I'm a longtime SketchUp user. I'm evaluating Alibre Design Pro to handle my more production-related drawings, but I'll still need to import the models back into SU. It looks like Alibre used to offer something called 3D Publisher for this purpose, but no longer. How do all you SU-Alibre users do it? Thanks.

Thanks. Perfect.

I'm having trouble closing the geometry on the attached figure and thought someone here might have some pointers. What I'd like to end up with is a 120 degree section of a funnel (well, a funnel without a drain). I start by creating a 120 degree slice of a circle (2000 sides). At one end, on the circumference, I draw a line to the desired height normal to the slice's plane. I continue the line from this point to the vertex of the slice, completing a vertical triangular face of the desired cross-section of the finished figure. I select the Follow Me tool, click on the triangle, and click on the slice circumference. What I end up with is what you see here. The original triangular face opens up, though the last one is closed. There's some weirdness where all the faces meet at the vertex, which you get a hint of in the drawing. Is there a way to get this to work, or a better way of achieving the desired result? Thanks.

I had a PC problem the other day that will necessitate re-installing Windows, along with all my apps. I'm still on SketchUp 7.1, however, which I can no longer find on Google's SketchUp site (it's all v8 now), and I don't have the original installation package for 7.1. Any ideas how I can re-install 7.1? Thanks.

Thanks for the tip. I hadn't used dynamic components before, but after watching one of the videos I got the drawer to open and close with a click. I'd still like to know why my initial approach didn't work. Any ideas?

I'm using SketchUp Pro 7.1. I have a drawing of a chest of drawers. I'd like to have one scene where the drawers are closed and another where one of the drawers is open, so by clicking on, say, the "Closed" tab, I see the drawers closed, and then clicking on the "Open" tab I see one of the drawers open. It would be nice, but not essential, if the opening/closing were animated. I try to create this effect by creating a scene with the drawers closed, then creating another scene, opening the drawer (with a move), and updating the second scene. This just causes the drawer to be open in both scenes, however. If I then close the drawer in the first scene and update it, the drawer is closed in both scenes. How can I get the desired effect? Thanks.

Thanks, sbsaint. Solved it awhile ago with uninstall/reinstall.

Is that where all this stuff is supposed to be? I thought plugins just had to be under the Plugins folder, not necessarily immediately under it; that subfolders were OK. Not so? Gets kind of messy otherwise, making it hard to remove things you don't use. How do you tell which entries apply to which plugins?

I thought you just put it in the SU Plugins directory, but if I do that (with SU closed), then start SU, I can find no evidence of Sketchy Physics in SU (not under the plugins menu or view/toolbars). I'm running SU 7.1 Pro on WinXP Pro and downloaded Sketchy Physics2. See below for pic of my installation. Thanks.

Thanks, Chris. Here are my issues (I'm running SU Pro 7.1 on WinXP Pro):

1. I can't access the Help Center or Contact Us sections from the Help menu. When I click on these, nothing happens.

2. When I click on Check for Update (on the Help menu) a dialog pops up saying the update service has been disabled. How do I enable it?

3. When I start Layout 2 it displays the splash screen and I can see various components being loaded. Then I get a Windows dialog saying Layout has encountered a problem and needs to close. How do I fix this?

These seemed like things that were more appropriate for support than the forum, but if anybody has some ideas, I'd love to hear them.

I installed Layout 2 last week when I upgraded SU from 6.something to 7.1. When I start it, it displays the splash screen and I can see various components being loaded. Then I get a Windows dialog saying Layout has encountered a problem and needs to close. Any idea how to fix this? I'm a SU Pro user, but Google's been blowing me off for the last several days. Thanks.

I've sent and re-sent some SU problems via Google's web form (I'm a Pro user) but have yet to hear back. Anybody have suggestions for getting their attention? I thought buying Pro entitled you to actual support. Thanks.

E.g., suppose you have a circle in the XY plane. You pull it up along the Z axis, so now it becomes an upright cylinder (looks like a smokestack). But you want to rotate it so it's horizontal, parallel to the X axis, so it looks like a tunnel. Invoking the rotate tool, you try to stick the protractor to the X or Z axis of the cylinder, but you can't find either one on the round surface. What do you do? Thanks.

No. I used Eagle by CADsoft. I already had it as I occasionally need to make real PCBs. There was one element that had to be repeated 24 times at intervals of 15 degrees of rotation (I'd include a pic but I can't figure out how to attach or embed, only link, and it's not online). That's just not something you ever need to do in designing a PCB, hence the headache. Obviously a 5 second operation in SU, but with no way to get the design out in Gerber format, I just had to suck it up and carefully tweak each placement in Eagle. Took about an hour to figure out how to do it, then another hour to actually do it. Would've taken much longer for someone to write a script, plus some dough. If this was something I was going to need to do regularly, that would be another thing, but it was strictly a one-off requirement. Thanks again for your looking into it, though.

Thanks again, but I finished the job in my PCB layout s/w earlier today.

Thanks loads for the links, TIG. Unfortunately, I can't get usable output from the DXF to Gerber converter, and the STL to Gerber converter guys make you jump through so many hoops to get an eval version of the program (the normal price is $2K), it's not worth it. I'll just slog it our with my PCB s/w.

It designs traditional circuit boards just fine. What I need, though, is a thin, rigid board with a complex pattern (not an electrical circuit) etched in metal on the surface. It has all the characteristics of a circuit board except the circuit. I can make the design in 5 minutes in SU, but it's going to take me over an hour in my PCB layout s/w since the latter doesn't have tools for making the kind of design I need.

I have a project that would be best solved with a custom made printed circuit board (PCB), even though it's not electronic. My PCB design s/w, however, doesn't permit the necessary drawing flexibility. SketchUp is perfect for the drawing, but PCB vendors use a file format called Gerber RS274X. Does anyone know if there's a plug-in for SketchUp that produces Gerber output? Is this the right forum to post this in? Thanks.

I'm thinking of using SketchUp for the redesign of my backyard. I've been using it for a number of years for mechanical design. One capability that would be very handy would be the ability to easily swap materials in a scene. I'm specifically trying to decide between different kinds of stone for a patio. Is it possible to lay out the stone and then apply different stone textures to the layout? I can imagine creating a few stones as individual components and then copying them repeatedly to make the pattern. Then I could apply different textures to the master components. There might be only three or four masters, so that wouldn't be the end of the world, but I thought I'd check here to see if there's an easier way. Also, suppose I want to experiment with different patterns? Is there a way to quickly and easily generate these? Thanks.

Involute