Right now I am editing someone else's model of a plant. I want and to map texture on all of the leafs at once, but they are all groups.. I would practically had to place every single leaf all over again as a component instead of a group.

And it did happened to me few times that I just forgot to make my group a component, and than I would lose the option to edit all at once. I guess you are just more careful when you work on your models

Selection Toys is the answer! Thanx a lot!

Well it makes 120 different components.. which again does not help me.. I need it to convert all of the same groups to one type of component so I can edit them all at once

Hi all,

I was wondering is there any way to convert certain groups that are repeated in model to components? For example I forgot to change certain group to a component before multiplying it and now I have 120 groups in model (entity info says there are 120 of these groups in model).. I need to edit them all as they were components, but now it is impossible.. or maybe there is a way? Please help.

Yes, it really is a useful tool, I'm just thinking about how much it could shorten the modelling process for me in some situations. Thanks again!

Box,

Thanks a lot. I think that is the plugin I've been looking for.

TIG,

This is exactly what I wanted to do. I guess the verb I've been looking for is "wrap". I wanted to wrap the surface with the curve as it were a texture on the curved surface.

I guess there is no easy way of doing it.. OK so, could you recommend me an UV mapping tool for this? The most challenging thing I've done with texture mapping in Sketchup is projecting so I don't know how to wrap texture on face.

OK.. so this is what I want to draw in Sketchup. A curve that is in vertical plane (which will later define the "not fixed" gradient of the slope, and than I want it to "I don't know the verb for this" on the curved surfaces.

Practically It would be the opposite of unfold tool.

OK, this is really clever
Normally, I would have intersect faces and than delete the unneeded leftovers. It's great, thanks.
However, this is still not the geometry I had in mind. Please read the plastic explanation I have with wallpaper in my second post in this topic. I need the curve that is in one plane to be "rolled over" a curved surface.

I will make a new sketch soon, since my language capabilities are limited.

Thanx for responding.

Sorry, but that is not what I had in mind.

I've attached a sketch of the closest thing I can make with basic tools in few seconds. It's an intersection of two curved faces resulting in 3D curve. The problem is that I don't want a real intersection. I'm not sure how to explain it using correct geometrical terms so I'll explain it like this:
Imagine I've sketched a curve on wallpaper and then I stick that wallpaper on the curved wall. So, the curve on wallpaper that was drown in one plane is now ______ (I don't know the verb for this action and it's not projected since it would be a intersection) on curved surface.

So, basically I need a 3D curve, not really a face. I hope I was able to explain this now.

hello,

I do a lot of modeling in sketchup and I really enjoy making things.. and the new problem I've stumbled upon is how to make "curve along a curve". since english is not my native language I'm not sure if I've used the right words and I have trouble googling out the soloution, so that's why I have to post yet another question here.

anyway, here it is:
I have a bezier curve that defines the slope in plane view and another that I would like to define the gradient of the slope along that path.. so it would be a slope that does not have a constant (fixed) gradient along the curvy path in the top view.

I use a lot of plugins like 1001 bit tools, curviloft etc but I just can't figure out how to do this...

thanx guys in advance

Hi!

I'm working on rather complex model that I plan do render later like a section... I was wondering is there a plugin or an easer way to cut the objects/components in model than to draw the plane and than to do intersection... and then delete the part that I don't want.. I takes a lot of time...

I was wondering is there a way to do this with section plane? except that it does not hide the geometry behind but to delete it..

for example this model:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=e48007bf5061b48667b1272dcec67cf&prevstart=0

it is great but, when I export it for external rendering the hidden geometry becomes visible.. can it just delete the parts that are not visible?

Thnx

The other "problem" had nothing to do with scaling, I was just wondering is there a plugin or some tool that draws a polygon or circle in perpendicular plane of the selected line on witch the centre of that circle/polygon lies or something like that... but now I can solve that with axis tool as well so it is ok... and thanks again, axis tools is basic it will help me a lot in future - I don't know how I missed it when I started learning sketchup

thanks a lot, I thought about making an object component and defining it's own axes and then edit it, but this is much cleaner solution

now i just have problem with finding an orthogonal plane for random line.

Hey, I have two questions I can't seem to google out... first when I use scale tool (and that is a lot) I have problem: when I have a 2D object (lets say circle) and it isn't in red, blue nor green plane scaling can be tricky. Is there a way to scale in certain plane?

Second is about finding perpendicular plane for a random line, I know how to find it by drawing two planes that have my custom line and then finding normals to it in each surface but it is not fun when you have to do it more than two-three times. help

I think these problems are really basic so I posted them here, but maybe I was wrong... sorry for that

Thanks
I started using Fredo's curviloft, it looked like the most intuitive solution to me. The first link is just for drawing curves or I missed something?

hey everyone,
I was wondering is there any way to for an example draw circle section to be gradually scaled from one end to another while it is extruded along a curve? or to explain it better i know the size of the section on the both ends and I want the bigger section to gradually shrink to the size of the smaller while extruding along the certain curve. is there plugin for this? normally when I do this for line I use scale tool, but this would take a lot of time for complex curve, plus scaling something that is not in the planes defined by the red, green, blue axis can be really tricky.
or at least is there a tool/plugin that ONLY scales surfaces in the plane they are in?
thanks

Could these textures be used for Artlantis?

window > Styles > and than select one where the sky and ground are white (default styles > "03 shade" does the job), when you send it to Lay Out, it can be saved as PDF with transparent background... or simply export the image from SketchUp in JPG, and use Photoshop to cut the backround sky and ground.