Anybody ever tried creating a 3D model (car, room fixtures, etc) in SU and export it to DAZ? If yes, how?

Before using any "surface" tools (tools-on-surface, Joint-push-pull, etc) do an Orient Faces first.
It really does not matter which face is outside, although standard practice is "white outside - blue inside" as Box noted.

The missing faces is an SU quirk when 1 side is tiny. Scaling up does solve that problem, but sometimes scaling up then back down creates a placement problem.

So to prevent that, I make the overall object, or just a piece of it a temporary component, and copy it away in free space. Then I do an OUTSIDE of box scale up, edit that and do the surface operation. It will be duplicated on the original, intact. Then delete the scaled up working copy and explode the original comp.

Jeff

You are being picky.

Of course the "fail to loft" is not a CL fault. It is the geometry faults that "prevent" CL from lofting.

@tt_su said:

@jgb said:

Just make it easier to switch back and forth.

Toolbar?

That could work.

One icon to launch SI on a selected object.
2nd icon to launch edit mode on same object.

They would be mutually exclusive, one or the other, not both at the same time.

Other icons for other stuff.

The T100 was primarily for my wife so she doesn't hog my PC. Putting SU on it was for when we travel and then I can keep my brain and fingers active.

Can't do SU on my Blackberry phone.

As for the T100 small screen, well, my PC is a dual screen (24in primary, 19in secondary).
I keep most dialogs (materials, components and layers) active on #2 and only toolbars and Entity Info on #1. That gives me a huge work area.

Dual screens also allow me to keep an Excel spreadsheet open on #2 when I am doing calculations and other stuff. Sorta gotten used to that so a postcard screen was a shock. I knew it would be small, but did not expect that to be so intrusive on using SU effectively, till I tried it.

I also have a USB 4 port hub attached to the single USB3 port on the T100. To that hub I attach a tiny USB mouse and my USB Thumbdrive for PC <-> T100 files transfer.

The T100 also has a micro HDMI port, which I have yet to try.

@tt_su said:

There is no way I can keep the SI tool active while editing. The API doesn't have any feature to do so.

Best thing I can do is selecting the edges.

No need to keep SI active during an edit. Just make it easier to switch back and forth.

Selecting edges would be a real bonus.

CL will fail on any one of the following most common conditions... (as well as a few others)

1. 2 lines not joined at "endpoints" although they look like they do. Endpoints joined when "Constrained by" will not loft.
2. a tiny fragment at an endpoint is taken as part of the perimeter CL finds, or you define by selection.

When CL defines its perimeter, use the colours as a guide to where problems may lurk. Fredo has stated that the colours are not meaningful by design, but I have noticed that if the perimeter segment is a complete yellow it has no problems, but that is NOT a given. It can be almost any other colour, and it could still have a problem, usually at the very ends. However I have found that red indicates a problem that could be at either endpoint, or anywhere on the curve.

If a perimeter is made up from several colours, then there may be a problem at the endpoints where the colour changes.

The common fix is to zoom in on the endpoint CL has indicated to perhaps be a problem, and fix it.

Another way is to widely left-to-right select one line segment that includes the 2 endpoints and delete it. That will get rid of any gaps or fragments. Then redraw endpoint to endpoint. Make sure you do not join the lines on an endpoint that is "constrained by" or that is on a point outside the current context.

On a large complex loft you may want to put temporary lines in to breakup the large curve into several smaller ones, and CL each of them. The one that will not loft contains the problem. All this does is narrow down where to look. Delete all the temp lofts when done.

On a long complex curve as you posted, I would split it in a binary fashion. CL one 1/2. If it lofts, split the other half in 2 and repeat. If it fails, split that in 1/2 and repeat. Do this until you get down to a manageable few lines to look at in detail. This does not preclude multiple problems, but it does find clean sections as well as the problem ones.

And finally, when CL does not loft a seemingly clean perimeter that is attached to other geometry in the model, do this;
Select all of the perimeter lines manually and move/copy them to some free space along an axis line. You could also make the perimeter a group and edit the group.
Inspect and fix the perimeter for gaps and fragments.
CL should then loft.
Simply move the grouped loft along the axis back to its original position.

@tt_su said:

@jgb said:

1: One icon should be a Direct to Edit mode. Once SI shows you the problem circles, the icon should go directly into edit mode, with the red circled item highlighted or selected.

Right now you have to exit SI mode, reselect the comp/group, edit it and go find the problem, which may very well be a twig in the forest.

You should be able to activate SI while inside the group/component you want to inspect.
Making it select the edges SI highlights is a good idea though.

Activating SI while inside a group/comp is not the issue.

Once you activate SI you cannot edit the object unless you exit SI, select the object, and edit it. You lose visual context of the element to fix, especially if there are a few of them in close proximity, unless you zoom in to the element while still in SI mode, before editing the object. If it is a very tiny fragment to delete, this "mode switch" can become a bit repetitive to isolate it.

Transparency is not really an issue, just thought of it before I posted.

A toolbar is an excellent idea. I have 2 ideas what would go on it.

