@jean lemire said:

Hi folks.

Use the straigth quote symbol like this ", not the curvy ones. It is SHIFT-2 on my PC with a French Canadian keyboard definition.

I think that, for a future version of SU, Google should consider allowing the use of ft for feet and in for inches like the actual use of m for meters, cm for centimeters and mm for millimeters when using the Scale Tool.

Just ideas.
I personally do not have two versions of quotes on my keyboard (American, USA, or whatever the layout im using is called). Just the straight ones. Shift-2 for me is @ Im starting to feel like we get the dumbed down versions of everything after dealing with you fine international folks on here.

@stevierayfan said:

I must push down the Shift Key in order to enter the ( " ) sign. When I push the Shift Key... after entering (4' 6), my dimensions disappear. When I hit Enter, nothing happens because my typed-in dimensions were gone. Does this make sense?

So long as you are not doing anything to take focus away form the VCB holding shift doesn't affect anything else. I am able to (and always do it this way) hold shift to enter the " sign to signify inches. You may have a setting somewhere that is messing this up. Im not sure how everything works in SU so it could be a simple error like when my computer thinks I am double clicking my center button. Still does that by the way, its annoying when the screen centers every time you rotate.

So needless to say im late coming across this a bit late in my random wanderings of this forum, but that image that stuckon3d (wonder where he went he does nice work) looks fantastic. Im wondering what ruby he used to do that stonework and where i can find that PROJECTION EXTENSION.rb ruby or whatever it is he used. Anyways im off to reinstall sketchup and try the volume calculator again. Just reinstalled XP Pro.

Whats up with this volume plugin? Ive downloaded the 20kb ish one, the newer version i guess, but i cant find any menu or anything to get it to work.

@gaieus said:

I'm not going to help - I've never used it so do not know anything.

Why not ask in the ruby discussion forum?
Oh yeah, I suppose that would help lol! Well thanks anyways.

Yeah ive been working, working on my car, and the last couple days I had the flu... really bad too.
But how does this thing work? Im not finding any menus for "volume" anywhere. i had the previous version, the one thats about 17kb in size, now im using the larger one and its in the plugins folder with all the rest of the .rb files but i got no such options. Tell me im doing something wrong.

Is there a volume calculator out there that can handle oddly shaped/curved objects?
Trying to find the rough volume of each half of this box.
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=8e0f26daf028df68a2b31e2da9727255

All in all I couldnt complain about spending the night with her. About ten minutes after i made that post it got a little bit less boring. Then today i spent the day at her parents house with all her family. Not the worst start ever, I'm just not used to being around any form of family on New Years.

Well, its only 7 PM here and now Im not going to do anything at all tonight because my girlfriend is being a super, umm, lets just say jerk, because she "wont know anyone there" so no fun party with my friends for me, even though she said she would go before she got here...

Happy New Year though.

he is right and wrong. 32 bit XP will only allow you to use 2GBs (or with the modification 3GBs) of ram for programs. Default settings reserves no less than 2GBs for system use, and only lets you use 2 maximum for your software. Although it is capable of using 4GBs of total memory.

Oh thanks, i didnt even know about that. Ill give that a shot on my friends computer (as mine sucks and only has 760 MB of ram) and see if i cant get more use out of all his memory. I can see why it would become unstable, but i imagine there would be a way to fix it.

Ive used SU and kerky on vista on my friends PC without problems. Another friend of mine is using 64 bit vista and he also has no troubles with it.
Someone who is very good with computers wouldnt have any issue getting things to work with vista, and many of the problems are being patched in SP1.

And as a correction, a 32 bit OS can and will handle up to 4GB of memory in total. Im dead sure about this. This amount will be taken up by your GFX card's memory, and any other devices which use memory addresses. The reason im dead sure of this is because this friend whom i use his Vista PC for SU once in a while also has a XP machine with 4GBs of ram in it, with exactly 3.21 usable (512 MB gfx card takes some of the total access up) And im positive it is a 32 bit OS because im the one who ordered it and installed it for him.

