My feeling about slopes is that I absolutely want to model them. There are a lot of instances where having the real slope gives you valuable information with regard to the actual construction. A case in point would be - What is the real height of a deck beam. I would rather have this information on the drawing or model rather that having the carpenter figuring it out on the jobsite.
With respect to garage slabs, I usually have the slab 2" min below the adjacent house floor with a 2" slope from the back of the garage to the garage door.

Option 1 is what I have used many times. Never the others. Frost depth 2 to 3 feet typically.

I'm not familiar with NX but assume it is a solid modeler like Solidworks etc. First try would be to export a 3D model from SU in dwg format. See what you get. Can you convert the imported objects in NX to a usable format? You may have to go into the SU model and make sure that all the groups (or components) are solids before export. You also may have to go into all the solids in SU and make sure all the edges and faces are on the groups layer (not Layer 0 which is the default SU method). Sorting your SU groups into appropriately named layers may help. I have used both Autocad and ViaCad to convert the exported objects to 3D solids in dwg format which seems to import cleanly into solid modelers. Hope this helps somewhat.

Dave,

Thanks for your suggestions. I installed both and both work nicely but with the following results -
Julia's plugin - Works perfectly.
Jim's plugin - Appears to work perfectly except for - click on one instance of an altered component and it is selected as normal, click on it again and all the instances of that component disappear. The same result happens for other components in the model. If I save the model, close it, and reopen it, normal Sketchup behaviour is back. A puzzle. Don't know if this problem is machine specific or a plugin problem. I will investigate
Bottom line ... Julia's plugin solves the problem.
Thanks.

"Working on a component from the "outside", which it seems solid tools is, has never achieved that."
Well, I guess that is my point. Why is this not achievable? I can do solid operations to a group from "the outside" and they work. Why can't a similar operation to a component have the result propagate to the rest of the components?

This has been one of my pet peeves for a while. Why would any programmer think that it is a good idea to change a component to a group when operating with solid tools on a component. A typical scenario for me is to have two hundred objects made up of fifty different components. The final shape of lots of components isn't determined until a lot of the objects are in place. Solid tools provides an easy method to do alterations to objects except for the fact that that it destroys the component. Now I can change the object back to a component and then have to copy it about but this is a total waste of time.
I am sure this is a non trivial request but I am sure that a lot of people would find it useful.
Summary of need - have solid tools or equivalent not change components to groups during their use.
Any good ideas out there?

Regards,
KrisM

Single rake, double rake.

I needed a similar result in order to export to Revit. Here's a link to that post and the solution. Thanks to sdmitch. http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323%26amp;t=62940

Thanks for altering the drop down list. As far as the frequency of your updates...I see nothing wrong with what you're doing. Keep up the good work.

Nathaniel,

I love your plug-in. However, I did find a restriction which affects what I normally do. I would normally consider the truss overhang to include the sub fascia. So for example, if I had a 24" overhang, the actual length of the truss tail would be 1' 10 1/2". To input the truss overhang, you present a drop down list which doesn't allow me to input this number. I'm not sure why you give a drop down list for this particular value but it would be nice to input a different value. Your use of drop down lists and user inserted values seems entirely appropriate in all the other fields, just not for this one.
KrisM

Forgot again...beautiful work.

Paul,

My models from Revit come in totally grouped. There are no loose lines or edges. This is what I like most about the dwg export from Revit. The trick is to export the dwg as solids. If you don't, you get what you are describing. Pass this on to your collaborators. You will like it.

KrisM

Also...excellent work.

Paul,
Just curious about your thoughts on the Revit - Sketchup workflow. This is what I currently do. I really like Revit for the design and documentation but prefer Sketchup on the presentation side. Any comments?
KrisM

"I would like to have Entity Info in two places but the software won't allow it."

I also want this and found I couldn't do it Why would someone implement this restriction? It makes absolutely no sense.

There is a third location at work here and that is the right click context menu which is becoming increasingly large. Plugins are SketchUp's greatest asset and it's greatest curse. I would hesitate to suggest that Trimble enforce some kind of order so as to not stifle the creativity which happens with the plugin authors. However, there must be some way to have a rational structure to this issue.
KrisM

If you're holding out for 'All the major wish items" to be included, you might change the timeline to 2027.

The perpendicular inference is great but you still can't inference to the world axes from within a component (which has a different axes orientation).

Pbacot,
I can do this for you. Send me an email.
Kris

Kudos to Trimble for replying to my email and sending the 2016 license number within two hours. They said they are in the process of sending out the 2016 licenses as we speak.
KrisM