I learned that you can change the style in which my SketchUp is displayed, to make it look like a Blue Print, or a quick sketch, or papyrus or whatever. I was wondering if there is a way to download or add a style to make it look like a space scene. Namely a black background, or even better a black background with small stars speckled throughout it.

I tried to do so manually, but all my models wind up with this really annoying white line forming along the back lines. Visible here to the left side.
http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc42/Edward_Wolf/Refference/RamaModel.png

I wanted to do a simple model of the Rama spacecraft, from the Arthur C. Clark novel, and right off the bat this bug is just... killing the mood!

Window, Model Info, Statistics,

Got it, thanks. I'd still like to know what the average user's polygon count is though. If you all don't mind my asking.

@mitcorb said:

Yeah, what Brodie says.
The number of longitudinal divisions for a cylindrical form could be as few as 8 to 12, maybe less in some cases. Or as much as in the 20s.
This all has to do with how close up your rendering view will be to the model and comes with experience.

Wait, what do you mean when you say longitudinal divisions? The segements in the circle come as a default 24, so do you mean the number of circles that will make up the torus? Because 8 seems like far too few...

Basically what bugs me is when I take a simple geometric shape (like a cylinder), and then try to make it into something useful (like a rocket ship). As soon as I zoom in to add a window or a sensor node or a hatch or anything, the edges of the polygons that make up the damn thing become glaringly obvious. Maybe these segmentations can be fixed by rendering, but honestly I've... never rendered. I've always worked through SketchUp.

But thank you, that's what I wanted to hear. Either, "Only 16000 and you're starting to lag, hooo boy, it must be your computer." Or "16000 man! Are you daft, no one should ever have that many polygons." Or... "entities", whatever. Point is, my model was excessively rich in polygons, so next time I'll try to dumb it down.

Considering all the trouble involved in trying to get it on a tablet (coupled with a surprising drop in my funds) I decided to stick with a desktop set up for now. I haven't given up hope that they will invent some kind of portable range-finder that is fully compatible with SketchUp. So you just step into a room, zap the laser at all the walls, input a few values manually, plug the device into your computer... and presto! You get an approximate model of the house you scanned.

Anyway, I got this: http://www.markways.com/photo_view/id,1565/

AMD X2 Dual-Core processor
3GB DD3 RAM
500 GB internal drive
Nvidia GeForce 9200 graphics unit

And most important...
NINE USB PORTS.

But really... honestly, I'm not at all impressed. I've already made 2 threads asking for possible causes on why it's been so laggy. Because I can't accept the fact that it would be insufficient hardware on my part. At the very least I should be able to create and edit simple geometric shapes!

I tried my first serious SketchUp model on this new computer, and I very quickly ran into lag. I was encouraged to find my graphic card type and install all the latest drivers (which I did) but the help it offered was marginal. So now I'm wondering if the model I was doing simply had too many polygons, but I realize I don't even know how SketchUp counts it's polygons.

I did find this thing which counts "entities": http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc42/Edward_Wolf/Entities.png
And as my model increases in complexity the number of entities does increase. The cube has 6 sides though... and 18 entities... does this mean the entities include all surfaces and all edges? Anyway, my super Torus started making my computer cough blood at around 16000 entities, is that really that many? I have a dual core processor running at 2.8 GHz, 3 GB DDR3 RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce 9200 graphics unit. You'd think it would be able to handle a decent amount. What is the typical limits for polygons (or entities) for your average user?

EDIT:
This is the super Torus that gave me so much grief, I didn't even get to finish it!
http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc42/Edward_Wolf/Refference/Step06.png

@mitcorb said:

I am the kind of guy that thinks one way or another, these little concessions can cumulatively come back to bite you on the ass. It is a case of deciding whether you need precision or accuracy.
Personally I'm a stickler for accuracy too! Back when I would try and sketchup my home I would always wind up with these tiny misscalculations for each rooms. Just a few centimeters here or there, nothing too evident in rooms that are several meters in scope. But when you reach full circle and try and finish a wall that's supposed to be 8 inches thick, and it looks more like a sheet of paper... you know something went wrong.

@unknownuser said:

I don't think it's a scale problem, SketchUp can handle that. But there are "better" practices when using the Follow Me Tool. How re you doing using it?
I don't know... I select the beginning of the shape I want to drag (in this case it was a triangle that followed a circle that resulted in a truncated cone), and for 99% of the process it's actually quite smooth in most instances. But EVERY time I finish it and I find a polygon was manhandled somehow, usually right at the end or right at the beginning of where I clicked.

