Just guessing, but I suppose this is where a solid modeler would shine, as a sphere would be a single entity, instead of hundreds of entities.

I once stayed in a very inexpensive rual Mexican Hotel that placed the shower head on the ceiling between the toilet and the sink, Guess the rational was that it was easier to wash everything down.>_<. If it's just a place to crash, windows may not be desirable, but natural light would be nice. You need a way to get into the upper bunk, and may be a small lockable storage cabinet.

Sure beats that room I had in Mexico. There, the idea was to fall asleep quickly so that you did not have to deal with the giant roaches climbing the walls.

@unknownuser said:

....The only default is cosmetic : icones are very uggly! :mrgreen:

Well, that by itself makes it completely unacceptable for an Architect.>_< Thanks for the update.

Does the free version have at least the horse power that free SketchUp has? I looked at the comparisons, but am not able to judge. Did you install and run it?

The bigger the better, with as much pixels as you can get. Check sharpness, and light output (don't know the technical terms). I work with a single 24 inch, wish I had 30, monitor. Keep all my open apps in smaller windows that I move around as need be. Make sure that your graphics card has the power to max out your monitor, otherwise you will not get the full benefit of a large screen.

PTC, put out one of the first parametric modeling tools, and ended up owning Personal Designer and CADDS. They have come a long way with their products. I tried to figure out the cost, but they have so many variations listed. Is it about $1k?

LVMH, the biggest luxery group sold about 15b in the first half of 2011. Apple sales were almost 25b in the first quarter. WOW!!! Steve Job can probably own his own space station 4b/year over 30 years, and refurbish a shuttle (1.7b) to take him there (.5b a trip).

Did you read the product literature? They make something for erotic pleasure read like the description of a pc key board.

As the model is that of a bathroom, how much detail does the molding have to have? Do you need to draw individual tiles, the door hinges, tracks on the shower doors, etc.? At the scale of the room, maybe a reasonable facsimile can be managed with a texture.

It appears to me that SketchUp will forever be linked to its roots, that is a easy to use architectural building modeler. Even then it has some problems. It is not more then a general level tool for modeling, and with layout, a means to present the model on paper. There are however, more appropriate tools to model difficult (for sketchUp) objects. Lets face it, SketchUp's user base is big because it is for many, a free program. I often wounder how big its paid user base is, in comparison to other pay to use modeling applications.

Go ahead Google, prove me wrong, turn SketchUp into a proper solid modeler with real curved shapes, and better modeling tools, without raising its price, while providing a easy to use free version of the program.

SketchUp is a single processor application, so you need at least one 3Ghz+ processor to max it out. SketchUp speed IMHO, is primarily a function of bus, processor, and hard drive speeds.

You can set your bios to give preference to the top application (when in SketchUp). In addition, reduce the number of multi tasking programs in the background when SketchUping.

mac1, and mitcorb beat me to the post, but since I have already written it:

You have no backup? How about a FileName.skb? In the future, on a daily basis, you might want to open and save to FineNameXX.skp where XX is a consecutive number. Of course, you need to delete the earlier files from time to time. As you can see, I have lost files too, and its procedures like this that have saved my btt many times.

@bigstick said:

........... Considering Apple's massive growth (iPhone and iPad revenues apparently are higher than Microsoft's total revenue) ............

Didn't realize this. Wounder if there is no longer a barrier between hardware, and software?

[flash=640,390:k6fyyu1o]http://www.youtube.com/v/uPE9Jl16T5c&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3[/flash:k6fyyu1o]
The other end over New Mexico.
[flash=640,390:k6fyyu1o]http://www.youtube.com/v/u9SyXfWWLPA?version=3[/flash:k6fyyu1o]

Partick, What is your role in the office? It sounds like you work as part of a team. Is your primary job to conceptualize landscape designs, to model a design for presentation, or to model and refine a design with the intent of doing construction documents?

@bjornkn said:

I always thought (and have been told) that DWG does not store the unit type in the file.
None of the DWG/DXF viewers/converters I've been using have been able to read the units from the files. It is just numbers................

That's it. Never really thought of this before, however all Cad models are actual size, but perhaps in terms of their basic units. Therefore a 10 unit model in inches is 10 inches, but the same model is 10 mm if its units are mm. So, if your model is prepared using units by inches, and you need to model in mm, you must convert the quantity of units in inches, to their equivalent quantity units in mm.

Btw, at least in the US, Engineering as well as Architectural models are in units of inches, or possibly feet.

Am I wrong?

Just guessing, but how does movie maker know the frame speed of individual images? Why didn't you import the sketchup .avi into movie maker? Btw, I have no experience with importing individual images, and someone else will have to help you with that.

@bryan k said:

.........The biggest problem with most famines these days is lack of water and plenitude of war..........

Absolutely, especially water. I had a former College Architectural Professor that dedicated the back end of his academic career to alleviating squatter housing. They studied everything from containers, precast shells, tents, cardboard boxes, making brick, etc. In the end nothing worked because the problem that had to be solved first, was political. In some cases, they were not even permitted to give it away.

Using Win Mover Maker converts my SketchUp .avi from about 9,000 kb to 1,000 kb, and outputs it as a .wmv file. Adding sound, and some titles increased its size by 400 kb.

Don't know if quality is lost in the process, Run a test strip and judge for yourself. Here is some info on it.

Isn't loading time more a function of hard drive, and bus speed? I have a slow 3 ghz, 2 core machine that loads about 30 plugins in under 10 seconds the first time.