Thanks Mitcorb, you're correct, my issue is more to do with how to show the water rather than the terrain through which it runs. As it is a 'brook' and not a 'stream', the water trickles unevenly over rocks etc and drops into pools in some places along the way and I'm not sure how I should attempt to show it.

PS: The waterfall you mentioned sounds interesting, I'll try to look for it.

Wow! I've actually managed to catch you guys out for once. No worries, I'm sure I'll come up with something ... awful

Hello chaps. Please could you advise me on the best way to draw a natural stream please? I'm planning to design a garden that has a brook running through it and my main problem is showing water running through it in some manner that doesn'tlook too awful. Once ccompleted I'll render using Podium, so I don't know whether that might gave a bearing on your preferred method.

Thank you once again.

Yay! Positive feedback from the big boys! Makes a pleasant change to being told off for "plane clipping" and such like

It took me a while to figure out what on Earth i was doing, but i eventually generated something kind of like i envisaged. There's a way to go I reckon, but I've taken the first tentative steps

@dave r said:

Unfortunately you won't be able to get that sort of thing with styles in SketchUp. That's going to require some post processing.

One easy way to get the watercolor feel to the drawing is to run it through Fotosketcher's Watercolor filter. I do this sort of thing once in awhile. I make separate exports of the edges and the faces so I can manipulated the colors and add texture without impacting the edges. I then overlay the lines in an image editor. I can show examples if you're interested.

Sounds Great Dave (though maybe a tad complex for lickle ol' me )

I've just found some great Styles provided by Lidelin/Lin, but I'm interested in your suggestion too Dave.

I can't believe I'm only just finding out about these styles being freely available! I also can't believe I've never heard of Fotosketcher before today either!! What other fantastic secrets have you all got hidden?

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!