wow.. that is the biggest skp i've ever opened and it definitely slows my system to a crawl.. there's well over a million edges and faces + tons of materials, images, etc.. sketchup simply isn't designed for this type of abuse..

--model info for those that haven't downloaded the file...
15.5 MB
Edges 857746
Faces 318839
Component Instances 137582
Guide Points 30
Groups 2659
Images 12
Component Definitions 108
Layers 121
Materials 171
Styles 1

looking forward to hearing how toxic's system deals with this thing..

[edit] okay so i just realized which forum this was posted in (i use view new posts instead of browsing individual forums)... at least i now realize what 'LO' stands for in the above posts.. please ignore the following

maybe i'm not understanding your problem correctly but i just tried -->

--open two windows - one set to decimal/mm and the other to architectural/inches..

--in the decimal window, draw a circle measuring 20,000mm diameter and group it..

--copy that group and paste it into the architectural window..

--measure the diameter which is ~65' - 7 3/8"

that's a correct conversion...

is this not what you're trying to do?

yeah, i've asked for this one before as well but to no avail.. my situation usually involves deleting one half after the intersection but i'm sure you could apply some of this to other operations..

one thing TIG did for me a little while ago was to update his invertselection.rb which allows you to select only the faces you want to keep and delete everything else.. this works very good in certain cases but if you're dealing with a lot of faces that you want to keep, it would still be tedious..

in those cases, i like to orient my drawing so that i can only see the edge of my cutting plane with the half i'd like to keep on one side and the stuff to delete on the other.. i'll then use the selection tool window to select everything i want to erase and then hit delete... the trick is to drag the window from Right TO Left instead of l to r... doing this will select a line or face even if it's not entirely encompassed by the window.. you might have a little bit left to clean up afterwards but this technique will get rid of the bulk very quickly..

still, i'd much prefer the intersect then group method.. painless..

@gaieus said:

@Jeff: It's OK - just leave it there.

ok then.. here's an exaggerated version which probably makes more sense than my other explanation..

the triangles do not share the same angles.. the top line of the assembled shapes isn't straight .. the outer perimeter isn't the same although they are very close looking... the bottom one buldges and the top one dips which when all is added up, there's one square worth left over on the bottom version..

(i'll remove this if you want more people to go temporarily insane over it)

and..

5.. go spend a $1000+ on a graphics card so you'll be able to rotate your model more cleanly while shadows are turned on..

the only real solution here is to work in a more organized fashion... everything else in the thread simply states that what he is experiencing is normal and should be expected.. (well, at least what i think he's experiencing... he hasn't replied or gone into detail about what exactly he's experiencing)

seriously, how much of the problem is going to be solved by buying a thousand dollar video card?... i'm assuming the OP is working on fairly large drawings (garden design - plants/leaves/etc) without too much organization.. the best (and cheapest) solution would be to start using groups and components which can be hidden or replaced with low poly versions while doing the bulk of the project..

not sure what you're going to say is a decent card is but i use a geforce 8800gt with an intel mac 2.66 quad.. 5g ram...

truth is, i don't notice much of a sketchup performance boost with my desktop over my laptop (g4 powerbook... 1.33 PPC chip.. 1.5g ram..)... it's just that on the laptop, i pretty much have to close all apps except sketchup to get it to run good so in the case of multitasking, multi cores are a no brainer.. (in contrast, i do a lot of image toning/management/editing with ~80mb files and there are incredibly noticeable performance differences between the two machines while using apps such as photoshop...)

.. most sketchup operations aren't very demanding and i only notice major enhancements with the faster chip for certain things -- complex follow me deals, soap skin bubble, joint push pull, copy/move etc.. those are the instances where i wish for multicore support because i do a lot of complex curve type of drawings which i think i could simply coast through if i weren't relying on one core..

strictly speaking sketchup however, a quad is going to offer little to no performance enhancement.. to say otherwise is misleading.. my quad can deal with higher entity drawings better than the laptop but that's due to the better card.. still, that difference isn't highly noticeable and once i get to around 25,000 pieces, the quad will start to glitch.. the problem is in the programing and you can't just throw money at it to deal with it.. instead of doing the my machine is bigger than yours argument and discussing minimal gains after a couple thousands of dollars worth of upgrades - it would make more sense to get the programming right first...

if you have 3 separate sketchup files open, they are still only using one of your cores so that justification goes out the window.. plus for the most part, if you're working on separate drawings at once, the background files sit idle (talking cpu here - the background files will still use up some ram..)

i really can't see any advantage in using a slower per chip multicore machine vs a faster single core when running sketchup.. if you're rendering with another app in the background for instance then yes, there's an obvious advantage but if sketchup is open, it's only using one core - regardless of how many drawing you have going at once..

bottomline is that sketchup needs multicore support...

i'm pretty sure i read that podium already has a working os x version but they are unable to (and will not be able to) release it due to licensing issues with kerkythea (which i think podium osx is based off of)...

i'll try to find a link..

[edit] -- here ->
http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/supodiumforum/vpost?id=2406470

so i guess they will be releasing a mac version eventually but it's going to be a different engine than the version they have now..

fwiw - here's two screenshots of my activity monitor while using sketchup and cheetah 3D..

with sketchup, i'm trying to copy/move a drawing with ~30,000 entities while the cheetah shot was taken during rendering..

the four black rectangles on the right represent each of my 4 cores (2.66ghz).. you'l notice sketchup will only max out one equaling 25% of my total system while cheetah 3d will make use of all i have..

are the actual material costs going to be entered manually or is there some sort of central database that you can tie into?
for me, the biggest headache for producing estimates is getting the local material prices (i work all over the country and occasional, outside of the u.s.).. material costs vary by thousands of dollars depending on the region..
if it's up to the user to keep the database up to date, i don't really seeing this as much of an advantage unless they're generally dealing with a small variety of materials to be bought in the same region of the country..

the easiest way for me to deal with this is to fax/email my material packages out to suppliers in the area i'm going to be working in.. i usually get the quotes back on the same day and when i'm ready to buy, the companies already have the orders..

ok.. i promise to use these guys/girls/animals in a more productive fashion eventually.. i think they're great..
for this one, i'm using the excuse of being at home on a friday night in nyc..

hey wo3dan... i skated that thing before. .. found something like it in fayetteville,nc..

(that's not me - he's a friend.. i shot the photo)

ok, so i figured out how to draw it more to my liking but doing a tutorial for this thing might be a little bit much.. it would be about 25 scenes with weird to describe curve manipulations in there.. if someone really wants to see a step-by-step, i'll do it but i'm going to hold off for now.. it will probably take ~2hrs to put together..

it's sort of similar to TIG's method except i used two circles to begin with instead of one (one inside of the other).. i then alternate between the two circles which allows for the weaving..

here's the fixed version skp..

ring2.skp

i don't have time for a tut right now but i can show you how i did it later.. in the mean time, it looks like a lot of people are into trying this shape so maybe someone else can do it..

for now, here's the skp of my version..

ring.skp

just in case it's meant to be braid-like.... i guessed a certain reference point which was close but not totally right.. if i have to do it again, i'll be able to fix that..

select the surfaces you'd like to measure then right click -> entity info... the area will be listed there..