Maybe it's simply a lack of familiarity with the system at this point, and I just need practice... I just wonder how others manage to pull off these amazing models with dozens of complex curved surfaces, when I keep breaking my head trying to figure out just a handful of simple ones!

@mitcorb said:

Hi, Phillipe:
See this topic with Sketchup Guide Tommy: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=10750
Dual core is apparently not used by Sketchup application. However, a sprightly processor and a good graphics card with sufficient ram is necessary. Google actually does have both a minimum and a recommended system specification on one of its pages.

Ok I'll check...
2+ GHz processor. I have 2 cores running at 2.8 each, so that's check.
2+ GB RAM. I got 3, check.
500 MB of available hard-disk space. Over 200 GB, check.
3D class Video Card with 512+ MB of memory or higher. Please ensure that the video card driver supports OpenGL version 1.5 or higher and up to date. SketchUp's performance relies heavily the graphics card driver and it's ability to support OpenGL 1.5 or higher. Historically, people have seen problems with Intel based cards with SketchUp. We don't recommend using these graphics cards with SketchUp at this time.

Ok... This might be my problem, I have no idea what graphics card I have. I don't think my comp even has a card per-say, I think it's a graphics chip welded onto the motherboard.

@thomthom said:

16000 copies of the torus?

What graphic card do you have?
Have you updated the drivers?
Have you ensured Hardware Acceleration is enabled in SketchUp?

Do you have Shadows or Edge Style effects enabled?

LOL, god no, if I'd tried that I'm quite sure my computer would have burst into flames. 16000 polygons, for some reason Sketchup calls them entities. As I said I'm not quite sure what graphics card I have, I'll have to check that, I bought the computer 2 weeks ago, so I doubt the drivers are very out of date, but I'll check. And no, I've never heard of Hardware Acceleration, so I haven't enabled it yet.

I only mentioned the extreme scale because it's making the follow-me problems particularly encumbersome. I didn't think the scale itself was at the source of the Follow-Me problem... You're suggesting that if I make my models of a more conventional scale my follow-me problems will be... fixed? Because I distinctly remember having similar problems back when I did smaller models as well.

It's just something about the tool that never works perfectly right for me, there's always something that falls out of place in the final shape. And I wanted to know if I'm just doing something wrong, if I'm just unlucky, or if everyone else encounters this as well and they've just learned to live with it.

I managed to acquire a new Acer x2 dual core processor equipped desktop computer with 3 GB RAM on it. I was sure this would be enough to handle anything I threw at it, sketchup wise.

To my surprise, I was sketching up a simple torus and when I got to around 16 000 entities, it started lagging, a lot. I've only got a quarter of the torus done and I can barely copy the other 4 portions of it. I created very small polygons (180 rectangles per circle, with 360 circles) because I wanted a smooth surface, but I was sure my set up could handle it. Just how powerful a computer does one need to handle high polygon count for simple geometric shapes!

Here's a screen-grab of the quarter I got done (un-smoothed so you can see the polygons).
http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc42/Edward_Wolf/Refference/Step05.png

Not sure if this is a bug, or if it's just a quirk that everyone else has gotten used to... but it has been personally driving me crazy ever since I learned how to Follow Me.

http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc42/Edward_Wolf/Refference/Cylinder.png

I was experimenting with large cylinders, this one is about 10 kilometers in diameter and 20 kilometers long. I wanted to use it as a kind of blanket of volume within which I would try and work on asteroid models. But right off the bat I'm running into problems.

This next picture is a zoom in on the lower half of the forward truncated cone.
http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc42/Edward_Wolf/Refference/CylinderCloseUp.png

I made the cylinder's circles out of 360 segments (compared to the default 24), so I could zoom into a portion of the asteroid and add an outpost or a mine or something science-fictiony without seeing the jagged edges of the circle. The problem is now whenever an imperfection crops up, it is usually very very hard to spot (because it's so small compared to the rest of the circle).

And, for reasons that are beyond me, every time I try and use the follow me tool something like the above happens. Either a rectangle will disappear, or it will permanently change colour, or it will just... invert in an odd way. How do the other SU users avoid this problem when working with curved surfaces?