@ecuadorian said: How about a little contest? Choose a scene from the 3D warehouse, and let people do their best efforts to pull out "artistic" renders out of it. good idea, should i pick an image? or an actually model, you import into piranesi as a image file right? we would have to set a time limit though, like 30 min maybe??

intersect the walls with the driveway, select the driveway geometry the group it. its now detached and can be freely moved. just rotate it from the edge you want the slope to start at.

And you are lucky, you will have choice between 2 plugs for bend your wall

Land FX works only out of AutoCAD and now Bricscad. The problem with the modeling is the trees they use look like some kind of umbrellas rather than some of the great trees that are now availble from tom or tree generator. in concept is is a really great tool if you are doing concept through construction docs, but for modelling native SU is better. It really depends on what you are doing.

I think all experienced users draw with the axes always on. As they don't render, I can't think of any reason to turn them off...apart from the very exceptionl case of showing a client a walkthrough of the model. As Chris says, you are much mre likely to spot elementary mistakes if they are visible. For instance, we quite often get questions relating to a mysterious grey shadow hovering above the ground. If the newbie had had the axes on, it would have been immediately obvious that the model was set below the origin; and that the shadow was actually on the ground, as specified in the Shadow dialog box....and that it was the model that was too low, not the shadows that were too high.

@jean lemire said: Hi Rudbeckia, hi folks. If the cursor is over empty space, the zoom will be very slow. Move the cursor over some geometry to get a better response. Just ideas. thanks that seems to work, i drew a base plane under the entire drawing and its not doing it as much

Don't forget to move all layers to Layer 0.

Also note that by using the Tape measure tool to scale a group/component only within your model, you should first enter its editing context (i.e. double click to edit) and scale it there. In this case only the group/component will be scaled. To scale something with the scale tool with your example (one side is known to be 6') follow these steps: select the component then the scale tool: select one of the grips along the axis you want to scale press and hold Shift to scale uniformly (so that the component won't get distorted) start the scale operation (you can now release the mouse and the Shift key), type 6' (with the unit symbol) and hit Enter. Note that if you scale with the tape measure tool OR with the scale tool inside the component's context, the component definition will also change while whatever you do with it from outside, the "original" definition won't change so if you insert another instance from the Component Browser, it will look like before scaling.

@chris fullmer said: No, its more like drew is saying. They are absolutely autocad backup files. Everytime you save your autocad file, it makes a backup file. The way to open it in autocad is to rename it, like drew said, to .dwg ending. Then autocad will recognize it. To get rid of the skp icon, right click on a .bak file and choose properties. The in the "Opens with:" area, click on the "Change" button. Now choose autocad. This will associate the file with autocad (not really useful) and hopefully change its icon off the skp icon. I don't know how to completely unassociate the file. Maybe someone else can give a description of how to do that. Good luck, Chris Okay I will try that. Thanks for the help.

Thanks for all of the help everyone! There are some great pointers here! I will try to stop flooding the SU forum with questions

Very helpful videos, thanks!

@rudbeckia said: Another question for you...lets say I have a not so legal copy of autocad 2006. Will this work with Windows Vista? If not, what version will?? Thanks for your help! Rudbeckia, please do not discuss illegal software on these boards. If you are a student currently attending a University, you can download the full version of Autocad 2009 free of charge (along with lots of other free Autodesk software) For students, Autodesk do have a lot to offer.

To get LO to render what SU is rendering, create a Scene in SU and select the Scene in LO.

You don't need to place background images on a rectangle. You can just import them as images, not textures. That way, they won't have any edges unless you explode them...so there's no need to hide them

Yeah, 37mb is a very big model. You should be able to shrink it down by going window->model info->purge unused This gets rid of all the materials and components in the model that arent actually being used.

If you can find some suitable 2d replacement plants, you should be able to place a plant, select it and go in to the components manager (window->components) and right click on one of the 3d components and select 'replace with seleceted', this would make dealing with the vast amounts of geometry a bit more feasible as you wouldnt have to make it visible.