That did the trick! Because it was in a foreign language I couldn't tell where to click to change it, your graphic showed me what to do. Thanks so much

Now that's gonna be useful!!! I think I can use that to do what I need to do, has all kinds of options for working with the components and groups. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help - although I would still like to know why the component browser gives me such weird results. I'm firmly convinced that my basic modeling practices are far from ideal, and I'm paying for it with things like that. While I can do what I set out to do, pretty much, eventually, I think my sloppy techniques are resulting in some unnecessary bumps in the road and larger files and edge counts than need be. If I don't get it right now, it's only gonna get worse as I delve into more complicated models. Anyhow, thanks again.

@mitcorb said: For me, reading as much of the forums as possible, whether seeking an answer to a problem or not, challenging myself with non business modeling projects, "going down blind alleys" and discovering the intricate behavior of the program has helped develop my methodology. It really does take some time in the trenches and soon these things will become second nature to you. Sometimes I come over here and just read and find out all kinds of helpful stuff I didn't realize that I didn't know. Does that makes sense?

Good info. Will go into my ragged and tattered mental notebook

Doesn't enlarge them that much but with my eyes I need all the help I can get [image: vCWY_MysticThumbs1.jpg]

oh and back on-topic; hellnbak; have you tried using the material-picker? if you've already applied the material somewhere in your scene, and you know where, you can use paintbucket+alt to pick up the material in order to apply it

Probably none of my business, but what's a "bling club"?

I use this method frequently for turned legs and such. For example, this turned post is made of eight sectors as shown on the right. The nice thing is that it saves out at about 43 Kb. [image: 5169372316_db2dce793a.jpg]

the geometry is jacked.. this color shift often happens after strange intersections or other 'unorthodox' transformations to the geometry.. here's a quick example caused by a boolean subtraction.. the affected face consists of weirdly positioned edges at the point of intersection.. it can also happen from softening some of but not all of a group of lines defining the adjacent edge between two faces.. solution: pretty much, it needs cleaner geometry.. meh.skp [image: 6NPO_screen2010-11-10at2.02.03AM.jpg]

@tig said: [ensure you haven't got adjusted axes by right-click over them and 'reset'] Oh crap !!!! That never occurred to me. That's because I are a noobie. Couldn't figure out how I could have moved and rotated the entire model "accidentally". Of course I also can't figure out how I managed to "accidentally" adjust the axes, but doing that would have been much easier to do. I normally turn off the axes unless I need them for something, guess I should stop doing that so I could maybe notice sooner if I screw them up again somehow. I was anticipating having to redo all the changes, and all it took was two clicks of my mouse Anyhow, that fixed it, all better now (picture here a smiley doing cartwheels, and fireworks, and smiling till his face splits in two). Thanks a million (the check is in the mail, really!) I know, way too many smilie thingies , but hey, they're cheap and you've made me so happy with your words of wisdom.

Doing as he suggested restored only about 10% of my thumbnails. For whatever reason the only ones it did restore were for models that I had not yet opened with SU. So I uninstalled/reinstalled SU. No change. Thoroughly uninstalled with Revo Uninstaller, reinstalled. Nada. Finally, in desperation, I tried the Mystic Thumbnails mentioned in the post you referred me to. I now have thumbnails And I can even make them a bit larger, although they tend to get a little fuzzy when you do that. While I like Mystic Thumbnails and would probably use it anyway, it's still just a workaround for a problem that is still on my computer, and I don't like workarounds. Oh well, it's about time for me to replace my C drive again, I do that once or twice a year to get a fresh start. A hassle, but it's worth it. Has anyone posted a warning anywhere in the forums about the troubles they might encounter if they attempt to install a second version of SU on the same computer? At least they would be aware of the potential difficulties and could make an informed decision. I only installed SU 7 because I wanted to get around problems with the Zorro plugin. It's a really useful tool, at least to me, but definitely not worth all the trouble I've gone through. I'll just install SU 7 on another computer and use Zorro there, along with any other plugins I may need that seem to have a problem with SU 8. Maybe Google will get of it's butt and fix the problems with SU 8 someday. It's only fair, considering how much I paid for it By the way, what about the second part of my original question, any insights there? Just one more quick question, is there a way to set things up so that I'm not notified when I post a reply to my own topic, just when someone else posts a reply? Thanks, bye

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=32358&p=285411#p285411

I see that flicker all the time on my little machine at work. It's barely qualified to be considered a computer though. At home I just see the menu line go white. I didn't notice it on this file but then I didn't have the rest of the car either.

could be stupid but my SU kept crashing when i would create a group from slice, so i tried fiddling around with other variables. i found that when i turned off axes and guides when i was slicing the model, it stopped crashing. dont know why, just did.

If you put the earlier component in a component library, you can select the component in the model and then right click on the earlier version in its library and choose Replace Selected. If the component axis origin is in the same relative place in both components, the substitution will put the earlier component in exactly the same spot and the one you are replacing.

@dave r said: Just a question. Why do you have to explode it to modify it? Why not just open it for editing? ... I should have asked that to begin with...

My Materials Tools plugin let you remove materials from all edges.

That did the trick. Thanks

Sorry to hear that. Well, I don't know what time it is there in Hungary, but it's 4:30 in the morning here and my old bones are aching. Have a good one.