Hello everybody,

I'm modelling a stadium, in which I want to align VIP boxes of identical size along a path, which persists of equally long edges:

I struggle to position the very last box accurately. When rotating the box, it moves slightly away from the center point of the rotation, thus it never aligns perfectly with the edge it should be aligned with.

So far I've tried to rotate the entire model by say 15°, align the box as planned and it worked. But: After rotating it back by the same 15° or saving and re-opening the model, the object slightly moves out of position again. This is really weird and frustrating behavior and really the first time, I expierence that kind of inaccuracy.

I've uploaded the model here:

File-Upload.net - Datei nicht gefunden

Leider konnte Ihre hochgeladene Datei nicht gefunden werden. Laden Sie die Datei neu hoch.

(www.file-upload.net)

Maybe you can have a look at it and verify the problem or better even solve it?

Any advice/help is very much appreciated!

Thank you and best
Markus

@liam887 said:

Next purchase Pete:

Redirecting...

(www.maximumpc.com)

Just wondering: A second Titan would cost as much and increase render speed to a greater extent, wouldn't it?

@solo said:

@unknownuser said:

@Solo: Did the card arrive yet? If so, please let us know about the rendering experience with Thea's GPU render engine

It did indeed and it's installed.

I decided to take Giannis's advice (Thea developer) and keep my existing GTX 660ti 3GB and add the Titan in next PCI express slot, I kept my dual monitors connected to GTX 660 and left it as main GPU.

Now in Lumion and Thea I set it's priority in the Geforce settings panel for the Titan as top card so now when I work (render) the Titan takes on all the work and my other card is pretty free to still surf net, work in Photoshop etc.

I did a test using a Thea bench mark scene.

That's s/p 883.

When beta testing (without Titan) I got s/p 330.

As you can see Thea used the Titan the 660 and the CPU.

So as you can see the Titan made my rendering almost 3x faster.

Thx for the update. Appreciated!

@solo said:

Well, I just did it, placed an order on Amazon for a Titan, expedited to arrive Friday. Base camp may be out of reach as I spent $1000 on a video card (wife cannot understand these things, kids think my work machine is their next gaming rig...dream on)

Amazon.com: EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN Superclocked : Electronics

Buy EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN Superclocked: Graphics Cards - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

(www.amazon.com)

Would like to see how a GTX 660ti and a Titan work together for rendering.

@Solo: Did the card arrive yet? If so, please let us know about the rendering experience with Thea's GPU render engine

Thanks for your opinions.

So understand that CPU is the bottle neck in SU. Problem is: it does not get much faster than what I already have

@liam: 50.000.000

@solo: Love your avatar

Hi there,

my high-poly SU models (50.000.000+ edges) won't orbit as smoothly as I'd like them to.

So far I'm using 16GB RAM, an Intel Core i7-3770 CPU, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX570 GPU.

I wonder if there is a GPU, which would signficantly increase my machine's performance in SU and the rendering times in Thea Render at the same time.

Thea Render recently posted this on their forums: http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17%26amp;t=13779

This seems to suggest that a GeForce GTX Titan would do the trick at rendering, but I'd only consider getting one if also the performance in SU improves massively (rendering time is not that crucial to me).

I'd be happy to hear about your experience on Geforce GTX Titan vs. Quadro cards for SU specifically

Thanks!
Markus

@dave r said:

Well, I can't help you with the automatic replacement when you open the master file. As I told you in my last PM, I do almost all of my drawing and editing in situ and this is one of the reasons.

Maybe it would be possible for a plugin to automate the replacement of components but I'm not the guy for that.

Alright, thx for the effort anyway!

@dave r said:

Alright. Let's see if this makes it clearer.

1. Make a folder some place on your computer. Call it 'Sectors'
2. Save your sector components in it as individual SKP files. In your stadium model, right click on each sector in turn and choose Save as... Make sure they all get saved in the sector folder.
3. Open the Components window (Window menu) in SketchUp.
4. click on the Details button to the left of the search line that shows "3D Warehouse."
5. choose Open or Create a Local Collection.
6. Navigate to the folder called 'Sectors.'
7. Click on Details again and choose 'Add to favorites.'

Now you have a library of your stadium sectors.

8. Open a SketchUp session and open one of the sectors. Let's say it is Sector A Save it when you're finished.
9. Open your stadium file. Select Sector A in the model.
10. Go to the Sectors library in the Components window. Right click on Sector A there and choose Replace Selected. (Notice there is no Reload option in this case.)

At this point Sector A should have been replaced with the edited version.

I did this with some table leg components.

[attachment=2:2zx9rasb]<!-- ia2 -->Dville leg 2.png<!-- ia2 -->[/attachment:2zx9rasb]
Here's some legs with mortises in the sides.

[attachment=1:2zx9rasb]<!-- ia1 -->dville leg 1.PNG<!-- ia1 -->[/attachment:2zx9rasb]
I opened the leg component in a separate file and removed the mortises.

[attachment=0:2zx9rasb]<!-- ia0 -->dvill leg 3.png<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:2zx9rasb]
Then I right clicked on the leg component in the Components window and chose Replace selected. Presto! the edited version of the legs without mortises appear in the model.