You are right about the application needing to be 64 bit to use more RAM, and in fact on 32 bit you cannot use more than 2GB at a time for an application. But you can have up to 4GBs of ram, all of which is usable. The thing is, XP doesnt like to let the applications use all available RAM, because it reserves some for itself. I have been on more than one 4GB PC where almost every bit of RAM is being used at some point.

Also you typed that up sort of wrong.
2,147,483,648Mb = 2,147,483,648,000,000 bits which equals 268,435,456,000,000 bytes or 268 GBs so i think there was an error there. 32 bits is equal to 429,4967,296 possible combinations of 1 and 0. You missed one more multiple, 31 bits is equal to 2,147,483,648.

You were one short of 64 bits also. 64 bits is equal to 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 possible combinations of 1 and 0.
The name for that number is Exobytes, meaning 18 Exobytes are possible, it goes Giga Tera, Peta, Exo if im not mistaken.

@anssi said:

I understand that the memory in a graphics card is mostly used to store the textures, so if you are not using many,many big textures in your model at a time, it should not be very important.

Anssi

If that is true then you will be much better off with the Quadro I think. Since that would work out that the card does textures and the RAM handles the actual model... So it would make sense to have more ram, and a better 3d rendering card.

i cant wait till i get my first paycheck, its going in the bank to be put towards a quad core machine running 64 bit vista and if possible i will eventually be running dual Quadros in SLI and more ram than i would ever need. i found that 2GB sticks are plentiful and that would be a total of 8GB in the MOBO im interested in.

I want to go into some form or another of 3d design class.

As far as I know the 8600M isnt a workstation type card, they are both Nvidia though. According to Nvidia the Quadro is a "Performance" level card, and I believe it would be better for working with SU as Quadros are made for this type of work.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadrofx_go.html

I think you may be better off with the Quadro, however all that ram is overkill, because unless you have a 64 bit os you will only actually be able to see 3-3.5 Gbs of that because the system can only recognize 4GB total memory, and gfx cards and other things take up some of that total.
If i had any experience with either chipset i could tell you which is better, but i can tell you that Quadros are made for this type of work, while the 8600M is made for gaming.

I wouldnt base your purchase off my opinion though as ive never used either, but the Quadro is specifically made for the kind of work that SU does.

Chances are that it wont run games as well. If you go on Newegg and read reviews of some of the workstation boards you find that alot of stupid kids with alot of money buy these 1200 dollar GFX cards then freak out and complain and give the card a bad review because it doesnt run games very well.

@solo said:

The Quadro is a rendering first and pretty much only GPU, so if your rig is only for rendering then maybe.... however, I would suggest the faster CPU with the 800 series GPU. Remember a laptop is pretty much losing value and falling behind in tech the moment it is released, with the faster CPU and the 800 series direct X 10 based GPU you will be able to use the current open GL standard and the soon to be available 3dfx shader technology. Currently the Quadro does not support DX 10 shaders and an upgrade (new rig) will be required to do so.

Oh and while rendering you can use the balance of resources to play 'Crysis' the soon to rock the game world game.

Not such a tough choice IMO.

I hadnt thought about that. I do believe i will be waiting for quadros that can use these new technologies.

a 200 MHZ drop on a dual core isnt exactly noticeable. I would suggest the machine with the Quadro as most of the strain will be on the GFX card and an 8600m GT is made for video games, not rendering work.

The slight loss in speed on the processor shouldnt even come close to the gains you will see with the Quadro. (Thats assuming you dont play video games)

Another member of these forums (in a similar thread) stated that most of the time only the textures are stored in the gfx card memory, which i would assume means that the model itself is primarily stored in the computers RAM. If you do any sort of final rendering the Quadro is where its at.

Ooooooh ok, i misread it. You got a good deal then i would have to say.

Sorry to not be much of a help (as it was already answered) but 200 bucks for 1GB of notebook ram WITH the student discount? That sounds crazy expensive to me.

I might as well, even though all my stuff is too old to do anything even approaching professional work. Dont mind the mp3 player sitting on the table, im currently gutting it for spare parts, and to see if i cant make the 30GB hdd inside it usable. Also, idk why the blue LED fans arent showing up, they were on when i took the picture .

But, as you can see, definitely not a good setup. Im not even gonna tell you guys the specs. I feel like such a kid among you guys...and im almost 20.