Hi Jgb, hi folks. If you have SU pro, you may try File menu --> Generate report. Just ideas.

@dave r said: Joel, I would definitely like to see what you're working on. After all, it's a boat, isn't it? Who wouldn't be interested. What's the hull to be made of? Cold molded oak with mahogany exterior veneer. One inch thick. Most of the structural members (carlin, stem, rudder stock (etc) are laminated oak. They are deliberately oversized. This is very much a WIP. I am currently working on the helmsman's station (in particular the compass) and rudder gear, so those parts are very incomplete. As is the engine drawing and propeller. The masts, cabin floor, headliner and cockpit floors are in transparent and are only interim position, till other mechanical and structural considerations are defined. You can hide them by turning off layer D0. The deck (layer 1.30) is turned off so you can see the insides. Many layers have no content yet, and many more layers are known, yet to be defined. I had to RAR the file as it was just over the 4mb upload limit. If that's a problem let me know and I will ZIP it or split it as needed. The ballast keel is oversized and will be resized once the center of bouyancy is calculated. Right now the hull displaces almost 43,000 lbs, and a lead ballast keel would weigh almost 41,000 lbs. It should be about 1/2 that and would most likely be iron, not lead. I planned a cabin to sleep 4 in comfort and 6 max. My experience is 6 for 1, maybe 2 nights, 4 for a longer trip is best. The engine is a 40hp 3 cyl Yanmar Diesel. It is probably a bit underpowered, but the next up 4 cyl Yanmar is about 55 hp, and might be just right. I have not yet done the calcs. My old boat (40 years ago) was a 53 foot Yawl with a P Class racing hull. Originally a tall sloop, it was too tired for racing (built in 1911), but its 25 hp engine was more than adequate, when it worked. I sailed a full summer with only a 5 hp outboard jury-rigged to a sideboard. It moved that sleek hull like stink. This hull is not anywhere near as fine, but I wanted more interior space. The old boat had the interior of a 30 footer. The old boat suffered a badly broken carlin in a storm, and was far too expensive for me to fix. The wood stick for the carlin alone was almost $2,000. So I sold it as is, for a bit more than what I bought it. It had about 3-4X the value in the lead keel, bronze antique parts and the bronze screws in it. I still miss it. (Note: I had to compress the file in RAR format as it was just over the 4mb upload limit. If that's a problem, let me know and I'll ZIP it or split it as needed.) 55 ft Schooner design (WIP) RAR Compressed format

jgb, It sounds like you are describing either the proper animation or Keyframe animation plugins.

thanks, I will keep that in mind and bookmark this page. I'm not yet ready to do what I thought needed to be done, as a design issue cropped up yesterday and needs to be solved first. I may be "forced" to get back into SketchyPhysics as a result, something I shoulda done long ago.

Thanks all for the help. I deleted the phantom group and all is well. No idea why it was there in the first place. Tig, thanks for explaining why some of my solids had problems. I previously stumbled upon the fact that I can have multiple separated solids within a group/comp and now I use that "feature" in places.

@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.

SP uses flat earth calculations, but the matrix range isn't really big enough that it would matter You can only roughly simulate ropes/pulleys via sliders, pistons and hinges, but that will all be very rigid

Adding new toolbars does that sometimes. Reposition them and save the new positions.

I am guessing here, and most probably will get corrected: If this was a circle extruded into a drum, I will bet that the circle is a closed curve, you did some outline with Tools on Surface to generate the eyebrow, then did perhaps a Joint PushPull to project it which sent some spurious signals to the program "behind the curtains". It interrupted its connection with the curve. Wrong? Oh, well.

Each to there own................

@wo3dan said: jgb, then don't click "Download Model" but drag the decired icon into your SU instance. The 3DW-page you are on stays open for other items to drag into SU. (b) As for the abusing tags, I agree. Well I be damned! It DOES work. I had tried drag-n-drop long time before and it did not work, but now I know why not. I always have the Warehouse in full screen, and I tried to D&D the large model view, not the Icon. So because SU does not put the Warehouse in a separate Window outside of SU, I had no place to drag it to. And you cannot drag the model view. Now with the Warehouse set to a large portion of the screen, I have a piece of my model space available to drag to. Problem solved by endrun. Thanks again Wo3.

@johnsenior1973 said: File > Save As Click on the down facing arrow and you'll be able to select anything from v3 to v7. DOHHHH!!

I was advised to update my GPU drivers as SU made some driver changes in V7. SU8 needs Open GL 1.5. The highest available for my old ATI-9200 card is OGL 1.3. So I need a new GPU; which means an upgrade to my old power supply as the new cards are power hogs. But my old case may not be able to mount the new form factor P/S, so I may need a new case, which may not mount my old Gigabyte M/B. And so it goes............

@thomthom said: Have you looked under Window > Preferences > Extensions and ensured the plugins are enabled? THAT was the culprit Many thanks. Never thought of looking there.

Thanks, Dave.

@unknownuser said: On non-solids. Even on solid ! "Double faces" are so mixed that is impossible to solve (with SU Scripts or Reverse, Orient functions Hands are necessary

@thomthom said: You might very well find better performance with a newer SATA II drive. (In either case - 6,5 year old HD... hope you have backups...) I need to do that too!

@gaieus said: @jgb said: ...Is SU-8 out now? http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=30490 Yeah, all the good stuff (solids particularly) is $$$$$ At least V8-Pro is cheaper than V7-Pro was at introduction. Still a major chunk of change for what is a retired old farts hobby. But, I may give V8-Pro some very serious consideration. I will most likely upload V8-Free for now, as I am truly fed up with V6's shortcomings, most of which are NOT FIXED in V8 still.

@solo said: They have many options available, like real 3d (the stuff like they use for Avatar, side by side, something else I cannot remember and anaglyph (red/cyan) That sounds quite interesting then I'm waiting to see what Unity are going to do with their new version. There is great ArchViz possibility in Unity