Thanks for all your inputs guys... appreciated... I'll have to try various things and see what works for me. Best wishes from London...

Glad I could be helpful. It is nice to have an exercise that can also serve a purpose, so I have to say thanks in return, right?

Hi HL, Thanks for your response. Interesting plugins. The Smustard one looks promising, assuming that a jpeg at 2048 x 1307 px prints better at A4 than the equivalent view rendered in LayOut (Hybrid or Vector if possible) and then Exported to PDF. And that is my main question: jpeg export straight out of SU, or use LO and export to PDF... I suppose it depends on the final destination of the image (jpeg or PDF)...

Well done Elisei, nice work!!! And very generous to offer to do this for Ronan....

To change a Component's name you can select an Instance of it and Get Entity Info [right-click, first item on context-menu to open the E'Info dialog which shows info for anything you select], and you simply change the name in the 'Definition-Name' pane - it will rename the Component with that new name - note that changing the 'Name' pane gives specific names to individual Instances of that Component and not the name of the base definition itself. This Entity Info method is probably easiest, as you have it picked in front of you and therefore know what it should be called. You can also change the name of a Component Definition within the Model-tab of the Component-Browser as suggested below - select the component and change it's Definition-Name, you can also edit the description there too: BUT, this method is OK as long as the components are clearly identifiable - but the E'Info method above avoids any guesswork, when you have perhaps lots of doors called Group#1, Group#2 etc that might look similar in the preview icon, picking one off the model itself is less prone to error...

@gaieus said: At least we only have "simple" rain here. So much about global warming. No, Gaieus Here in the north it goes: Higher temperatures in the Arctic> more evaporation, more winds> more rain As to importing DWG files, a valid file should import OK, but SU ignores many object types, especially those created by AEC applications like AutoCad Architecture. Those should be "Exported to AutoCad" prior to sending you the file. Cleaning the file of unnecessary geometry makes it import faster, but should otherwise not be necessary. There seems to be some limit to file size, though, I have read somewhere that at somewhere bigger than 10 Mb the importer begins to choke. Note too that the new AutoCad 2010 version that came out this spring has a new file format that is not yet readable by SU. So if the person who is sending you files uses that, they should save the file in the 2007 format or older. An intermittent problem with the same file might indicate some other problem, like a problem with a removable disk/memory stick or a network glitch, if the file resides on a server. Anssi

@ronanr said: So my next question is, are there any do's and don'ts about placing images on a flat surface when it comes to exporting? Can z-fighting happen between a painted colour and png (inserted as image)? Ronan Sure it can! After all they (i.e. two different images) are trying to occupy the same plane no matter that any of them is just an image entity or a texture image on a face geometry entity. This "Z value" thing is used in other apps as well but in some you can dictate what is on top and what is in the back (like in LO for instance) What's more, sometimes nudging it off by 1 cm (or any other small distance) does not help either since it all depends on the "distance" your camera is from the target. If this (in real world physical) distance - by moving farther - becomes less than a pixel on screen, Z fighting starts (or edges behind a face will "see through"). So either make it part of that face or move it even further than 1 cm (and maybe turn off "cast shadow" for the entity so that it won't be that visible).

Wow Solo, thank you so much. Your time much much appreciated... Thank you very much. ronan

I always use Acrobat to put all my pdf's together into one document. Of course, I have to use another software to do all my blueprinting, since layout is so useless and so I end up only exporting pretty pictures from SU and for that, I, too< always use PNG.

Also it seems that there can almost nothing be found on the net about SU that would not already be here...

Reading Excel files could be done by using roo. azuby

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