@unknownuser said:

You can use the Tape Measure tool for this. See insructions here http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=95006

Keep in mind that this will scale in all directions though. If you've extruded objects in your model to a the correct height, they will be scaled along with the horizontal geometry.

Is it possible to do this for a selection and not the entire model?

I typically start out all my projects in AutoCAD from a survey then take them into sketchup once all the major stuff is drawn in accurately where I design and model. Somehow early on in the project the entire sketchup model got slightly out of scale and became like 5% bigger than the original plan I had imported and I caught it when I brought the model back into CAD to dimension a site plan.

Now I am trying to fix the model and adjust the scale of everything but there is no good scale tool I have found. Is there any scale tool plugin that works like the AutoCAD scale tool? Basically I want to select a reference length, then select the new correct length like how the autocad tool works.

Now that I'm writing this and thinking I actually might have found a solution by doing some simple math and inputting the percentage but it would still be nice if I could find a scale plugin that worked like this. Thanks for the help.

Get the instant roof plugin here

http://www.valiarchitects.com/sketchup_scripts/instant-roof

I'm pretty sure you can create your own component tile styles and modify it. If not directly I'm sure there is a workaround to be able to use that plugin with custom tiles by replacing some of the components. If you can't do it inside the plugin itself, then just create 3d tiles or whatever and then select instances and replace them- it's still an amazing plugin to build roofs.

If this doesn't exist I would love a ruby plugin that offered a command line where you could type commands for every shortcut you need. You would be able to assign commands as if they were shortcuts for everything you need. Working this way is much more natural for me and every time I work in cad and go back to sketchup I find myself instinctively trying to give sketchup commands, so I'm thinking how great it would be if you could actually do that.

Are there more tree libraries available for it from anywhere?

I just cleaned up some toolbars I don't use.... I have a bunch of plugins that don't have toolbars that I really wish did though.

It is very very fast. I'm not 100 percent sure but I know overall my system was using close to 5gb with just SU and Podium 64 running. It really takes advantages of as many CPU threads as possible, It is still going to be limited by SU in terms of geometry it can handle and I tried rendering a scene that had over 1 million polys worth of 3d plants and it just couldn't handle it which isn't a big deal I just replaced one component with a 2d plant and it dropped the model down 90% and rendered quick. For a quick one click in SU solution it is pretty good. I'm getting into Thea for more complex stuff.

@unknownuser said:

I'd vote against a lot of restrictions and such. I think the only restriction should be some method of making sure that whatever is warehoused would be quality content. Whether that means someone actually approving each model or simply only letting registered sketchucation users UPLOAD models.

I think when you put limitations like ratios, it promotes more models of lesser quality. For example, if I run into a limit and want to download a bench, I'm not going to spend an hour modeling a nice piece of furniture. I'm more liable to pull out a second rate model and throw it up there in order to download my bench.

And as was mentioned restricting downloads in other ways can just create a hassle. I ended up never really going to pushpullbar because I could never figure out what I was supposed to do. I got registered and made some posts but I would find someone sharing models which I couldn't download and other things. It just becomes annoying and I didn't have the time or inclination to try and figure out the rules.

-Brodie

exactly. I think by nature it being sketchucation would make quality high and people would rate them. We could have moderator review models and have low quality ones removed. As soon as you put ratios, download limits, subcription fees, whatever it will never grow enough to be useful.

It depends on the rendering program, some are 64 bit. And doing it that way wouldn't make sense because the big thing with rendering is CPU, so if you tried rendering two scenes at a time hey would each get half the CPU speed and be twice as slow.

I was looking at the task manager while rendering a project in SU Podium 64 bit this morning and it used 97-100% CPU with all 8 threads being maxed out. It showed my total system memory peak at 4.5gb out of 8gb ram used while rendering.

So even if you could utilize more ram, you can't double up processor speed so it wouldn't make any difference....

@earthmover said:

I definitely like the idea of the Sketchucation Model Repository.

How about a ratio system. You need to maintain a certain give and take ratio in order to have downloading access to models. You have to give one for every two you take or something. Also a mandatory rating system. If you haven't rated your previous download, you temporarily lose downloading privileges until you add the rating. If a model gets more than 10 minimum ratings, then it's removed.

I think giving a lot of requirements would be prohibitive. I think by nature that it would be from the sketchucation community would weed out most of the crap and encourage people to share. I don't think a ratio system or restrictions should be in place. Maybe have a one-time mandatory upload before you can download anything and get access? So every user would have to upload a quality model and have it get approved before gaining access to download anything.