@oo7ml said:

...but as soon as you zoom out, they lose their effect completely and almost look like a flat single colour.

it's called 'mismapping' and is a common openGL 'feature'...

you can adjust how they behave in 'Preferences'try changing these...
john

BTW. if you go to the 'Shop' menu item above there are Textures for free and fee...

@dave r said:

Seriously? What would make you confuse those?

LOL!

Thanks guys. I actually re-drew everything. Sometimes it's just quicker to do so 😄

You don't need to hide anything to use the animation function with section cuts...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nKyWomUYxs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sQ-7dt95yw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khsFvyXLe-Q

01- You need some Ruby to delete all SectionPlanes:
This line of code + enter in the Ruby Console will do that:
m=Sketchup.active_model;m.start_operation('!');m.active_entities.grep(Sketchup::SectionPlane).each{|e|e.erase!};m.commit_operation
It's somewhat long as in includes code to make it one step undo-able.
It erases all SectionPlanes in the current context - so ones nested inside a group are not affected until you run the code inside an edit of that group...

02- As well as hiding other contexts completely during an edit session...
SectionPlanes can be assigned Layers.
That way you can assign different Layers to different SectionPlanes and switch them to be not visible in different Scene-tabs as desired: thus removing the visual 'clutter'.
Get used to using Layers, Modes, Styles and Scene-tabs in combination - you can have various tabs set up to enhance your modeling experience - e.g. you don't need textures and shadows on when making most 3d forms, and they will slow down orbiting etc, a tab to troubleshoot - with a Style set to show hidden geometry, color edges by axis etc is also a useful thing...

Hopefully it will get me an answer.

Ok great, thanks for your help.

Another possibility:
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=79%26amp;t=57658%26amp;hilit=+follow+me+keep#p524527

It may be a nice solution but I think it's not a good start for a beginner to use DC in this case.

Also use separate components to contain the 'parts' - this helps avoid overlaid geometry sticking together where you don't want it to - e.g. in subsequent Moves etc...

A DWF file is a bit like an 'AutoCAD PDF' file, a format that allows others to view, review, or print design information – without these people needing to know AutoCAD or other design software, so no good in SU. I can only suggest saving the drawing as an earlier dxf or dwg format such as 2006 or Release 14 from within AutoCAD.

@krisidious said:

If you're doing it in order to hide them more quickly, you can always use layers.

You've got a good point. If you wear hat, though... 😆

Using layers to control visibility is better than Hide. Use Hide for temporarily getting things out of the way.

Also, if you haven't done so, give the Outliner a thorough look and think about what it is showing you. Don't make the newbie mistake of making a group, drawing some more edges and faces, selecting them along with the group and making another group.

Great, thanks... i turned on 'use maximum texture size' in the Open GL preference so now i am able to import a large png image, however i haven't even drawn a line yet and my file is 7mb.

I plan on deleting the imported image plan as soon as i have the base of the model drawn on top if it.

Haha, thanks Dave, much appreciated.

Take a look at this thread.
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=18%26amp;t=723#p4177
Good place to start. Everyone seems to have their own way of doing it.
You can also use Inkscape to convert PDF to a DXF file which you can import and work on directly

Search for the videos from 3d basecamps...

Cool, thanks for your help.