1: One icon should be a Direct to Edit mode. Once SI shows you the problem circles, the icon should go directly into edit mode, with the red circled item highlighted or selected.

Right now you have to exit SI mode, reselect the comp/group, edit it and go find the problem, which may very well be a twig in the forest.

2: 2nd icon is a toggle between normal view and a partial transparent view in SI mode. That would make it easier to see what the problems are.

Right now SU's transparent view is too transparent.

Ignoring the seeming lack of interest, I POR.

The small screen makes this device not really suitable for SU development, but passable for presentations.

The touch screen (and finger pad) is not precise enough with a fingertip as a pseudo mouse. But it is usable with a capacitive tipped pen, or better yet, with a real mouse. The very high resolution screen is great, but being on the small side, makes pointing precision very iffy.

The biggest problem with a fingertip and to a lesser extent, a cap.pen is that they hide the point you want to see or select, unlike a mouse pointer. I have yet been able to select a specific endpoint with my fat finger, or some of the time with the finger pad, but can do so most of the time with a cap.pen, vrs. all of the time with a mouse. Also, zooming in helps, but is a pain to continually go in and out.

Another problem with the hi-res small screen is that the lines, especially guide lines and hidden lines are almost too thin to see. Zoom has no effect on this.

Otherwise, SU works on an ASUS T100. More later.

I wasn't sure how much nautical knowledge he had so I tried to keep it very simple.
And that IS a good illustration, BTW.

@thedevil said:

can you show a tutorial or maybe even explain how one would make a ship hull for say like a pirate ship...

It really all boils down to what you have to define the curves needed to generate a loft.

For a ship, you need to define the deck curve (waterlines), the keel curve (buttock lines) and at least 1 (preferably 2 or 3) curves defining the shape of the hull (station lines).

Do a 1/2 hull only. When done, make the loft a component, then copy and flip it for the other side. That way edits to one side are reflected to the other side.

Best practice is to make the 1/2 hull in 3 pieces. The bow section, the hull section, which is usually a straight extrusion for a "pirate ship" type hull, and then the stern section. Merge the 3 sections into one 1/2 hull.

When you create the perimeter curves, pay extra attention to the endpoints where the 3 curves meet. They MUST be attached at the same endpoint. A "constrained" point will NOT loft.

Try to maintain a very similar length of all the defining curve segments, or you will end up with a myriad of tiny triangles.

If you need more help, post here again.

Just acquired an ASUS T100T-64gb notebook/laptop PC running Win 8.1.

It is a convertible akin to the MS Surface RT. Keyboard and screen separate. Working screen is 9 inches by 5 inches. The unit comes with a 64gb SSD as drive C:. After the O/S and other stuff (MS Office - Student and some ASUS utilities) there was only 39gb free space. There is also a 32 gb unit available, but that will leave very little space for toys. There is also a Micro-SD card slot, so I put in a 64 gb chip as drive D:.

Compared to my 24 in widescreen main display with a 19 in secondary, this will be a challenge to work with. Keyboard is OK, but the trackpad is not conducive to productive work. So I got a mini-laser mouse and plugged it into the SINGLE standard USB port. At least it is USB3. There is also a micro USB port on the other side, but that is used primarily as the charging port.

Word of caution here. You are forced to use the power supply and the too short USB cable to charge the box. Putting in a longer (non ASUS) USB cable, and it WILL NOT charge, even with a powered USB hub.

After getting the essentials setup (Firefox, Thunderbird) and configuring the Win 8.1 Desktop (called "Start" by those wonderful folk at MS, took a while to realize that the whole screen is "start" not just the little dialog in the lower left corner )

Anyway, I d/l'd SU 2013 Make onto it. That was easy. You are working on a post card sized screen. Hi-res, but small, especially after loading up essential toolbars. And I have not yet loaded my "can't live without" Fredo, TIG and TT essentials. More on that later.

Then, I played with the touch screen on SU, for about 30 seconds and gave up. If you use big icons, you have no model screen to work on. If you use medium icons, you need a 4 year olds fingers to select any of them. You can't see small icons. I could not consistently select the wanted tool first try. (Yeah.... fat fingers, same problem with my Blackberry Q10 keyboard). Try to draw a line, did that, but connect to an endpoint..... haven't succeeded yet. Back to a mouse.

I suspect the T100 will end up being a display unit, impractical to design with.

I'll keep posting here as I progress over the next few weeks.

And, yes I will upgrade my main SU 8 to 2013 "real soon now".

Mac1

Interesting read. I too do not buy canned computers, but put the components together myself. That way I get the performance and upgrade path to my liking, not some generalized box. HP, while they make very good computers allow very little non-HP upgrades. Dell is similar.

You said your ISP charges extra for WIFI. Cut that cord!!! Get a simple cheaper non-WIFI modem from them.
Then buy a WIFI Router and install it between the PC and Modem. That also gives you 4 LAN connections, or 3 free for other devices. Try to get a good high power router, especially if you have a large house or multi story house.

Set it up on WPA and register every WIFI device (friends and relatives too) that will connect to it. You just need to define the devices MAC address to the router, and the password to the device. That way they automatically log in when booted or come in range.

