@thomthom said:

@jgb said:

IF I could simply [b]draw lines in colour,

You can do that. Set the Edge Style to Color by Material, and just paint the colours you want for your edges.

DOHHH

And I even have the "Edge Styles" toolbar visible that has that icon.

Thanks

Thanks Tig; You said "It about locating, orienting, rotating, scaling, skewing a texture's image so it's applied to a face as you'd like."

I have exactly that problem applying a Bamboo texture to a tube for my Silver Dart project. I got it right for a vertical stick (a component), but when I rotate a copy or stretch a copy, it screws up royally.

The Bamboo texture originated from a .JPG photo of a section of bamboo.
Playing with materials is not an SU area that I have any experience with.

This has been asked before, but my current project needs it in spades.

I'm drawing fairings for my big freighter. That entails drawing a lot of lines that run very close, or co-linear to existing structural lines to get a smooth transition. That will setup my perimeter and control curves that Curviloft will need to make the mesh.

But I need to identify the fairing lines vrs. structural lines in order to refine the curves. The fairing lines are generated in a group so separation is not the problem.

IF I could simply draw lines in colour, or thick/thin that would make it a lot easier to see which line belongs to which part of the structure or fairing. I would convert them to standard line afterwards.

@gaieus said:

Well, that's been raised, too. This way we could manipulate UV mapping much more flexibly.

Could you please explain what UV mapping is all about?

I think it has to do with photorealistic rendering but I really do not know.

@unknownuser said:

@jgb said:

As for a mesh tool, I think Curviloft does me just fine. In fact it creates too fine a mesh, and I spend a fair bit of time reducing lines. But that is still way faster than my old way of tweaking a manual mesh.

The density of the mesh is primarily driven by:

• the number of vertices on the contour (Curviloft respect all of them)
• the sampling factor you may apply (usually it is to get a more dense mesh)

It may be worth working out the contours to minimize the number of vertices and then perform the Skinning operation.

Fredo

Thanks Fredo, After I first played with Curviloft (CL) I realized it followed all my verticies, but added more so I now create my initial control curves with a reduced segment count that looks crappy raw, but nice and smooth after CL does its magic. However, CL introduces a significantly higher vertex count in the mesh, sometimes dividing a controlling segment into 4 or 5 bits, with some very tiny. It is those very small segments that I have to eliminate, yet still keep a smooth mesh. But even so, that is far less work than tweaking a manual mesh.

In my 3 problems above (Cargo door fairings for my big freighter airplane), I created a segment size of about 24 inches on average, figuring on CL dividing those segments in 2 or 3, but I got quite a few segments that were less than 1 inch. At the scale of my model (308 feet long), that was way too fine.

Is there any way within CL's control parameters to adjust the "sampling factor"? I would like CL to divide a control segment in 2 or 3 vertices as a norm. Then I can control the smoothness with my initial arc and spline segment count.

Also, how does the "angle value" figure into the control? Mine is set at 40 deg, but I have not played with it yet.

And, while I still have your attention, is there any way to default the start location of the popup control toolbar? It always starts at top left, but in my case that area is hidden by my Components Window. Then I have to temporarily move the Comp Window so I can move the CL toolbar down to the lower left of screen. I would prefer that as the default start position.

Charly2008.

Thanks, but as I inferred before, when I was made aware of the gaps by Rich, I fixed them and had no problem forming the curves, exactly as you did. Now I am more careful in creating my control curves and have done a few far more complex skins since without problems.

When you get to my age (66) two things start to go..... Memory and .... Can't remember the second.

Anyway, the curves formed after I fixed the gaps. Truth be told, the 3 curves in that drawing I posted above are only the 5th to 7th curves I've done, including the twisted duct in another post. I'm still at the bottom of the learning curve.

As for a mesh tool, I think Curviloft does me just fine. In fact it creates too fine a mesh, and I spend a fair bit of time reducing lines. But that is still way faster than my old way of tweaking a manual mesh.

@unknownuser said:

You've open edges. Use Thomthom's Edge Tool to inspect

I shuda known that when Weld didn't work.

Many thanks.

Going nuts!
I simply cannot get these skins to form with Curviloft.
I got a few others, but not these 2. (The small one in the middle I got finally)

No matter how I select the edges, or which tool I use, I always get either a gross distorted shape, or nothing, or usually the cursor just says "Transition" and nothing happens after that. Well the edges turn all sorts of colors, then nothing.

I need to know HOW to get these skins, as I have a bunch more to do with the same general shape.

So, if you can please explain how, rather than just do them for me.

Door skin edge shapes

Now that SU is more adept at handling solids, at least giving us a very good volume calculation, a companion to that would be solid materials.

Give the Solid Materials (SM's) a density as well as a texture.
So if I select a solid and select "Steel" from the materials list, it not only textures the entire surface, but computes the weight of the solid based on the Volume times the density converted to the Units in use.

