Niko, I am feeling your pain. I have a 2 1/2 year old Mac Book Pro that just can't handle the large models anymore and I decided that I needed a new machine, so I bought what is basically the same machine as you have. Wow have I been disappointed. I got a model today to work on that was about 285 mg and it just crashed every time, while the people with three year old Dell laptops were opening and navigating without a problem. I think part of the problem may be Mavericks but there is no way to go back to Mountain Lion in the new iMac. I haven't had a PC in 12 years but the new Dell M4800 notebook is looking good right now.

"The Film & Stage plugin has been on our target list for updating for some time, but as you say we have limited resources and it didn't make the cut for SU7.

Scott,

I was exchanging e-mails with Bryce Stout during the beta-testing period and told him that this is something that those of us in the film industry really need to have addressed. The Film and Stage plug-in was great for locking the aspect ratio but we need a way of inputting accurate lens data as well.

i could never understand why the angle of view was so different until I figured out Sketchup uses the vertical rather than horizontal field of view, whereas we normally use the horizontal number, for instance in Super 35 format all the ratios (1.78, 1.85 and 2.40) have the same horizontal angle of view. Only the vertical angle is different.

I've developed a series of wireframes for each format that I insert into my models to calibrate the window for the aspect ratio. Once that is done I can input the lens data from my conversion sheets to show a specific lens, both film or HD lenses. As far as I know no one has their software configured to allow for digital lenses yet.

I'd be happy to send you all my lens data. I've been writing an article for the Art Directors Guild magazine on my method of calibrating the program for specific lenses but hopefully you can make that method unnecesssary.

If you could work this into the program you'd have legions of grateful fans here in Hollywood. I use Sketchup on every film and it just gets better all the time.

Randall Wilkins