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.

I am not understanding something fundamental in regards to components. In the SU System Preferences > Files menu there are places where you can tell SU where to find models, components, materials, etc. I have done this, and have ensured that the path to those folders is correct. What I do NOT understand is this: When I create a component within a model and save it, why is it not saved in the Components folder that I created and pointed to in the System Prefs.

I thought that components were basically stored in a library and that in a model, all that actually existed was a pointer to the component folder. I have been doing a lot of modeling of late and there is not one single component in that folder. What is the purpose of those System Settings then?

I have to re-think my workflow because I'm screwing things up and making way more work for myself. I've had to import entire models into my current model just to pull in a specific component.

I hope that I have explained this clearly, and I hope that someone can steer me back onto path so that I can be more productive than I am currently.

Thank you.
Craig.

While this isn't directly related to a mouse, it's still about an input device, so I'll ask my question here. Has anyone used a tablet like an INTUOS or similar, or even the new Bamboo Touch tablets which are much less expensive but allow for all of that touchy-feely goodness of an iPhone/iTouch iPod.

I use a wireless Logitech mouse and I find that it really isn't sensitive the way I would like it to be when working in SU. Otherwise it's a very good mouse, and not expensive, either.

Craig.

You guys are in BIG trouble! After all of the help you have given and thanks to your scripts, tutorials, and links to resources, I've become an SU geek and my wife is now an SU widow...and she blames all of YOU!

Thanks to everyone, I'm having a blast modeling and I have had many A-HA! moments in the last couple of days where I finally GET IT! I can't believe how watching people model furniture, houses, cars, buildings and a myriad of other things has helped me so much in modeling my toy trucks and planes and who knows what else in the future. I've got lots and lots to learn, but I feel like I'm over that initial hump at the beginning when you fire up SU and then say "Now what?"

I'm in the dog house, but hey, it could be worse...it could be -37°C outside! Oh, wait, it IS! Ah, who cares? I'm having fun and that's all that matters.

Cheers to you all, and a prosperous New Decade to all!
Craig.

Hello, everyone. I'm just trying to give a little back to SCF for all of the help I've been given. I looked here in the woodworking forum for a specific thread about resources for textures, but was unable to find one. I wanted to let you all know of a site I found that has links to a number of image files which could potentially be used in SU.
http://ow.ly/RbsI is the link to the site, Hongkiat.com which is a site principally for graphic designers. I hope that you find something useful there.

Best for the new decade to come,
Craig.

Visit the SketchUcation forum about GE and SU here: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewforum.php?f=271

There are tools built in to SketchUp to bring in a georeferenced snapshot directly from Google Earth. You need both products installed, and both must be running at the same time. You set up your view in GE to the location of choice, then use SU to import that snapshot. That is the basic starting point for people who do 3D building models for inclusion in the GE 3D Building layer.

Here's a YouTube video that will explain it much better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMLmfrRsu6M

Chris,
Thank you for the link, for the ruby script, and the advice. I applied your suggestions and that has solved my problem. I do recall it being mentioned that one should scale a model up significantly at times, but I never understood why. Now I do!

Your script showed me right away where I had issues, and I was able to fix them easily and then use BoolTools successfully.

Many thanks!
Craig.

I have a plan view of a simple truck cab. I used Joint Push/Pull plugin to pull all of the faces up. I grouped that "solid". I did the same with the side view of the cab; JPP and then grouped. I used the BoolTools plugin to create my nice, intersected truck cab, but every single time the plugin tells me that my first group was not a "valid solid" (or words to that effect) which would produce unpredictable results. Well, it does, and the intersecting doesn't work properly.

Could someone please talk me down off of the bridge?

I would buy an Apple computer but I'd have to buy most of my software all over again. Not because it won't run on an Intel Mac, but because most companies won't allow you to transfer a license from your PC to Mac.

That sucks the big one.

Thanks, D12DZR!

BoolTools - OMG! I wish I had that script a week ago when I was building my monster truck model! What a fantastic tool. That said, I'm glad I struggled with it manually, because now I have an even better appreciation for the power of BoolTools.

Best US$10 this Canuck ever spent!