Thank you Dave. Definitely not too late. That video was marvelous and I have bookmarked it as I find that like practising scales on a piano, that repetition works for me, being a bear of little brain. I am always grateful for many responses as there is always something to be learnt from all contributors. Off to practise what I have just seen.

And not to be left out, thanks to you too as well sfto 1. Yes I have been toggling the x-ray mode on and off, but was still having a problem accessing the light bulb within the lamp until I remembered a trick that I learnt yesterday during my afternoon tut viewing, and that was to just cut the shade to the clipboard, position my light bulb and then paste in place. That part worked like a charm, after spending 45 minutes lining up the light bulb!

You obviously don't have to tell me TIG - but my dad was from Alnwick, but Northumbria sure struck a cord!
Cheers!

Thank you. I just tried it as suggested, and so far with just a square on top of a circle it seemed to work. I will redo my lost lamp post after lunch and see how it works there. I had a rough time centering the light bulb into the socket. I imagine one has to use a certain degree of "common sense" as having seen in all of my video tuts, to pick up the object by the corner, that is what I have been doing. I am very obedient That, now that I think about it, would apply in aligning objects next to each other, but not on top of each other. I think my biggest problem is in being too quick in wanting to see my component or model done - no patience, and not allowing SketchUp to "think." Going back to review the video "SketchUp Tips & Tricks" which I looked at yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed, in spite of a few nutty professor moments, LOL. Maybe there was some additional information there that I missed, but thank you gentlemen. As always bless this forum for speedy and helpful advice. BTW - think my family are about to stage an intervention, as all I do now morning noon and night is practice SKETCHUP! YIPPEE!!

OK - So I sit here every day, virtually all day looking at video tutorials until the cows come home, and I am improving, but the one thing I don't seem to get and which will cause me to jettison my beloved computer into the nearest body of water is the ability to center one object on top of another. It takes me hours!!!! Just made my first lamp post - so proud, then SketchUp crashed - sure why not. Still good practice. I rotate until my head spins, I have tried used inferencing, but no matter what I do it just does not seem to get dead center. There has to be an easier way involving some sort of snapping, but darned if I know how? Even though I think I have looked at every SU video on Youtube and some... I am still having problems. I know there is a Ruby script out there that I saw for "nudging" but call me old school, I think I should learn how to do it for myself. Any tips please?

And that's the best part of working for family that you love. I can demand all sorts of things and threaten to complain to his mother, LOL and the boy (man actually) is a gem of a person, so after a little/alot/huge amount of nagging he generally comes through. Love what I do though!! Summer is the quiet time in the corporate event business, so I shall use any free time wisely to hone my Sketchup skills, such as they be.

Fortunately again most clients, and probably to include yours with the TV, just want to get an idea of what the finished product is going to look like. It always amazes me how many people are not able to visualize and have to see it laid out in front of them, but then for the most part they are happy.

Most of the time I have a rough idea of the majority of the dimensions, but actually that is why I started doing my drawings or pre- composites a lot of the time in Sketchup. I do the artwork for my nephew's business - designsbysean.com and if you have a sec and take a peep at what he does, you will see that sometimes getting actual dimensions is not always easy. He is also the typical "squint and choose" designer. And prior to using SU (I work from home) he would ring after I had submitted a draft and say "No - that's too small, or that's too big, or move that over a bit and that pattern should be smaller etc." It was driving me nuts, and when you are doing your entire drawing in PS and in spite of layers, moving things around is a bit of a pain. Not to mention that changing the angle because he wants something placed somewhere else means having to either warp or distort your element as best as you can.

I have started whining to him about needing at least some basic measurements before I begin, and it is working out really well and actually saved money in having things presented to scale. I at least get a floor plan now. For example he might have planned on two couches and two chairs for a lounge group, to find that only one couch and two chairs will fit in the space after I submit my draft. But since the materials that I am going to apply might be a fabric pattern and unless someone actually measures the pattern or places it next to some other object for scale, before taking a snap and sending it to me, it is pretty much a guessing game. It is not like architecture or engineering where it has to be precise to the centimeter, and is really just to give the client an overall impression of the proposed event, but it does my heart good when I see a picture taken of the live event and it matches my conceptual drawing to the t. He is also very particular and rightly so, that the client sees exactly what they are getting, no more no less, so there are no unpleasant surprises down the road. It can be tricky.

