That is right. I wish I could detect that the user had clicked the "close" button on the window itself.

Plenty of room for messing up in that second one! i cant help but cringe at the thought of what would happen if the bow caught a wave...eek

CorelDraw not a cad , but it can do most of your cad presentation need.

Panoramic pic [image: 2357407103_1c216f3467.jpg?v=0] pic render scene.skp

True, only problem is that when i tidy, i tend to just put stuff in piles rather than actually removing it suppose i'll just have to look forward to that extra sense of achievement when i finally finish it (complete with desk clutter)

Catia is the CAD program that Frank Gehry's firm uses. I had no idea it could do the stuff Paul mentioned. Wow.

I would be totally happy, if the bounding boxes of groups would allign to the actual axes. if you change your axes (for example to fit a house into an existing survey model and still be able to refer to the house's axes), SketchUp still alignes the bounding boxes of new groups to the original axes. that can drive you mad (and made me cheat with the compass orientation instead of rotating the building to its correct orientation). but your idea sounds interesting too.

Cheers guys, seems liek theres no amgic method for doing this, but your suggestions all sound like decent ways of getting it done. Thanks again.

Well im getting kind of bored of waiting, so i'll tell you what the difference is. The first one is done as a normal mirror is, a piece of glass with shiny metal sprayed ontot the back, and the second one is just a straight shiny surface. Looking at them again after a few dyas, i reckon the first one is beter, but it needs a bit more tweaking, the thickness of the 'glass' needs to come down a bit, i reckon, ad it needs to be a bit more transparent. Thanks people who responded

I am studying Architectural Technology. I am fortunate that with this course SHU is seen as the UK's leading provider for Arch Tech. I have no idea how the Uni performs in other fields or courses. I guess all Uni's have their strong and weak courses/lectures.

@remus said: this is mre a long term wish if anyone's ever feeling really kind My limited knowledge of ruby tells me it should be possible, but i reiterate the limited part. So, what would be really cool is to have a ruby that could cut standard sized countersunk holes for you. Much like the holes wizard in solidworks if anyones used that before. ideally, it would kinda go like this: 1)start ruby 2)click where you want the hole 3)select hole size and wether or not to countersink it thanks I know this is an old post, but a search for "countersink" brings up nothing newer, so I'll second this! I guess it may be a variation on "holes" scripts, but the specific functionality of this script's understanding standard hardware sizes, the correct bevel angles (they're not 45) and countersink depths, etc. would be tremendous for those of us sending models to metal fabricators! I'd modify the requested functionality -- since holes don't copy easily, I think that starting the script, selecting the fastener, then click, click, click... to "drill" countersunk holes. To ice the cake the script would understand correct pilot hole diameters as well as clear-hole diameters -- so you'd set the screw size (ie #10 or M6), then toggle for Clear/Pilot, check box for countersink, and off you'd go! And while I'm wishing, it could place the appropriate screw component (or not). If wishes were horses... -Carl-

thats's a crazy good tip! i'm gonna go test it now to make sure you're not on a wind up... pav

I would go for the largest monitor you can get your hands on. I recently bought two 24" Soyo LCD's that make my life much easier. Less scrolling and switching. One is at home working in duet with my Dell laptop. The other is in the office next to a 16" diagonal CRT. The Soyo has a brightness number of 1000 and resolution of 1920x1200. Very bright and very sharp. Makes the detail jump for my old eyes. I'd love to jump up to Solo's 42" [image: CBkH_screen-shot.jpg]

[edit] okay so i just realized which forum this was posted in (i use view new posts instead of browsing individual forums)... at least i now realize what 'LO' stands for in the above posts.. please ignore the following maybe i'm not understanding your problem correctly but i just tried --> --open two windows - one set to decimal/mm and the other to architectural/inches.. --in the decimal window, draw a circle measuring 20,000mm diameter and group it.. --copy that group and paste it into the architectural window.. --measure the diameter which is ~65' - 7 3/8" that's a correct conversion... is this not what you're trying to do?

Thata the thing though, the component i wanted to copy across was jsut a small one, hardly worthy of its own file. It would make far more sense if you could jsut copy and paste it into layout. Apart form this, im quite liking layout, it seems very intuitive.