Posts made by gtrogers

Congrats on your first paid model! Always such a great feeling.

I've also had some luck importing a vector PDF into Adobe Illustrator and from there, exporting to a dxf/dwg. Which I can then import into CAD and take measurements or export to DWG which SketchUp and read.

What a pain in the butt though But it works!!

Oh bummer, so it's only the network license that won't let you run multiple instances anymore? I didn't think to mention it because the functionality has always been there since I started using SketchUp back in... '07 I think?

As I type this I have a previous model I need to toggle between and I have to close my current one. Makes Hulk wanna smash! Anyway, just had to vent.

EDIT: So, quick technical question. Is there a reason SketchUp can't have multiple projects open in the same instance of the program that you can toggle between like in many other applications? That would be a great compromise between needing to run multiple copies of the program, and allow a lot of flexibility for the user to work on multiple models at the same time.

This is an extremely frustrating update. In the past, I often times will have 2 instances of SketchUp running and I'll copy and paste certain elements from a previous model into my Pro version. Now I have to close the current model, open the other one, copy, close the model, reopen, paste.... needless to say I do not appreciate the change. It would be one thing if I could ctrl-tab between multiple files like in CAD/Photoshop, but you cannot.

Extremely frustrating from a paying user's perspective and NOT a welcome change.

@massimo said:

Hi Greg, enable "hidden geometry" under "view" menu. Then rotate 90° a single planar texture surface of your arch. Pick this rotated texture with your eyedropper and continue to paint the contigous surfaces. SU will "remember" the correct position of the rotated texture.

Amazing. Worked PERFECTLY.

Thank you so much for your advice!

Hello everyone. Pretty simple question that I can't quite figure out yet.

I have two stone arches and I'm trying to texture them. The large arch's texture is orientated the way I want, but the smaller one is rotated 90 degrees. I'm assuming there's no "right-click>texture" positioning command because it's a curved surface?

Here's a pic of what I'm talking about.

Any advice?

@gaieus said:

Also, here is a whole collection oflinks you may be interested in:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=486

Ok, there's the mother lode. Thank you, Gaieus. I had a feeling a question like this would have been covered in depth, but I wasn't quite sure where to look as I'm new around here still

Thank you so much.

@ecuadorian said:

http://www.cgtextures.com
Some of the textures have tileable versions, check them out.

Holy cow. That will keep me busy for quite some time.

Thank you!!

In particular, I'm looking for tileable (is that a word?) stone textures for the exterior of homes. The 10 I have already in SketchUp are okay, but I'd like a little better selection.

Any recommendations (besides blindly hitting up Google)

Thank you!

@chris fullmer said:

The button is called color all the same or something like that. Here's a screen grab that shows it. Hope it helps, let me know if it does not do quite what you were hoping for.

[attachment=0:3e6t77oc]<!-- ia0 -->all_same.png<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:3e6t77oc]

Chris

Ahh, ok, now I see what you're talking about! I followed your instructions and the model did indeed turn all white, but it's lacking its textures, unfortunately.

Let me show you an example of what I'm looking to do:

I model with color data and presentation purposes:

For certain rendering effects and photoshop post-processing, it's VERY handy to keep the textures, but have them have no saturation and full brightness:

There may be no easy way to do this other than old-fashioned elbow grease. It just gets very redundant, very quick to manually adjust each material

@chris fullmer said:

One way you can do it without needing ruby is to create a new style that uses black as the default front and back face colors. THen set it so that it displays default material color, instead of materials (it is a setting similr to line mode).

Anyhow, does that make any sense? Then you have it saved as a nice little style that you can reuse for all your models.

Chris

Hi, Chris. Thanks for the quick reply.

I was able to follow you all the way until you said "set it so that it displays default material color, instead of materials" which I can't quite figure out how to do.

I opened the Styles window and went to the Face Settings and changed the front/back colors to black, but I didn't notice any change in my model. I'm sure it's something obvious, but how do I do the "display default material" thing you mentioned?

Thanks again!

Hello fellow, SketchUp users! I'm new so please forgive me if I'm asking this in the wrong forum.

Q. Does anyone know of a plugin that would take ALL of my materials and set the saturation to zero, and the brightness to 100?

I do some projects that are greatly aided by an image that is black and white (not grayscale). Going into each color manually and adjusting the sliders gets to be a pain, especially when I need to revert back to color. Note: the hidden line viewing option isn't quite what I'm looking for as it doesn't show the textures (but it's close!)