I am going to try your suggestion. I am frankly quite enamored of Sketchup and will do what it takes to be the best that I can be and follow all advice and suggestions as sent. Thank you.

It was on a cylinder in the example I sent - yes. I was just experimenting at the time. I think, I had mentioned (maybe not) that what I use SU for is Special Event design. Sometimes large columns in building have to be covered in fabric or we just use gobos, so my hope is to cover all scenarios that might occur. Actually, once I did click on the width field again, thus setting the change (wish someone had mentioned that in all the tutorials I looked at before) the pattern even on the cylinder, did resize and in proportion with no distortion. Surprised me I can tell you.

Now, my next mission is to sort out the seamless pattern issue. I will probably use one of my seamless patterns that I have had to make in PS or Illustrator and see if that has the same result in SU. Looked at one being done for Sketchup on Youtube, but was not convinced that is would work based on what I saw and they never actually showed the end product applied. Thank you, and any other advice is more than welcome and always appreciated.

My prefs are the same. I have made a little progress though. I have found that when I alter the dimensions of the tile in the fields, that after changing first the width, and then the height, that if instead of just clicking "close" but in fact click again on the height, immediately the size of the pattern changes. I have not seen that in any of the tuts that I have read or seen, so it was just an experiment, but seemed to work.
Thank you for being so prompt with my answers.
Cheers

TECHDAVE02, I noticed that you had no measurement details in your size box? i.e. ( " ) as in the default. Is there something about this that I should know?
PS and just by the way - Love Canada. My niece and her family live in Oakville and two nieces attended the University of Western Ontario, not too far away methinks. )

Thank you gentlemen. I will try your suggestions. It is usually just something daft that I missed out on and then comes that eureka moment. So far, it is the only problem I have come up against in SU, that has me stumped and I seem unable to learn. But I never give up until I triumph so shall try it again - toute suite.

What am I missing here please?
Another question please. I have looked at and read multiple tutorials on resizing the size (pattern) of a material, but in spite of following the instructions to the letter, nothing seems to happen. To clarify, this is what I am doing.

1. Select surface
2. Select material (my own import since if I read correctly you cannot adjust the size of a pattern/material that comes with SU.)
3. Paint Bucket - fill surface with chosen material, the pattern of which is visually waaaay too small.
4. Select the swatch - double click. Break the width/height link. Enter my own dimensions.
5. Close the edit window
6. Reapply the swatch.

Result - Nothing, Narda, Zip, Rien?

Attached is a screen shot for better understanding. I have applied a random pattern (just something quick, tiled not seamless) but as you can see the pattern is much too small and is not properly constrained. I tried adjusting the width and the height so as to get the look of the material swatch, but the height would just jump back to the original dimension. The column is 10' high with a diameter of 2.5'

Thank you

Thanks Renderizer, I will check it out. Sadly I am not a math teacher, and if I could do math I could probably rule the world. I think I had been sent out on a errand somewhere when those chips were being installed prior to the storks delivery. I am seriously bad. More accurate to say a math moron, and without a calculator I would be reduced to laying out pebbles on the sidewalk to even know if I had received enough change from a store purchase.

That being said... it has not made anything that I do with the graphics world easy. I will take a deep breath and delve into this and have a look at the plugins mentioned. I have no problems with the 2D exports, they look wonderful. I will also do some Youtube searching (thank Heaven for Youtube!!!) and see if there are any videos posted that might be helpful.

Thank you all,

Actually Gaieus, even with my regular 2D exports I have been choosing 600 rather than 300 ppi and the results are pretty good. Pity about the animation, and so will have to do as mentioned previously and create the animation in PS.

Attached is one such export. Remember I am still a newbie so don't be too hard on me please. Although criticism can only foster improvement.

