz said:

Can't help with the problem but the screencast works fine for me on IE7 and Chrome.

Thanks for taking the time to let me know