Okay, so this works fine as described

However, it is still not what I ultimately would like to achieve. I'd like steps 9 and 10 to be done automatically every time I reopen the stadium file. Just like a website would behave if I hit the reload button of the browser. Otherwise I will probably forget to "update" a few sectors or it will take me forever to replace all the sectors (there are jus too many ).

Thx ... will try that first thing tomorrow morning! Good night!

@dave r said:

It sounds like you weren't doing it correctly? Did you actually make a separate library for the sectors? And were you trying to replace the sectors from that library?

Okay, I did this:

1. Saved my sector file into a specific folder
2. Opened the stadium file, put in a reduced low poly version of the sector and saved.
3. Closed and reopened the stadium file, selected the low poly version of the sector, openend the component browser, navigated towards the folder from 1)
4. Replaced the low poly version by the high poly sector from the library.
5. Closed the stadium file.
6. Changed and saved the high poly sector file.
7. Reopened the stadium file and hoped to see the sector changed. That wasn't the case
8. Went to Sketchucation and started this thread

@dave r said:

Why don't you save all the sectors in a component library you can access from the Components window. Then you don't have to indicate a path. Just go to the Stadium model, select the sector you want to replace, choose the new/edited sector from the library, right click on it and choose Replace Selected.

I did that. But then I still have to reload components when I changed them as nothing happened otherwise. Or did I make a mistake?

Edit: Hm, okay, I can refresh components by replacing them before having to specify a file path. That feels slightly better

But I guess it is not possible to have it like a HTML file, where I can specify where I want the pictures of the website to appear on the screen, then change the pictures, hit F5 and have the new website with all the changes pictures on screen?

In any way: I'm glad for the help I get here ... this is the second question I had in a few days and I'm really pleased about both the quality and the speed of help this community offers

On clicking reload component SU still asks me to choose a file. That's quite annoying. Is there a "reload all components and don't ask me for the path of the file because it hasn't changed" button?

@box said:

Reload.

How? Closing the stadium file and reopening it didn't do anything ...

Hi there,

I am building another stadium and it consists of multiple sectors, which are quite complex and have a high poly count in their own right. I am now looking for a way of assembling all these sectors together in the stadium.

So let's say I have 10 Sector files, e.g. sector1.skp, sector2.skp ... sector10.skp and a stadium file, e.g. stadium.skp. The stadium.skp contains the 10 sectors as components, such it defines their orientation etc. Ideally I would now like to edit the sector files on their own, save them, reload stadium.skp and tadaa => the changes I made in the sector files are taken over in the stadium file.

Of course it's possible to replace old components by new ones via the component browser. I just don't want to do that every time the component changes. So isn't there an automatic function?

Thx!
Markus

Wow, thx @Jeff!

@unknownuser said:

@futurepast said:

Except that the spacing you have gets narrower with the greater distribution, and I thought he wanted repetition on spacing, with the row ends being the adjustment. As in, start at the center and scale out to both ends, leaving the remainder as the row ends.

but it seems to make sense from a manufacturing point of view to have the spacing remain consistent..

Erm, actually I want the spacing between seats to be varible, with the first and last seat exactly on the start and end of the row (as indicated by the image in my opening post) ... otherwise one gets ugly looking "kinks" in the stands like this:

I prefer the solution with variable spacing in each row, as this will look smoother in a stadium like this:

@futurepast said:

This what you want? Rotate the chair any direction and scale it to the right any length.
You don't list in your profile if you have the Pro version this is a dynamic component.

Well, I think that could work, but does not save me any time ... the Copy + ""-method is equally fast/slow ...

Anyway, thx for the effort!

@Pilou: Yap, for sure I only model 1/4 of the whole stadium and then copy & past

This is what the stadium looks like without seats in them yet:

@box said:

Since you know each chair is .5, dividing the respective B lines by .5 will tell you how many can fit. Then actually divide the B lines by that number. This will give you the centres of each chair. Use Component stringer to place the chair at those points.

You would probably find it easiest to make blocks of seating, just like they do in real life, and use the various blocks as components to populate the whole stadium.

Well, by doing that I would still need to measure the length of that lines first, wouldn't I?. That won't save me much work, as I would then be faster by the method Pilou mentioned

The second hint I do not really understand. I do have blocks in my stadium and I only model 1/4 of the stadium anyway, since this is enough to complete it afterwards by making this 1/4 a component. However, each block is different, because the shape of the stadium bowl is not symmetric or should I say "regular". So each block has its own seating pattern unfortunately ..

@unknownuser said:

And why not use the normal Move/Copy tool "/" ?
You draw the first and last seat on a line then type "/" and the numbers of seats wanted!

Just type again a number if result don't satisfy you!
(no need to redraw anything)

Yap, this is what I have done before. And that is just annoying work to do, because I have like 90 rows and 15 lines in each stadium, so I'd need to do that 1350 times

Thx! Need to learn how to use dynamic components. Not sure if it will safe me any work on my current problem, but will probably be very useful for other purposes

The Component Stringer and PathCopy don't solve this one unfortunately ...