Miguel, Helped a little. Guess before I can be sure, I must rebuild the component.

Pilou, Could be wrong but I thought I tried to re-component it, though that did not seem to matter. Gai, I was able to re-position the image after I moved the face, but not at the same time. I think I can do it by making a blank workspace, inserting the old component, exploding it, then regrouping, and saving the new component. Next time I will position the image properly before cutting out the alpha. Every time I do this, I forget some step, and mess up. Takes less time to cutout the alpha then to get the name, etc. right:-) Another reason pro is the way to go. Thanks, all.

wow. how you guys write these rubies is beyond me completely. am always in awe of your skills! thanks for replies

@honoluludesktop said: Matteo, Richard, Thanks for the feedback. I never thought about creating masks in that manner, and always wondered if the renders posted even attempted to approximate the right colors on compled shapes. Now I have a idea how they did it. Mate there have been several cases of buyers taking legal action because the end product didn't look like the renders!

Dave, I over looked the obvious. Thanks, >_<

Thanks, I will see if I can make the plugin work

I haven't used post processing for landscape and other objects (yet). I do it primarily to adjust, brightness, contrast, and gamma.

Thanks, Chris. Now I don't feel too bad about not being able to find it in the API.

Ugh, nodes. I have yet to be able to make anything at all with nodes, I can't get my head around the logic.

Sepo, I revised table at top of page. Deleted item from table because all support this feature.

It was there after I uploaded it. Guess I will have to redo it on Monday.

Thanks for that Andrew. I can appreciate what you are saying about incremental updates. And clearly folders containing plugins, components, materials, etc are unaffected by updates. Thanks for the great work...always appreciated.

Paul, Got it, didn't think about extruding edges, over scaling, and applying the texture on both sides. I will apply your process when I get to the office tomorrow. The other great thing about using a texture is that it will warp a curved surface. A long range view doesn't need detailing like this, and a closeup can use the component Gaieus provided. Thanks.

@dave r said: Joe, how did the component axes get set so far away from the geometry? Makes you wonder, don't it? At a guess, that subcomponent was probably part of something else, which was then mostly deleted and then saved/imported into the new component. IIRC, the worst one I've seen was a lamppost from the warehouse that was a couple hundred feet from the origin. I figure somebody had a street scene, then deleted everything but the lamppost and did a save as.

@chris fullmer said: @honoluludesktop said: A entity can only be on one layer. Yeah, but groups and components are entities. And a group entity can be on Layer 0 and all its contents be on Layer 100. Or its contents can be split up on all sorts of layers. I wondered about this; by (my) definition, entities are primitives. That is they can not be broken down into more basic elements. What do you think? @chris fullmer said: @honoluludesktop said: Groups can not share surfaces. That sounds mis-leading to me in that they can have faces in the exact same 3d location. Maybe they can't share entities sounds better in my mind. Tried it. Couldn't make two groups share the same surface. However, two components can share the same space. @chris fullmer said: @honoluludesktop said: A component instance are entities that comprise a component definition. I'd reverse the order of these. First comes the definition, then comes the instances (sort of). The definition is aptly named because it is the base "definition" for the instances. The definition is what is shown in the components browser. Once you select the definition to insert into the model, you then have an instance inserted in the model. So all components are instances (except the definition shown in the comp. browser). Let me think about this. An instant is part of the model, a definition is data noted in the component browser and outline. @chris fullmer said: @honoluludesktop said: Component properties are common to all instances. Instances actually can have different properties than the definition. The X,Y,Z location, any changes in scale, and materials applied to the outside of the instance, are all properties that are saved uniquely to each instance. I was thinking of the things that an instance of a component share with other instances of that component. @chris fullmer said: @honoluludesktop said: Component instance comprises of its definition. Yes, as a a starting point. Like I pointed out above, the instance when inserted into the model is an exact copy of the definition. But scaling it, applying a material to it, or moving it will change properties to that instance. Oh, and all these properties can be changed without making the component unique or different than its definition. S***, when I scale a component, it scales by itself, but each instance's common surface, can share common property (like color). So we have properties that are shared (like color), and those that are unshared (like scale). Is scale a property, or should it defined in another way? @chris fullmer said: @honoluludesktop said: A scene (among other things) is a collection visible layers. A scene is a collection of visible layers (among other things) And I would love to detail all those other things, because I think that scenes are much more useful than many people realize. Its all in the "among other things" that there is some great functionality. Perhaps too complex for elegant definition?

Been so busy I forgot we were going to create a video or two on the workflow for this thread. Dropped the ball, sorry... I'll get on this, as the one we have on our web site doesn't go into too much depth. But you can see that one here if you like: http://downloads.imsidesign.com/Flash/DoubleCADFlash/Import-From-Sketchup-800-600/Import-From-Sketchup-800-600.htm William