Good link Marcus.

Thanks all for your suggestions. I guess a picture is in order here. The landscape was not derived from sandbox tools - the client wanted to clearly see the contour graduations so that is why I chose this method. But editing that is a mess, IMO. The hard sloped area is the point of contention. He has a beautiful vista looking out over a river and wants to maintain that visibility but also does not want his little kids rolling down the hill to their death We are experimenting with various scenarios to show the client. 2D plans just do not do this any justice and he was very pleased with my feeble efforts thus far in SU. So, that is my dilemma. Thanks again! Rick [image: x3Du_Landscapechanges.jpg]

Hi Rick, How about scaling by 5 along the Z axis? Update: group it first so if eventually you need it to reset, just right click and reset scale

Did I help, or just confuse you?

I agree Rick, but unfortunately, SU just does not tolerate models that are far from the origin. I use this trick to help though. In my CAD plan, I draw a triangle (or any object really), rather large, to the bottom left of my CAD model. And when I export things from my CAD file, I always use the wblock command. So I select all contours, AND my triangle, and then wblock it out to a separate file. Then I import that into SU, and I force it to ignore the model origin. What this does is it then lines up that object I drew on the SU origin. And everything I export from CAD from then on, I just export that trianlge shape alone with it and it wil always import right where I want it. Or if ever these is a problem, I always have that triangle that gets imported and I can then rotate and scale the new import so it fits perfectly with the existing. Sounds harder than it is and so far it has worked perfectly for me. And I think it might help with your bizarre linework. Chris

@escapeartist said: Not something I've ever done. Could you make a large sphere and place the picture on the inside, literally a skydome? Cover your scene with it? It'd probably mess up shadows and the like, but if it's the imagery you're after it might be OK. Here is a thread about mapping a Panoramic Image to the interior of a sphere using Google O3D. You could do the same mapping to the triangles of a sphere in SketchUp. We just haven't tried it yet. Using O3D for Panoramas And by breaking an 8000 x 4000 panorama into 8 pieces before mapping it to 8 octants of the sphere, you should be able to use 2000 x 2000 images for good resolution. (Part of the O3D Panorama) [image: lF9w_o3d-panorama.jpg] (Click on this link to view the O3D panorama) http://www.renderplus.com/pano3d/pano_from_o3d.html?file=http://www.algarve-photo.com/contax/wp-content/gallery/07_07_panofaro/pano_catedral_do_faro_01.jpg

For this use SuPodium Mac / Windows...same license Great in exterior renderings More than user friendly...like twighlight, which hasn`t a Mac version now Podium starts with the new V2.0 ( beta ) which has also no Mac Version in beta stage, but the actual 1.7 works well on Mac and will be supported further. You won`t loose anything by buying it know, if you want to uprgrade to the new release later. Informations are by http://www.suplugins.com Also please take a look here in the forum with the search function. You'll find a lot of information about all the renderengines, including http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=3220. greetings from the 21th century

@gaieus said: Well, in such a twisted case, the easiest thing is to temporarily move the axes (see attached where I put the origin into the pivot point, the red axis along the intersection of your shapes and the green to where the red originally was - so the red/green plane is now the same as it was but you could also align it with the face of your component). From here on, you can force SU to rotate it along the (current) green axis by left clicking into the origin/pivot point while still holding the left mouse button, dragging it along the green axis when it turns into green, releasing the mouse button clicking into the intersection of your leading triangle and the component plane starting the rotation finishing it by clicking on the upper endpoint of the triangle. If you want the axes aligned to the component face instead, right click on an axis and > Place. In this case with your first click, you establish the origin with the second, the red axis (best to place it where it is now) with the green axis, click on any of the far endpoints of your component. Ahhh Axis - way cool! Didn't explore that far. Thanks! Rick