Glad to help.

until Bryce looked to be the right size Interesting method. When I took the photo, I was not paying attention to number of pedestrians in the image. But they are there. It can be used to scale. I should intentionally include them from now on, in at least few of the building shots.

I thought there were enough users here to tell me what I needed. I did look at Podium forum. But as you know, most forms require registering; user name, password and all. But man, I got gazillion user name and password all over the place. Its getting tough to keep track! Any way I will try there.

If you are applying a paint texture directly to a component or a group, every default face and line inside that comp/grp will be painted. However if you are painting individual surfaces or lines (either in edit component mode or while painting non comp/grps) then just what you click will be painted. Make sense?

If you editing same file that you share on warehouse than with shetch up just go on share model,model would be changed but all info would stay as rating and comments. But if you mada a new model most likely that you need to delete a old one.

I've posted this bug on the tester's forum. It is present with the rotate tool as well as the move tool. When a group or component is "selceted" you can't inference (click on) a point that is within the selection. It is particularly annoying in a rotate/copy or move/copy. This is not the way it was in older versions so it is definitely something that got broken in V6. I knnow they did pay attention to the bug and have it on the list to fix. BTW, the bug works differently on different graphics cards I have found ( I teach across Canada and the same excercise behaves differently on different computers). With some Graphic's cards it works fine. With others, if you find the inference point first (touch it with your cursor) and only then select the component and then click on the inference point, SketchUp will remember the found point. On other graphics cards that doesn't work either and you need to draw a segment to the point ( outside of the group or component) and then you can find the inference when the component/group is selected. Bummer, but that is the way it is.

Ahha. That's the problem then! Noet that SU files (kmz files for GE) neverimmediately and automatically become parts of the default GE 3D Layer. There is a quality control first of all (and considering the amount of the uploaded models it can take a while for the QA Engineers to go through them) then the layers are only updated from time to time, not constantly.

The layers thing sounds interesting, but can probably be explained by the fact that layers only control the visibility of stuff in SU, so it must have kind of 'left it' in the model to some extent.

Man, I was deleting the surface to get the materials off! Thanks, both method works fine.

You can get images in SU to scale with absolute accuracy...but you need to import them as images, not textures. You then draw a line on the image of known length, such as a line across the top of a window frame, obviously, the longer the known length, the more accurate it's going to be...then group the line and image together. Entering the group, you then use the tape measure tool to measure the line. Ignore whatever value appears in the VCB, but type in the actual length and hit Enter. You will the be asked if you want to resize the contents of the group....obviously yes. Having now sized the image with absolute precision, you can place it in front of the appropriate section of the building, explode it, sample it and then paint it onto the wall.

Here is the model I built. I needed to move the roof peaks from flat roof plan so I couldn’t cross connect points with lines to move it. The points were already connected with ridgelines, which needed to slope. I ended up moving each peak points using inferences. [image: nielsen.jpg]

Thanks, I mix up Preferences and Model info time to time. They both change units but in a different context.

Import the image as an image, not as a texture. You can then treat it like a piece of geometry and manipulate it into position using the Move and Rotate tools...and also Scale. Position it over the round end of one of the components...although not actually making contact...then explode the image, sample it (Paint bucket + Alt) and paint the projected texture onto the round end. As far as putting a rectangular image onto a round surface, you just need to make sure that you have enough excess around the edges so that it will fit without starting to repeat itself.

Shouldnt have to (if im understanding you correctly.) everything stays relative to the origin.

Cut and Paste works. Thanks.

I thought this a very interesting problem so I tried playing to see if the situation could be improved. There's some good news but it might not be viable in every case... I made a similar model to ridix's one. I could see the same problem in mine when I had the edge display turned off. The white phantom edges would appear particularly when the shadows were turned on. The trick I found that could improve things was to temporarily turn back on edge display and select an offending line. With it selected, look to the 'entity info' panel and note there is an option to "smooth". (If you don't see the 'entity info' panel, right click on the line and choose it from the top of the context menu). To the selected line apply that "smooth" option. Switch edge display back off and you will see the white phantom edge will be gone. For some models this technique will work very well. For others the "smooth" function might alter the display of some faces so much as to become a curse. (I can anticipate: "Damn that Ross! - Damn him to hell!"). The 'smooth' function works by rendering the faces connected to the edge with a varying tonal value. It can be hard to anticipate the effect it will have. Faces defined with lots of edges can get their display screwed up when the edges are smoothed. In conclusion don't just select all edges (easy in wire-frame display mode) and 'smooth' them all. Do that and your faces will look wonky. (The resulting inflated look is fun but rarely useful). Instead apply it to offending phantom edges and see if the effect looks good. Play. The best way to have fun. You will learn while you do. Regards, Ross

Dear All, You could also use Jim's most excellent 'query' tool. Like TaffGoch I use the Entity Info box all the time, using it to name/rename groups on the fly. Using the Entity Info box with the Outliner box is even better. Regards, Bob

ridix, You might find the tips posted here... Learning Advanced Tips and Techniques ...to be helpful (demonstrating how to preferentially manipulate the orientation of the rotate and protractor cursors.) Taff

Ah, building a ship, ain't you! I love this stuff, really! You'd probably need a 3D grid then. Go to Didier's Ruby Library Depot and get 3d_grid.rb. You can even create a nice, custom grid then some scenes with Standard viewsand save your (empty) model as a Template so you can start with it when launching SU.