The SM list should also allow for user defined materials with user defined densities.
I.e. the SU SM list has a very few types of rock densities, but I might want to define a density for gravel.
In aviation there are several types of aluminum; each having very specific densities, while almost every other discipline needs only 1 common density.

That way I can get rid of the Excel spreadsheet I must maintain which gets very tedious when I make part changes in shape or scale.

And this just in...
SU should also give me the aggregate volume and weight of all the solids in a group (assembly).

I too found autosave annoyingly slow. And I also found in V8, it is faster than it used to be, but manual save seems faster than autosave.

I brought this up a very long time ago, and also suggested a possible fix to speed it up dramatically.

UNDO has a stack of 100 operations (I counted). That has got to be a whole lot smaller than the model file.
SU should create the Autosave file from the UNDO stack, by user specified (short) time interval as is done now, and when the stack nears 100 (or XX) operations. The Autosave UNDO file just keeps building till the next manual save.
A manual save clears the Autosave UNDO file.
Then if SU abends, the recovery is to apply the Autosave UNDO file to the last saved file, but in reverse, as a "REDO".
That way almost all the work is recoverable and the autosaves should be almost unnoticeable.

As I have said many time before; I have used ACAD for many years. But I struggled with ACAD's 2 1/2D disaster for over 2 weeks trying to get a good approximation of an airplane fuselage I've been developing on paper. I gave up.

Then I discoverd SU V6. In just the very first 2 HOURS of playing with it, I had my design exactly as I wanted it.

ACAD has never since lit up my screen.

Gai

Just yanking your chain!

I'm stuck in my Canada Election riding office this early Sunday AM waiting to solve some itty bitty problem that the Poll staff didn't listen to in their training, and I'm using SCF as a diversion.

There is a whole lot of SU that I don't use either, not even the free bits of Layout, camera work, and many functions. I'd love to have Dyn.Comp's but can't justify the $$ for Pro just for that.

Keep in mind the SKB file is a slightly older rendition of the Autosave file.

SKB files are your last saved file version before hitting the SAVE icon. SU renames the file extension then saves your current version as the SKP file by overwriting the previous SKB.

Then depending on the autosave interval (mine is set at 30 minutes), SU will create an Autosave file in the interim between the last SKP/SKB save and now. When you do a save or exit normal, the autosave is deleted. An SU crash will leave the Autosave on file so it can be resurected with only the last minutes (upto the interval) of lost work.
The SKB is a slightly older version.

Any chance these may be small-dotted lines? These are hidden lines that are visible when "hidden lines" are turned on. Can't tell from the pic.

I used to get these a lot, when I deleted construction sections with HL off, and those hidden lines remained in the model.

The fastest way to remove them after the fact is with TT's Selection Tools plugin. Select the whole thing then click on his "show hidden lines only". Keep (deselect) only the lines that are required to form faces, and delete the rest.

@gaieus said:

(as I wrote to you, I cannot as I do not use SP).

UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!

Something in Sketchup that Gaieus does not use.

While SU is a great and simple 3D app, it is not the best for anatomical drawings. I would recommend using DAZ or POSER for such drawings. I think, but I'm not sure, there is a way to import DAZ models into SU and vice-versa.

The main advantages of DAZ/Poser are: anatomically correct base models; anatomically correct poseable joints and realistic skin tones. These are very difficult to model in SU.

Now if you wish to stay with SU for your models, get a few plugins to make life easier doing curvy surfaces. Primarily, Fredos CURVILOFT. There are several other surface and mesh tools also available.

Another tip is to work in 10X scale to achieve the finer polygons without getting near SU's small entity rendering problems.

@unknownuser said:

Hey thanks that was to easy

This is a SketchUp forum, not Staples.

I am not critiquing the quality of the SU art in any way, but, the mechanical concept of the Heavy Lifter is a somewhat backwards. The large dual wheels under the engine/counterweight should be as close to the lift forks as possible, as that is where the load will be. The 2 smaller tires in front are seemingly way too small for the load the lifter seems designed for. Plus the steering mechanism cannot take such a load, which is one of the main reasons almost all lift trucks have the steerables in the back. The load end is usually a solid axle.
Very nicely done model and render though.

@unknownuser said:

It would be nice if when you clicked on an already created circle, though, the segments would still pop up in the VCB. Currently it displays nothing there. That's about the only thing I use the entity info bar for so it'd be nice to totally do away with that.
-Brodie

If you keep the Entity Info box open all the time, and you select an arc or circle, it will tell you how many segments there are, and the Radius (for the circle) or arc length.

If the circle has not been exploded (fully intact) you can change the number of segments and/or the radius by changing the non-grayed out values in the Entity Info box. For non-intact circles/arcs, there are some elements that can be changed that way, but with varying results.

The only comment I can add, is to open both SU sessions BEFORE you do the Clipboard Copy. Sometimes, opening another app can corrupt the clipboard area. Rare, but has happened to me more than once.