Nobody else can get in, even if they know the password. ISP WIFI Modems usually just need a password, their password, and the modem ID.

I have a Cisco router. You can access the Administrator page from any registered device, or the PC with just its static IP Addr, Admin name and password.
It also has a Guest access for ad-hoc access with a separate Password.

By the way....
I would strongly recommend an upgrade to a Solid State Drive (SSD) as the boot drive, and relegate your current Hard Disk to a secondary data drive.

SSD's are getting cheap, less than $1.00 /gb (even Canadian!!) My 128gb cost $80.00CDN. You don't need a big one, 128gb is probably more than enough for all the OS and apps.

Win7 boots in 17 seconds.
Su with a load of plugins, 3 seconds.
My big file (15mb) used to take a full minute to load. Now it takes 5 seconds. A save takes 4 seconds (30 seconds before).
Firefox; 2 seconds.
My file manager (Thumbs+) used to take almost 2 minutes to boot and scan. 10 seconds now.
AVAST used to take 4 minutes to do a basic rootkit scan. 5 seconds now.

An SSD comes with (or you d/l it) drive image swap s/w so it just copies over your old drive. I couldn't use it because of the way my recovery disk was setup.

So my recovery HD (.5tb) will become my data repository after I xfer over whatever apps I can and clean it up.
I put the SU Files dir on the SSD to speed up the saves. Then I will mirror them back to the HD on a regular basis.

Another thing to consider... a dedicated backup drive. What I shoulda done before.
WD now have .5tb, 1tb and 3tb external USB 3 (or 2) drives. Named "My Passport". My 1tb cost $75.00CDN. It is USB 2 compatible, but slower.
They have s/w to auto backup every file from your SSD and HD that gets saved or added in background. I have it (1tb), but not yet installed. I'll get back to you here when I do next week. I don't want to set it up till I cleanup the HD.

@dave r said:

Chasing down the wrong alley.

Just uninstall the Logitech driver altogether and don't install one. It might be the CMB will start working correctly. If not, you should be able to change the CMB function in the Control Panel.

Fixed.

The problem was my old Logitech setpoint install disk was not Win7 compatible, so it did not install any drivers. Win7 default drivers were the culprit.

I went to the Logitech site and found the driver download page for my "old" combo set, and it had a Win7 set. 3 minutes later and a reboot, SU8 Orbit and Pan are working.

Now I can delete the SU8 install and replace it with 2013. But it will be next week, I got some other priority stuff to do first.

Thanks to everyone for the good advice.

@dave r said:

@jgb said:

I never needed the "shift" btn with the center button on the mouse to pan.

You didn't, huh? Well, that's been the standard method for activating Pan at least since I started using SketchUp with V3.
So if you didn't access Pan that way, how did you do it using the CMB?

My mistake.
I meant ORBIT. Been away from SU for 3 weeks now so I forgot how my finger memory worked.
The thing is my CMB does nothing, so neither PAN nor ORBIT work.

I am thinking now it may be my mouse driver is not compatible with Win7 as I had setup issues before I brought up SU8.
The KB & Mouse are so old (but functioned beautifully before on XP) that Logitech no longer support them. I'm gonna try to find the drivers later today.

@dave r said:

I'm not clear on what you have installed and what you haven't. As has been said multiple times on the forum, do not simply copy your old plugins to the SU2013 Plugins folder.

To get Pan with the CMB, you need to include the Shift button. Does Orbit work with the CMB? If not, you can go into the mouse settings in the Control Panel and change the button assignment so it'll work.

First, I resurrected SU8 not 2013.
I never needed the "shift" btn with the center button on the mouse to pan.
Orbit works, but again, the CMB has no effect.
The button assignments are in my mouse setup s/w and the button is correctly set.
Win7 dropped mouse settings from the control panel so I can't change them there.
I'll play some more tomorrow.

Could not get SU8 to run in old drive, so Shortcuts are toast. I did print them out several months ago so I will try to find it. I know what pile it's in, just not how far down.
But I copied the install file to the SSD and reinstalled SU8 (but only temporarily). I WILL go to 2013. Then I copied over the Plugin dir and most of the other files just to test the install.
It seems OK. And it comes up REAL fast, 3 seconds.
But my mouse is not responding the way it used to.
SU does not see the "middle button" so I can't pan.
I can't remember if there is a setting in SU8 for this.

Progress update
PC is up and running. All my data files were recovered intact, so far as I can see.
Motherboard is OK. I installed a 128gb SSD as my prime drive for Windows7 and all apps. The recovery drive (500gb) will be my data drive (both are SATA).

Of course nothing goes smooth even on a virgin install. I won't bore you with details.
Right now all that is running is Firefox with my old profile ported to a clean install.
AVAST antivirus is also working. All that took 2 full days.
Tomorrow is Thunderbird email and SU 2013.

Question. Where does SU8 store the config files (shortcuts, toolbars, etc)?
Can I simply copy/overwrite them to the 2013 locations? If they were registry items I know they are toast.

And I will re-download all the plugins I actually use.