Calstock,

What you have here might be a question of selection. You have to select only the right parts of your terrain to make it reeditable in your process.

What you should add to your workflow is that you should soften/smooth all terrain edges before draping. After that, just find your own methods of selection of draped curves, so you don't destroy original terrain info. The plugin that helps me the most with terrain curves is select curve from Thomthom

Most importantly, if you have to reshape a complex mesh or erase something to create holes, don't do it!!! Hide stuff, group it, copy it, "backup" it, make component and "save as" external file. Any method is good but erase and loose all those hard to remake polygons.

If you don't think this as anything to do with what you want... watch the video:

http://screencast.com/t/ADucyyw1

I hope this helps,

JQL

mchizz, then I suggest you only design 3 or 4 and make them components and scale/skew them with fredo scale, connecting them and making all different yet only 3 or 4 instances.

Brilliant one Jeff!

But did you see what happens? Do you want me to make a video or something?

Inteloide,

I tried it again today and the problems with push-pull and undo have disappeared, but now I'm seing it messing with Fredoscale and I also believe JointPushPull. I think it's because they perform changes to components and groups visually and interactively.

I think your plugin is making Fredo scale multiply a given value several times, until the mouse is clicked.

I also believe it's making JointPushPull crash.

May you have some conflicts with your observers and Fredo's?

Oh well! it's so much fun to work with until it drops into it's frozen state...

Massimo,

Don't you ever fail? Again nice and simple subject, beautifully rendered!

Maybe you can also split sketchup model in manageable pieces wich would be big components and Xref them by using save as on context menu and reload on same menu.

There are some plugins to help you on this:

• Xref tools;
• Linkfile;
• Component manager (this one is new and being worked on but nice).

That's a nice one... I wish I was a kid!

Fredo,

Thank you for your time. For me it's more important that the scale is acurate than having it snap, so the fix is more than OK... it's perfect!

Thanks again and best regards,

JQL

unearthed,

If you use your models to render did you check to see if your renderer allows for proxies?

If so you could create proxies for those models and the render engine will autoswap them for the fully detailed and material ready models.

Thea render works greatly for proxy management.

Fredo,

Thanks for your trouble.

I noticed random results when trying to reproduce the error today, with the old version of the file you now sent. This link is for a video that helps me describe what was happening:

Dropbox - 404

(dl.dropboxusercontent.com)

Funny thing is that today, Box Scale to Target was giving me trouble not along the axis but on the diagonal square.

Your fix seems to clear all randomness and so far I'm getting the expected results though, of course disregards snapping.

I'll keep using it but I'm available for anything you need to test.

Thanks,

JQL

Alternatively you can use "Component stringer" plugin if it happens you want to do that in a different set of lines or a curve.

Fredo,

First of all thanks for this and all your wondeful plugins. There can't be thank enough for this contribution but I've came here bragging with an issue I've come across with Box Scaling to Target.

It is a very useful and natural way of scaling things in Sketcbup and it replaced my S key long time ago. However, today, a very simple operation gave me an unexpected result and I never seen this before. Probably it's because I hadn't noticed it or because of some setting I have changed that I'm not finding right now.

I don't know where an I failing but please take a look at this:

Is there anyway I can override the snapping factor and get on with only the distance on VCB?

Thanks and best regards,

JQL

That really depends on what's your process/workflow.

Krisidious has that trick but for a fraction of the amount of investment you are talking about with Autodesk, you could explore every plugin available for sketchup possible to replace Architectural Desktop. For myself, I now model everything and ceased drawing in 2D except for details, wich I draw on sketchup on SectionCutFaces and present on Layout.

There's pratically no CAD involved in my work right now, except when exporting/importing engineering drawings.

I'm starting to explore sketchup BIM capabilities with Tekla. I don't care much for parametric modeling as I tend to design exceptional details everywhere. So, for BIM, I'm interested mostly in infraestructure collision and Building Information Management for specific clients (wich are lacking for me right now).

I'm still afraid of auto reports from my models but I think this is where I should invest most of my time exploring in a near future.

I'm not going to talk about renders and presentations as it's pointless... Unless you'd like something unbelivebly sophisticated like those plugins available only for the most expansive softwares, sketchup has it all...

I really think my Sketchup licence is, and will be, the most important piece of software that dropped on my job in 12 years of work. I'm only sorry it was only 2 years ago and not earlier.

What can one say at a Sketchup forum:

In our office we have 2 bought programs, all the rest are free for commercial use.

• Sketchup Pro (without Layout it looses its competitiveness);
• Thea (Kerkythea free);

Free/Opensource:

• Gimp;
• Inkscape;
• Draftsight;
• Tekla (didn't really feel the need yet, but will do for sure).

The only real essential is Sketchup+Layout all others are what makes an edge.

Well Tom that is definetelly true, however the post title and all the attitude related to it is justified IMHO.

Title: Model 'Tea Tin' for Pay - wich implies someone needs a job well done and is willing to pay for it

First post text: asking for help giving the subject and nicely put (though didn't mention payment conditions or specifying anything about payment)

Replies: First of the responses was pretty amusing as an advanced user should be able to do this so fast that it really is wasted time to post here. As always in this forum there are several responses and then, someone with 20minutes spare time takes his time to help. I am absolutely sure that Frederick didn't even bother to read that there was payment involved at the title. Even if the job was simple enough, modeling, texturing, material and lighting really came out perfectly.

Conclusion#1: No reply from the author, no thanks (I shouldn't even bother about talkinf of payment)

Conclusion#2: The community (me actually) comes out with a simple yet excellent model for another project. Nothing is wasted here wich is great, but "here" exists because of willingful people that share and thank.

Pushpull is working nicely outside groups and components, but inside a component you still are unable to set a dimension for pushpull, or Undo. This time it doesn't even undo if you press CTRL+Z a lot.

I'm going to PM you a model for you to test.

Very nice!

Hey Frederick,

Here's my gratitude! I just remembered a project where this will be perfect. It will take some time to finish, but some shelves will be fast to fill! Thanks and best regards,

JQL