Thank you!

~Greg

@tig said:

Another way that avoids 'stretching' is to make the dormer a group/compo and initially to have it as a simple gabled rood at both ends that stretches through the main roof plane. Especially useful on curved or odd angled roof/dormer combos...

Edit the dormer, switch the view settings to show only the edited item [hide rest of model] and now select all, pick intersect with model and then you should get the main slope's cut-lines appearing around the dormer's geometry. Erase the unwanted parts of the dormer and close the edit. You now have a dormer that fits neatly onto the roof...

Here's a tutorial...

[attachment=0:1ewmyq3t]<!-- ia0 -->Intersecting Dormer.skp<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:1ewmyq3t]

If you have a half-made dormer with a wrong slope then in a similar way edit it and select all of the sloping edges etc and move them axially through the main roof plane, work with only the edit geometry showing - intersect them with the model and the cut-line of the roof plane will appear; erase the excess part - this way often easier than trying to stretch edges and vertices...

Wow, between the original suggestion and now this, I think I've got a great new set of skills to tackle this problem.

You're right, the sloped faces are causing a significant portion of my headaches. I think making a grouped/component "double-dormer" and editing it as necessary will save me a lot of grief. I'm so hung-up on having perfect geometry that I get wiggy when I have "junk" floating on the inside of my houses, not realizing that it can actually save me a lot of time if used as a tool.

Thank you guys!

xrok1,

Thank you for your help. While I still yearn for the perfect "smart-scale" tool plugin, this is already a much better way of dealing with this problem. I tried it a couple times in a row, both widening and narrowing the dormer. It worked great with only a little bit of cleanup afterward.

Thanks so much!

If anyone else has a different way, I'd love to hear it, too. I can build these amazing homes, but for some reason, modifying them can be a major pain!

@xrok1 said:

how about moving the left side 1' ,then the right side 1' ,then move the whole thing 1' to the left ,then raise peak to get the slope back to your 4:12 or whatever it is (if necessary)?

Actually, you know what, this doesn't seem to be a bad solution! I like your thinking.

I run into a bit of a snag on the final step where I need to raise the ridge up back to it's original pitch (12:12 in this particular instance). When I try to move it vertically, it's locked in the left-right plane. I had to use auto-fold to get it to move vertically again, and when I did, it messed up the face surrounding my window-component (which is set to punch a hole in the wall). I guess I'm okay with that, but still it seems like quite a bit of work to just widen a dormer properly.

Here's pics of my process as I tried your suggestion. Am I doing it right?

Trying to move vertically but I'm locked to left and right only.

Forced to auto-fold and I get some sort of auto-fold face/component error. But it worked.

Still a little bit of cleanup, but it's much better than having to perform surgery on tiny edges and faces!

@ecuadorian said:

Just keep it grouped, separate from the roof. Remember: group, group, group.

Keeping the dormer itself grouped is no problem. It's more how the geometry doesn't scale in the fashion that I want when I need to make the dormer wider. The eaves must remain the same (12" in my case), but the actual ridge line will get higher, and rafters get longer, etc. If I scale the grouped dormer, or portions of it, parts will get scaled incorrectly.

Am I making any sense?

Hello fellow SketchUp users! This is my first post here, so I figured the Newbie forum was a good place to start. If this question belongs in another section, please feel free to move it.

Ok, here's my problem. Frequently I'm asked to build models of our homes for clients. Initially the 3D model was done after all the CAD work was complete, so there were never any modifications. Now, however, due to the power and flexibility of Sketchup, it's become the design tool and changes are made all the time. My models are complex enough that some seemingly simple changes are very irritating to make.

For example, I'm told to "make that dormer 2 feet wider. Just stretch it to the left two feet." Easy, enough, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do it without breaking or copying all the faces and then manually having to redraw them. See the pictures following for an example:

Original dormer:

"Just stretch it 2 feet to the left"

Now I get to perform surgery with the pencil/move tool, etc. *arg!&

Is there a plugin that would auto-calculate the modified ridge lines and appropriate geometry? It's particularly difficult because everything is connected and on slopes surfaces.

Anyone have any suggestions? I find it hard to believe that such a simple revision would require getting up and under all the surfaces and re-drawing/inference-locking multiple points.

Thank you so much in advance. This problem has been plaguing me for over a year now! It's very frustrating. Sorry for the long post

~Greg