Coen,
Take all the time you need.

@unknownuser said:

enforcing new zero-tolerance sexual harassment policies and the fear of litigation.

There you go, its got b**ger all to to with sexual harassment, its just "its not my fault, don't sue me"

Its not just America, we're heading the the same way here in the UK.

It makes me sick.

Improved UV mapping tools

Multicore/processor support

Fix Shadow error

Very nice,
I like the clarity. Was this all done in SketchUp or did you use layout?

As I said, anywhere's good.
My family are in Stratford-upon-Avon so Oxford is fine for me, straight down the M40.

Name: Paul

Surname: Russam

Age: 43 (I think)

City: Belfast
State/Province/County: Northern Ireland

Profession: 3D Illustrator/IT Manager

About yourself: I'd been a 3D Studio user since it came on 5 floppy disks (about 1991) but since I discovered SketchUp about 3/4 years ago 3DS hasn't been touched. I'm originally from England but been living in Northern Ireland for around 10 years and loving every minute of it.

Hobbies: I always hate filling in the 'hobbies' section on a form as I don't really have any but I'm a bit of a fan of Formula 1 and generally mucking about with computers.

Meetup interests: Travel is no problem anywhere in the UK, I'd suggest somewhere in or around the Birmingham/Sheffield area(s) as their well connected with the M1/M5/M6/M40.

Here's a quick list of things we may want to cover in no particular order
"Here's what our product can do to help you" - Presentation(s)
"What we want from V7" - List of features/fixes to 'officially' pass on to Google
"How do I do this?" - Help!
"This is how I do this" - Showing off!

But generally it would be just fun to meet as many of us as possible, I doubt we could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people here who have actually meet.

Do we do this before/during/after the US basecamp.
Before could enable us to composes some questions to be asked on our behalf.
During would enable us to 'take part' with the aid of modern witchcraft.
After could mean that one of the UK attendee's who was at basecamp (b*$&t@rd) could fill us in.

Bob,
With regard to the church I measured everything by hand using a Leica Disto laser thingie, only when I got outside did we employ a local surveyor to take some spot heights for the roofs/steeple etc.
The hardest thing was to mentally dismantle the building as see it as its buildable parts: floor/walls/roof/columns/pews/windows etc. without getting overwhelmed by the whole thing.
On more than one occasion I abandoned any form of measuring as 'I didn't know where to start'

Belfast here, but I'm originally from a place called Kenilworth in Warwickshire, been in NI for 10years and loving it, It'll be a cold day in hell before I go back to live in England.

Links fixed

Here's the first finished version:
Tutorial
Its a 1.2mb PDF

I'm going to add more stuff in regard to adding titles, effects, editing etc. but not just yet.

Please be critical and point out anything that's not clear, misspelt etc.

Done a bit more this lunch time and its now on a prototype SCF template.

Edit:
Opps sorry about the quality of the images in the PDF, I squidged them a bit too much.

EDIT:
Final tutorial linked here (from later post below)

OK, here's an updated Tut with the first part of the Premiere stuff in it.

kannonbal:
I've always used TIFF's and for some reason never really got used to using PNG's.
I actually had to look and see if Premiere actually imported PNG's and Low and behold it does!! Whether it will import them as 'Numbered Stills' (See the revised tut) is another matter.

As for the "dreaded moire" well that's the next bit I've got to do in the tut!
Here's it quickly:
Select the sequence
From the menu select CLIP/VIDEO OPTIONS/FIELD OPTIONS
Select 'Flicker Removal'
Repeat for every Sequence (Very tedious)
Drag into the time line and export.

EDIT:
Final tutorial linked here (from later post below)

I've just got me a MacBook Pro

Catia Wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CATIA
Youtube video of Catia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqBLYj1sql0

It shows an engine being assembled but this is only .0001% of Catia's abilities. Catia knows about material properties, Strength, Elasticity, Ductility, thermal expansion etc. It can simulate fluids and gas's. So not only can you design an engine, you can run it on petrol, cool it with water and lubricate it with oil and after a simulated 100,000 miles you can see the wear on the parts etc. When you happy with the design the components can be sent directly to machining centres to be made

I saw a TV programme about the making of the Boeing 777 where they had the ENTIRE aircraft in Catia, move the stick and the wing surfaces move! At one point they changed the weave of the fabric on the 300odd seats (or something like that) and were able to (almost) instantly see the improvement in the aircraft's weight. At another point in the programme there were designing a small bracket for something, trying to save weight, they punched a hole in one of the faces and then simulated x number of take off/landings then looked for cracks etc. Truly amazing.

I never really believed in CAD meaning Computer Aided Design, I've always thought of it as Computer Aided Drafting.
Until SketchUp I don't believe that it was practical to 'design' on a computer, only draw what had been previously designed, certainly for architecture.
Mechanical engineers had/have Catia which is stunning, I once saw a whole car with the engine running being virtually crash tested, dismantled, changed and crash tested again and again, now that's Computer Aided Design.

SketchUp (certainly for architecture) has enabled us to knock up massing models, workout roofs, change materials and generally tryout ideas incredibly rapidly.
This is close enough for me to call it 'design aided by a computer' but CAD has always had a 2D connotation as in Autocad etc. so I tend to perceive that SU is a visualisation tool.

Maybe CAV is a good initialism.

Thanks Guys, thought it was something along those lines.

+1 for this bug, I have a couple of models with about 60 trees in them and its a real pain having to change the date.....wait for shadows.....change date back.....wait for shadows for each scene, each time I need an image.

Umm, I don't seem to be able to get on the su.porta.ca site

I've set you a PM

Its walking motion looked like one of those show horses, the recovery after being kicked/on ice looked like a deer and the shot of it jumping over the mat looked like a goat, very impressive. The bit I was stunned by was when it walked THROUGH the snow, it knew what it was and that if it put its 'feet' through it, it would eventually hit a solid surface!

Wouldn't this make a brilliant Mars rover?

Very nice find.

My experience is a little different, I find that drawings (CAD anyway) produced by architects are worse than ones produced by draftsperson, let me explain before I get linched!

Architects are aiming for the design of the building not the drawing of the design, they are often under pressure handling multiple projects and performing multiple aspects (letters to contractors, schedules, planning etc etc etc) as a result layer management, technical accuracy etc. can take a back-seat. Its easier when under pressure to edit a dimensions text than to move the wall(s) to which the dimension is pointing. Why use layers when changing a lines colour has the same VISUAL effect?

A 'good' draftsperson's creation is the drawing(s), producing drawing is 'their' skill. They usually get a good clear run at a scheme without the other distractions mentioned above and can therefore concentrate on layer management, neatness, presentation, and most importantly accuracy.

I started my career as a draftsman but please don't take the above as a biased comment, its just my experience of working with and for both. I could never have drawn anything had it not been designed first.

On more than one occasion (a lot more than one actually) I and others have 'defied' an engineers/architects instruction to ensure its RIGHT not just 'looks' right. And on just as many occasions have been balled out by the said engineer/architect only later to be proved right (invariably on-site).

The only good thing about being linched by a bunch of architects is that it will take then 3 years to finalize the design for the gallows