@tomsdesk said: Gotta get me one of those! (The flame thrower, I mean...for my Sunday morning donut runs...since there's nothing, of course, more vicious on the road: than a Christian late for church :`) As somebody who loves messing with these 100mW lasers you can buy nowadays. I thought this was neat. Adam

If you're going to give a site as a design competition feature (as opposed to just describing a hypothetical site and giving other criteria), it should make some sense. What can one consider about this site? If you know Crissy Field at all, it's not that it happens to be a public space. Pretend it isn't. It is just a flat site with an obvious view, but very idiosyncratic siting given the neighborhood and other features (freeway overpass,biking trails, "historic" structures);and loaded local planning issues. It would be like "Consider that you are to build a house here, but ignore everything except the view and private beach." Because otherwise... IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE! Also if I owned that piece of land, I'd dream of letting it be a park. I don't think I'd want to do the competition. I'd get depressed. That's it. I'd build a tiny caretakers cottage and sweep the walks in the park the rest of my days. I guess I just said what you were saying. Sorry. Interesting that the Presidio Park itself is the site of several hotly contended development issues with other colorful players like GAP owners and Disney. Actually a very rich planning / architectural discussion /controversy. Somebody(s) will write a book or two.

Finally had a chance to work through the Piranesi tutorials, so here's the first result. [image: CJzP_6-LWadsworth-SH-viewS-alt.jpg] A higher resolution version of the same image is available in this gallery on Picasa. (The faked "etching texture" of the background texture is more visible in the higher res version.) I rather disliked the original view towards the South (north elevation in perspective) shown in the first post of this thread because of the non-human (but not particularly bird-like) point-of-view. This is more reasonable, from eye-height for a 6' tall human. Pity it's too late to re-submit the image. I'm finding Piranesi to be a fight...so far, it seems to be the most expensive Photoshop accessory ever (as far as I am concerned), because almost inevitably the output needs pixel-scrubbing and layering in ways that don't seem easily achievable with Piranesi alone. I'm not sure I like this as much as the "bad photocopy" pre-Piranesi NPR renderings posted before, although it is in fact much more like a Schuiten-type illustration (which may not be a good thing--there's something deceitful about faking older illustration media with digital means. This is not a pen-and-ink drawing, anymore than a VRay rendering would be a photograph).

I looked it up...Friday night distractions. Unfortunately, I'm more likely to be the "evil Kirk" from The Enemy Within, not the "evil Spock" from In a Mirror, Darkly. [image: 300px-I%27M_CAPTAIN_KIRK.jpg] I'm sorry, even when "evil" William Shatner is just not that cool. I better hope this place is named after my grandfather.

I never got into Tron but I was addicted to Robotron: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=robotron&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS266US266&um=1&sa=N&tab=iv# I spent countless hours in the arcade playing this game. My high school friend Wes and me would take turns playing for hours on just one quater. We would roll the machine several times. Ah to be in high school again and have unlimited free time....and do something productive other than play video games. But we don't get to go back and change things do we.

The Ruby on Rails community might be in panic, or not, but it doesn't mean much for us at all.

I don't think it's a matter of how they were created, really, but the fact that they are exact copies. Toyota designed the cars (the "original works") and therefor owns the rights to those designs. The modeler made an exact copy of Toyota's designs.

@unknownuser said: funny thing, I tried last night Aptana - it has some nice features, but for me is waaay to bloated/slow. nowadays I play with SublimeText coded by an ex-google. as it is at the beginnings it doesn't have all the cool tricks, but it is extensible via python scripts (if Ruby were available I would jump in to write some specific Sketchup thingies) another one that I keep an eye on is Intype Sublimetext looks very nice, and it is very small at 11 MB installed...smaller than RDE in fact. And it's only $59, which is not that bad. I'll give it a shot and see how the features work out...thanks, TBD.

Hi David, Sorry to hear your first experience with a z-corp machine left a bit to be desired. However, the level of detail on the model is very nice. Was the model for a healthcare clinic? Seams can be tricky to work with...with a bit of work you can get pretty solid surfaces where the edges touch. Yet, they can take a bit of time. Here's a few photos of before and after. Also, thought you might get a kick out of this small bathroom and room layout we did for a client that builds temporary housing plans using SketchUp. Amazing what can come out of 3D Warehouse and eventually a 3d printer. How did the model work for your client meeting? Jake Sweet Onion Creations [image: Jz6V_sanding_section.jpg] [image: i5kd_FinalMassingModel.jpg] [image: p7FU_Room_closeup.jpg]

@unknownuser said: Thanks for the info Lewis. It is short notice for me to enter this at the moment but I will watch out for the next brief being released. I feel much the same way. Unfortunately, I think this is probably the most interesting of the three briefs. At one point in time I had the email of the fellow who started this Line of Site business (an executive in a company that makes roofing components, I seem to recall), and he was pretty clear in our conversations that he was trying to provoke flash-of-genius "napkin sketches" as opposed to deliberated responses.

It's pretty zippy, but the textures take an age to load. MS Virtual Earth is starting to look pretty cool. It's got much better 3D trees and.....flyovers. http://ve3d.spaces.live.com/blog/ And Everyscape has it's own pretty neat version of Street View. Here's one for you, Lewis. http://www.everyscape.com/boston-ma.us.aspx

I won't be digging in Blender until after 3DBC. Neat article on John. Cool!

@mirjman said: congrats! nice renders, and it looks like construction is going per your images so far... Thanks. I had a minimal design roll in this...I just translated other peoples' ideas into models, and then checked out the implications versus the program and structural requirements. I won't know until they finish the entrance if either of the twoitems which I feel I had any real design input actually made it. I did draft a great many of CD details and sheets, as well, but that's just CAD monkeyshines.

As a former Application Engineer for Autodesk all I can say is BOO-YA!!! __________ ______________________________ ____________________ ____________________ ______________________________ __________

Hey Lewis Mate I've really only just joined this forum, the PPB is pretty much home for my SU fix as it covers a broader range of design topics not limited to SU! I dropped in for the first time the other week from a link on the PPB and have decided to register and hang around a bit! Must say I always find it funny how every forum I visit I get Richard as my username!! always a surprise really, make me feel important as if it's reserved - or is it simply no one wants to get called "Dick"?

@aerilius said: In the meantime Wine has reached a state where SketchUp can be used without Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but with Wine's own opensource Internet Explorer replacement that is based on Firefox/Gecko. This means we can have all the goodness of Gecko in WebDialogs! [attachment=0:3k7jewnp]<!-- ia0 -->wine-explorer.png<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:3k7jewnp] How to force to use Gecko instead of IE?

already did! LOL!