Thomthom, I must say, and I'm sure many others have, that this plugin is a lifesaver! It is amazing how some details so tiny can have such a huge impact to STLs. I would have never found the errors otherwise!

Also... for anyone else having trouble with the installation process with rbz, I just searched google for "tt_solid_inspector.rb" and that regular ol' *.rb file is posted in other places =-)I put that in my plugin folder and it worked great!

When you say create instances of the the standard SU tools, it makes me think of the custom toolbar script. You can make a toolbar with any of the original SU commands, in any order, combo, even put the little verticle breaks where you want. I forget the link, its somewhere here. I'm not sure if this is what you're asking though.

I'm just thinking outside the realm of SketchUp. What would a good program for this question be other than SketchUp?

I've been struggling with this for a while. Sometimes I want to model all the landform in the distance for view and view planes investigations and etc.

However, since some of these landmarks are so far away, it takes multiple captures from earth to cover the entire area (I wish I could simple zoom out more in Earth, but no). When I do that the overlapping meshes don't line up at all, smoetimes with huge gaps.

Is there anyway to break up and stitch these meshes into one clean mesh? I don't care too terrible about the geometry of the image, but if that can be retained, all the better. Is there perhaps a script for this? Is there anyway I can modify the resolution of the mesh?

p.s. anyone find a workaround for the color vs B&W topos? Sometimes I've even thought of taking screen shots or earth and replacing the B&W with that. Anyway, not as important as this geometry.

Thanks guys,

Scott

Hi all,

I have a circumstance where I need every group in my model to have exactly 18 entities (12 lines, 6 faces). I have quite a few (hundreds) groups and componants by now that I have to keep track of. I was wondering if there is any way (either natively or ruby) to be able to review these numbers. I'm thinking of something like the outliner where I can see the number of antities. But anything really, as long as I can quickly find anything that does not have the 18 entities I need. My current process is going through each group and checking, which takes quite a while.

Thanks guys,

Scott

best bet I think would be to probably integrate it with 3D connection's tools. I know they had some small programs which made an example of that. It was a somo cube and you had to use the cap to move and rotate each piece into place. I also know that in SU, the cap can rotate around the model on it's own, focused on an object (like normal SU), or rotate specifically around the selected object.

What I do for my massings, is just make an excel file and enter the program into that. One of the columns is =sqrt(X:#). In this way I have a squartfootage and the lengths of the sides, however if the rooms factors to a nicer rectangle, use that. I make all the boxes 8'-10', depending on the function. I usualy through some people and desks and chairs and such for scale. Then I take a bunch of pictures from about, put it in AutoCAD, and print to scale, and then lots of trace! I find its a lot easier to do bubble diagrams and start getting into schematic design with these scaled boxes. I usually don't go back into sketchup until I have a better idea of what I want.

I think what you're looking for is more like a grid snap, like in AutoCAD. SU only has (that I know of) a length snap, so you can start geometry anywhere, but the length is controled at intervals, which doesn't work very well when you want all of your objects to have the same relative snapped distances between each other. I would very much like to see this too.

You could make your little clouds, then use this: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=6913 to randomly place them all in a certain area.

I sent a little test model down to the plotter. Worked fine. I'm not sure about all the mesh stuff, but the video at thier site explaines it pretty well I though. It just checking for leaks and setting all the different tolerences and such. I would think that if the STL compiliation works fine in SU, it should fine in the printer. I compiled some more complex models in US and they looked good after a few attemps. The first ones involed the program filling gaps too agressively. Turned it down (or up?) and than all my openenings were fine. But I havn't had too much experience other than that.