you could of course just close the camera tool bar - so they have no other chance, but to use their scroll wheel

I remember someone brining up the idea of a modifier key to lock the orbit tool to vertical/horizontal motion only. dont know, where it was though.

just hammer into them to keep the model tidy - you know, grouping geometry or creating components, where repetitions occur (the latter keeps the file size down). it is important for the students to understand the difference between groups and components; can save a lot of time lateron.
but spend enough time on showing them, how to enter groups to alter them and that it is impossible to manipulate a group, if you are outside of it (as if you try drawing on a sheet of paper that is covered by plastic wrap).

I dont know, what is your method of building a model, but I would advice, allways draw in layer0 (never change the active layer). if you want to use layers, group elements and move them into different layers. thus you avoid messing arround with the layers (group in one layer, geometry within the group in a different layer).

oh yes. and force them to keep their hands off the camera tools buttons (orbit, pan, zoom). that is what you have got the scroll wheel for (press scroll wheel - orbit; press scroll wheel + shift - pan; roll scroll wheel - zoom). like that they will change their point of view much more often and therefore avoid drawing in wron axes.

that is quite much for one lesson. it is better to start using layers not untill you are familiar with modeling and navigating in a desing.

and I thank you too! your instructions are really great!

I think you gave me something to do this weekend...

oh yes, that would be great. because at the moment SketchUp is limited to small, single designs (surely partly because it has difficulties coping with large models). enabling it to support real teamwork would be such a wonderful thing.

and you know what would be funny (not reasonable - but real fun)? if you had realtime teamwork.
for example you have one location. three people are drawing at different buildings, everyone sitting at his own computer. and on the huge flatscreen in the lobby you see an overall perspective where the buildings are permanently manipulated...
(would probably bust your network in no time and you needed a giant computer to render the realtime shadows. but it would be such a cool poser thing!)

has anyone an idea how these nice little gif animations were created?
(that one is out of the SkechUp Instructor window)

they look really nice and are wonderfully small. hare these just videos captured live or pictures combined to one animation? whats the best or easiest way to create such animations? waht software is needed?

has anybody of you done that before and knows some tricks?

If a team of people works at one project, each person is drawing at a different building at the same location, it would be sensible, that each person works on his own model.
each of those models contains only the information of that specific building. later you create one big file, containing terrain information, and import every single model of each of the team mates as a component.

so far that is possible with SketchUp already. but if you place a component in your model, SketchUp saves the information in that file (what is normally quite practical, not in this particular case though).
wouldn't it be handy if you could just check a mark, something like "live-component" or "dynamically update component", that makes SketchUp reload the components automatically when opening up the file (if the component files are not available it keeps the old information)?
because at the moment you have to select each component seperately and browse to the file location to update it.

I think that would be a great leap towards using SketchUp for large models.

you could in the outliner window select all geometry but the "mother component" you want to manipulate, right click it and choose "Hide"

after manipulating the component, select all the hidden geometry and "unhide" it again. it is of course a bit laborious. but at least it is already possible.

but I would love some improvements of the organisation of components too. for example that you can hide nestet components (created within the model) in the components window - you know, some kind of tree structure

this is definietly one of my favourites!
very simple - but connecting the world

yeah, some more modifier keys would be really cool.

some examples:

Move Tool:
press Shift+Ctrl to break a line at the cursor point (so if you hover over the midpoint of a line, press these keys and move upward, the line is broken and connects the endpoints and the altered midpoint)

press Alt+Ctrl to do the same, except that an arc is created instead of simply breaking the line into two

that would sometimes really fasten up some operations.

so cool!

but I am afraid, it will never be a part of SketchUp (too speciallized)

some of the videotrace tools could be integrated into SU though. for example the tool to turn a straight line into an arc with just one click.
that would be a good idea for another modifier key (you know, just press Ctrl+Shift, and you move up the midpoint of a line, whereas the endpoints stay, where they are, creating a wonderful arc)

I just tried it with a still locked terrain - it worked perfectly fine.

but Gaieus is right. try it with an unlocked one. perhaps that works.

and thats exactly where my weaknesses are.
I have allways to fight with finding the right level of detail and sticking to it in every bit of the model.
what is the best way to do that anyway?

is it better to just model the objects of interest in detail (for example some different options of a rain water pipe) and keep the rest of the model simple?

or (and thats what I am allways trying to achieve - trying, not succeeding ) is it the better way to set a border of detail that you shouldn't undercut, for example objects smaller than 10 cm?

hey mirjman,

thank you very much. the .reg file works perfectly fine! such a cool thing!!!

hencefoth I will travel the world not without this secret weapon within my pocket (usb stick)

I never got rid of these unpleasant effects either.

you could try to enlarge the texture. you may loose proper scale of the roof tiling, but perhaps it helps you to get rid of the moire effect. I think the only other option is to live with it. the question is, what is the lesser evil

unfortunately I am not aware of a way to import camera position.

however, what I would do is the following:

open the old model (with the correct camera position), mark one significant corner of the building (eg. by drawing two guide lines). then delete everything in the model (except the guide lines of course ).

now you open the components window, click on the details button (small arrow on the right) and choose the topmost option "open or create a library...". here you select the folder, where you saved the new model.

now the new model will appear in the components window. all you have to do now is to place it with the (previously chosen) significant corner at the intersection of the two guide lines you created earlier.

as a last step right click on the model and "explode" it (that it is not a single component anymore).

I know, it is a tedious method, but its the only way I can think of.

does he really use a 7’ screen. that is quite small for a presentation, dont you think?

well, for such a small screen it would be sensible to use images in the size of the screen's highest resolution - I asume that will be around 480 x 234 pixels. larger images wouldn't make sense, because they would slow down the presentation unnecessarily.

if he uses the 7’ screen (eg. of a laptop) to connect it to a video projector however, it would be advisable to refer to the highest resolution of the latter (800 x 600 or higher).

as a format I would choose jpeg or similar to keep the filesize small.

thanks Gaieus. that did really confuse me lately, when I suddenly found primitive geometry in the wrong layer. now I know, that it was not (or at least only indirectly) my fault

great, it seems that working like that
(draw in layer0 - group/component geometry - put these into different layers)
is the "right" or most sensible way - if you all use to stick to that procedure.

now I am reassured that it is a good thing to hammer that "modus operandi" into my colleagues

oh yes, the intersect tool is definitely one of my favourites. sometimes (for example, if you have an imported terrain model) it is the universal cure to get all faces closed. especially the possibility of "intersect SELECTED" is great, for it gives you perfect control over what is supposed to be intersected.