The BEST solution is to export from Layout7. Its renders are far better than from Sketchup directly and you can specify a line weight without having to use custom styles.

It now says that all voting and suggestions are closed. Wow. That didn't last long. Oh well.....

Wow! Huge speed increase for me. I haven't found a model yet that will make 7.1 choke. Looks like a lot of the speed increase is by temporarily disabling shadows and other texturing during rotation and move, but they come back in less than a second after you stop moving the viewport.

These are the kinds of performance increases we've been thirsting for.

I created and use DC's all the time. They are incredible time savers for repetitive tasks and common components. I use them primarily for residential construction detail drawings where components get reused constantly. Simple DC's can be built with very little investment of time. For instance, I have "smart lumber" components where I can quickly insert the needed lumber dimensions (2x4's 2x10's, etc. and length) The component takes care of setting the proper true size of the component so I don't need to remember the conversions from nominal to actual. (2x4 to 1.5"x3.5" etc.) The options are set up as picklists which are far faster to set than browsing through a large component library looking for the right size item. Another good use is to dynamically change the dimensions of joist hangers, etc. depending on the lumber.

More sophisticated components would allow building fully framed walls with options for spacing, openings, etc. but these require more thinking and investment of time. Constructing custom roof joists are another perfect example and there is an example of this on the 3D Warehouse.

DC's do suffer from one MAJOR limitation though. (which I hope the SketchUp guys will address in Currently, there are no DC values for rotating or scaling textures. If your DC changes the dimensions of an object, the texture is scaled, much like using the scale tool. But in the case of lumber textures for instance, you want the texture to remain unscaled when dimensions change. (like how the push-pull tool changes dimensions) Until this limitation is fixed, it's better to apply textures to a DC AFTER it has been dimensioned.

If SketchUp fixes this one major limitation, DC's will become even more powerful and helpful.

I use SketchUp with XP with no problems whatsoever, so it has nothing to do with XP.

I suspect there's a problem with your video driver. Try running SketchUp in software mode to see if that solves the problem.

I had this same problem a few weeks ago. Sketchup uses std. Windows dialog boxes for its floating windows. If you are using Nvidia's nview screen drivers, there's a menu option to open dialog boxes on a certain screen. (see nview desktop manager, nview properties, the windows tab) Also, make sure you have NOT checked "center dialog box on display"

That should fix your problem.

You could also try building a dynamic component. Take a look at the Sketchup 7 example of a picket fence component. As you scale the component the pickets are automatically copied and spaced.

To do this with bricks, you would need to build two sub-components: one row with a full brick in the corner and one row with a half brick, so the two rows would be offset. This component could also be used to lay down flooring or drywall.

WOW!

Many thanks, Chris. That will save us "roofies" a ton of time!

@honoluludesktop said:

Not sure about Mac's but on a PC what you do works. You select the component in SU then right click, save as. From there you can go to any folder, or make one, or rename one, and save your component. To start, in SU's component folder, I made one with my name, and started by saving stuff there.

I strongly recommend saving custom components under "My Documents" rather than Sketchup's component directory. Why? Because if you backup your computer regularly, chances are, you only backup a few folders like "My Documents." Placing all your custom Sketchup materials and components there makes it easy to copy all your critical "user generated" files to another hard drive or DVD.

I use this structure:

"My Documents/My Sketchup/My Components"
"My Documents/My Sketchup/My Materials"

Sketchup allows you to "log" your custom directory by using the menu option "Open or create a local collection" in the components browser.

In my everlasting quest to get material textures to behave properly in dynamic components (keeping material unscaled when scaling a lumber piece) I've discovered some bizarre weirdness.

Sketchup definitely has some work to do on the dynamic component system.

First off, in order for the material choice system to work with a dynamic component, the original component must be colored with the default material. (see the the "set material to paint with default" button in the materials browser) Then you can make a pick list of materials in the dynamic attributes and apply them to components through the "component options" context menu.

You can apply different textures to different instances of the same dynamic component, just like you can scale each instance independently of one another. HOWEVER, a bizarre thing happens if you copy an existing dynamic component rather than dragging a new instance from the component browser. In other words, if you drag a component from the browser and then make copies of that component using ctrl-move, the behavior is different than that which occurs if you drag each new instance from the browser.

If you copy a component and change the color of the first instance of the component, the material changes on all the other copies. If you change the material of the copies, they do not affect each other. However, if you drag each component from the browser, they are all independent from one another. Totally bizarre and can lead to some real strange behavior.

Sketchup REALLY needs to expand and fix the materials attributes in dynamic components. If they could just allow you to scale a dynamic component without scaling the texture, the dynamic component system would be FAR more useful.