Call me determined call me stubbon but I will NOT GIVE UP! AUUUUUGH!

Still consider myself a newbie after all this time, not enough of which to practice, but getting better. Using Sketchup now a lot more in the initial prep of my event drawings, but I tried to put together an animation this weekend and the result was just plain disastrous. So pixelated that it was totally unusable.

No offense, but what's the point of having the option to animate to have it look so terrible? I tried every possible setting and gave up frustrated. My only other option was to export the scenes as individual jpegs into Photoshop and then create a nice smooth crisp looking animation in there. But surely that should not be necessary? Any tips or ideas as to why the problem with the migraine causing animation please?

Tried it! Brilliant! No more mumbling under my breath. Thank you ever so much.
Cheers

Thank you both very much. I shall give it a try immediately.

Still a newbie three years later, sigh... Big question though please. My job is doing renders for an Event Production company. I do a base model in Sketchup to make sure that all the pieces they are using can fit in the space (not a floor plan) then once the designer says yes, that the draft looks good, then I export my Sketchup model as a 2D graphic to Photoshop, and then the fun begins! However... in the event industry either the client or the designer usually change their minds every 10 seconds, and which means having sometimes to go back into my model in Sketchup to make a couple of changes.

The problem I have is that having made these changes or additions, I want to export that revised model at exactly the same angle as the original 2D image that I exported, or things are not going to match up - obviously:)

Is there a way therefore to save a "custom" view in Sketchup, so that after the changes I can just apply that view before exporting my 2D graphic once again, and then later again, and on and on ad infinitum.
Will attach an example of the bare bones model that I export to Photoshop.

Thank you - the answer to this would be another life saver.

@d12dozr said:

@kathryng said:

Thank you and not that you are interested, but I might bore you down the road with my progress.

Not at all! I enjoy the little stories that make you (or other members, as the case may be) sound less like a screen name, and more like a human...and your little spiel up there made me crack a grin

You could make that quote your signature...just sayin'

Absolutely!

@kathryng said:

@d12dozr said:

Kathryn, have you seen Go 2 School? They have tons of tutorials, free or paid, and offer local workshops as well as one-on-one training over the internet. I learned much of my basic SU knowledge from their YouTube channel

Truthfully - forgot about them. I was already signed up as I had registered for their Illustrator tutorials etc. Seems history is repeating itself re the live learning after my Illustrator class problem, LOL. Actually not funny - taking back the LOL. My SketchUp for Dummies also arrived this morning so hopefully it will work out. One of the reasons that I like the actual live learning though is that I am notoriously impatient when learning something new, and want to know it all now - right this moment. Age has taught me nothing along those lines, so I shall try to yank on the reins and take it step by step and remind myself that even in SketchUp Rome was not built in a day. (No idea where that one came from - must be one of my better, or cornier... days.)

Thank you and not that you are interested, but I might bore you down the road with my progress.

PS - OK - last bit of nonsense for the day and then I won't bother anyone anymore, but just thought... that would be a great slogan for SketchUp -
"Who Said Rome Could Not Be Built In A Day" or "With SketchUp Rome Could Have Been Built In A Day." Sorry, could not resist - over and out.

@d12dozr said:

Kathryn, have you seen Go 2 School? They have tons of tutorials, free or paid, and offer local workshops as well as one-on-one training over the internet. I learned much of my basic SU knowledge from their YouTube channel

Truthfully - forgot about them. I was already signed up as I had registered for their Illustrator tutorials etc. Seems history is repeating itself re the live learning after my Illustrator class problem, LOL. Actually not funny - taking back the LOL. My SketchUp for Dummies also arrived this morning so hopefully it will work out. One of the reasons that I like the actual live learning though is that I am notoriously impatient when learning something new, and want to know it all now - right this moment. Age has taught me nothing along those lines, so I shall try to yank on the reins and take it step by step and remind myself that even in SketchUp Rome was not built in a day. (No idea where that one came from - must be one of my better, or cornier... days.)

Thank you and not that you are interested, but I might bore you down the road with my progress.