@mike lucey said:

Great picture Jim. Looks like you are left-handed? I wonder, out of curiosity how many design people are left-handed?

Oh yes, quite left handed. As far as percentages, from my personal background in school and work , probably the same as the overall world average numbers - maybe 10% 15% but from what I read, the percentage is larger than normal in the arts. Maybe it is because we must be more clever to get around in the R.H. world

Probably time for a poll???

Some famous lefties
Leonardo Da Vinci; Bill Gates; US Presidents Hoover, Truman, Ford, Reagan(ambidextrous), HWBush, Clinton, and Obama. Prime Minister Churchill.

Here is a link I found with a list of left handed artists.
http://arthistory.about.com/library/artists/lists/blsouthpaws.htm

And a link about famous left handers in general:
http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/left.html

I could go on----(T.M.I.)

@edson said:

[..so, jim, you are a confessed deserter! what a shame.
i moved to mac on 1985 because of minicad: i too wanted to be able to create drawings as nice as those made by a couple of friends who were the real mac frontier man. if you felt like in the wilderness in the US at that time can you imagine what we felt like in Brasil? something as simple as printing was a problem: there were no mac printers then. we had to import adapters and software to export files that could be printed on the "dark side".

but we stuck to it and never looked back. you can still be one of us. i promise not to tell anyone about your shameful desertion.

I am too far gone Obi-wan.

I too had printing problems in the early, dim, ages. Knowing those limitations I can appreciate your sticking to your principals.

My work around was to draw as much as possible in Minicad and print with a wide carrage dot matrix printer on 17" wide paper. I Spliced the images together and made a tracing paper original on a Xerox wide document printer and finished the fine details and notes by hand. This actually was somewhat faster than drawing completly by hand and did allow for quicker editing and of course was so much more teckie than just drawing. In a year or so of that agony, I discovered a multi-pen plotter that I could just barely afford and was able to do everything in cad. Unfortunately,.. Autocad.

Not so great pic of me and my Mac - 1989, before I gave up and went to the "dark side". Built two PC's and switched from Mini-cad, (which I liked but no one else was drawing with), to Autocad. Peer pressure? Caving in? Would have stayed with Mac but nothing was compatible back then.

@tig said:

.......If only Britain had been a little more sensible then the American colonies might be more like Canada [is that a good thing?] and they'd also spell properly! )

And drive on the left (wrong) side of the road?

@daniel said:

Jim,

Thanks, I need some luck. I have three tests left. One test I've failed a few times already - I've gone over it again and again, but cannot figure out what I've done wrong (of course, they don't tell you except "pass" or "fail"). Very frustrating.

I'm not sure of the Tenn. regulations, but see if they will let you review the results at the license board in Nashville. A bit of a p.i.t.a. but might help you figure out the problem.
follow this link to NCARB ARE page -
http://www.ncarb.org/en/ARE/Taking-the-ARE/Receiving-Your-Score.aspx

They should let you see a more detailed result. If they don't it might be time for the AIA to give the Registration Board a little push. http://www.aiatn.org/ If you're not a member you might consider it.

Also - have you signed up for any refresher courses? Some universities have live courses, the state AIA might and there are
some on line-correspondence types.

Hope this helps. PM me if you would like to talk further.

Jim Smith (AIA)

might be better than the tap water. This is a link to a site that shows the most recent years tests for contaminents in drinking water.

http://tinyurl.com/yfjl3q5

I shown my water company results, type in your zip code to find your local (USA) water company results. My,rust belt,area doesn't do too bad but has two chemical groups above what is considered healthy and of course bottled water has its issues as well. I Don't have any "beer" contamination results, not that I could easily make the substitution and still function .

@daniel said:

I've resolved to get my architect's license this year.

Good move Daniel. Best of luck. How far away from the goal? A few parts or the whole test?

I'm setting a few simple goals like straightening out my materials, components and plug-ins mess. Also, going to take a major trip this May and will be needing some forum member input at various across the pond destinations. stay tuned for upcoming post on that.

Jim

madder,

A few thoughts on importing the .dwg that have worked for me;

Do what TT and Anssi recommended.

Make sure you have purged everything in the autocad drawing before importing.

If the drawing parts can be divided say there are four elevations or a plan that could be easily cut and re-assembled, import each part separately.

If it is one large plan, see if you can clean up the obvious things you won't need for the render like room, door and window identifications, centerlines, detail bubbles etc. Lighten the load as much as posssible, purge and you might squeeze through the 99% barrier.

Good luck and Happy New Year.

TIG,

Just noticed these new bumps to an old thread, saw that there have been nearly 1000 downloads of your revised plug-in and very few thank you's - me being one of those remiss.

Thank you for this and all the other great plug ins.

One of my new year resolutions is to organize and update my sketchup plug-ins, materials, components, which have all gotten out of control

One down, countless more to go

And by the way a very happy New Year

Thanks Gaieus,

I will give the demo a try and post the results.

Jim

This plug-in looks to be extreemly useful for client presentations

Is there a limit on the file size that can be converted?

Hope to be included as a beta tester!

Jim

Zack,

Maybe I am misunderstanding your problem but if you right click a component, pick reload and pick another component, all instances are replaced.

Jim

I missed these the first time around, thanks Lin - really nice touches.

Jim

@tomsdesk said:

I'm WOW-ed as well! Love the reflections!

What is Renditioner BTW?

I think that is the IDX Renditioner?

I have the simple version and it is very quick, but my version does not produce the quality of Mike's render. I have not seen many reviews or examples.

@mike lucey said:

:lol: ..... Ahhh! but I can assure you that deep down the 'other halves' don't really mind that much as they know where you are and what you are doing....
Mike

Welcome to the dog house club Craig.

Two things that help - Mike mentions an important one,
another, that I found, is you need to search for something that your wife likes, holds dear, is active in etc. and see how you can use sketchup to make something she can personally use or appreciate. Works for me. Fortunatly, my spouse,(a registered nurse), has been infected with my love of architecture, photography and historic restoration. I get to use the GSU on community projects that she is also part of. Case closed. Tolerance well established!

Best wishes for a great 2010

Jim

[quote="elderla"]Hello everyone
OK, maybe I can't model a forest with individual trees. If I need half a million or so. So does anyone know anything about bulk modeling forest areas, like some kind of bubble model painted in tree paint? or whatever? I remember discussions of this sort of thing years ago on the old SketchUp forums (fora?) before Google.......but I don't remember anything specific.

Hi Donna, quite an ambitious project. I think this discussion and plug-in might help with the bulk modeling process....

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=11746&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Component spray. Several pages of discussion that might help. There is also a way to drop them onto contours.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Jim

I have seen this chair and stool by Pierre Paulin in "FormFonts"

I'm very impressed as well. Many of them would pass as photographs. Great job.

Twan,
very nice design and renders. My only observations are that on the first render, the waterline at the dock looks a bit strange. If there is a way, I would blur it a bit so it does not look so straight and more of a color transition, now it looks like a dark straight line. On the second render, I think the background trees need a bit of work. The 2D outline is visible and they seem to overpower the forground building especially around the angled roof line at the upper left.

Overall, they are very good. What render program did you use?

Jim