Hey everyone!
I'm modeling some pieces for woodworking, and when I make a pattern for cutting and drilling, I often forget to put a centre point / crosshair at the centre of my arc and circles. This has led to some inaccurate drilling. I just finished designing a piece that has four holes that I need to drill, but it seems like such a pain to go back and place a centre point and extend some construction lines out from there (crosshair) so that I can clearly see where to drill.

Has anyone come across a script/plugin that does this? If not, what would be your suggested workflow for doing this most efficiently as I model?

My suggestion goes one step further; once you have located all of your SKP files, move them all to a common folder and organize them from there. If you have Windows 7, then you can organize them in say, two or three principal folders, and use the LIBRARIES functionality to let the librarian keep track of where the files are. IMO, having files all over the place is a waste of time and resources. Bring them to a common core folder, and then back up this folder on your network or external drive or both. Off-site is a good idea, especially if these tools are part of your business.

The search suggestion is a great one!

"How much space do we need?" That seems to grow exponentially as technologies improve, doesn't it? Just think what kind of computer power we'll have in five years and all the fun we'll have rendering entire neighbourhoods or stadiums or other megaprojects will be possible. We gotta have a spot for all of that data! Maybe we'll be able to digitally encode our personal DNA by then! LMAO! Yikes!

My feeling is that you can have neither too much storage space nor too much memory...save for budget limitations, of course!

Thanks, Rich. I'll give Twilight a spin and take it from there.

I'm looking for suggestions on a renderer that would be good for a n00b to learn. Are there any free renderers out there? I'm not looking for architectural photorealistic rendering or anything like that. I'd just like to have some of my smaller simple models look a little nicer than native SU does them.

Thanks!

Dale,
I think it's a bit too early to tell. Right now I favour a high-end GPU and dedicated memory on a graphics card, along with a multi-core CPU and lots of system memory. It's better to go 64bit for sure. My understanding of 64 bit is that you think of the superhighways in your processor which take bits in and send bits out. The more "lanes" you have in your highway, the faster you can get stuff into the core and faster it can come out. But you need software built for this architecture to take advantage of it. Software designed for 64bit systems can allocate bits to multiple cores more efficiently than 32 bit software, as I understand it.

In my experience with mapping and GIS software, expectations for better and better products always, ALWAYS exceeded reality. Yes, software becomes better, and the hardware to run everything is extremely powerful, but consumers of your products often don't understand what it takes to learn and effectively use all of the software and hardware.

They will want more, and likely they won't want to pay a premium for higher-end work unless you can prove to them that there is extra value in it. If they think your products are the norm for the industry, they won't be willing to pony up the cash.

Reminds me of a Far Side comic punchline: "How Mother Nature says 'Do not touch!'"

Thanks, guys!
That clears up a lot for me. I've always thought of software as having a personality, and once you get used to that, you have your most effective and productive work. I did over a decade of work with MicroStation and by the time we moved away from it I knew its idiosyncrasies rather well. I can see that SU is no different.

One bit of information that is of enormous help is the "ORIENT FACES" tool. That's a new one to me, and I can see that it will save me a LOT of work.

Thank you for your time; I really appreciate the help.

Craig.

I have come to understand that I can reverse faces to ensure weird and wonderful things don't happen to my geometry when I apply certain tools. One concept that continues to elude me is this: what determines that a face is created as front or back? It may be my imagination, but I swear that one time I will create a rectangle and I'll be looking at the outside face. The next time I create a rectangle (or other object), from the same POV, it's a back face! It seems now I spend a huge amount of time reversing faces.

May I ask for some help in understand how faces are actually created and why I find myself reversing for as much time as I am creating something?

Thank you.
Craig.

OKAY! NOW I GET IT!

I feel so much better now! Thank you both for your patient responses. I have crossed another hurdle and I can get back to learning even more about the SU toolset.

Thank you thank you thank you.

Gaieus,
I appreciate your response, but something is simply not right in my install. I cannot find the actual components as files anywhere. If I open a model, they are there, but within the Google/Google Sketchup 7/ folder they are not there. They are not in the folder where I set the SU preferences, either. I have no clue where they are, except that when I open a model, all of the components show up.

I'm really frustrated by this. I think I'm missing something totally obvious here and for the life of me, I'm just not seeing the problem.