Great, i knew it was something simple but for some reason i was blocked. Now for a dumber question... I have always struggled with the solid tools.... I am a pro user so i do have them... But I can not figure out how to intersect the vase...I created a flat plane and placed it in the middle of the vase then selected them both and chose intersect from the solid tools. I get an error that one or more of the objects is not a solid... so i made the plane a group, the vase was already a group or was grouped after the lofting.... that did not work either... so i exploded them both with the same error... I guess I dont understand what a solid is?

Thanks again!

I think i must be crazy... I am sure the answer is right in front of my face but I can not figure out how to add thickness to a shape that is not flat. I created this lofted vase shape see attached... I want to make it with thickness... I can not figure out which plugin to do this with or what is the best procedure for creating this type of shape... obviously if this was a simple cylinder i would just offset it and extrude but this shape was created with curviloft... can someone un-jar my brain as to how i can create an organic shape with thickness? I tried creating a copy and scaling it out but that does not seem to work well...

Great, thanks for that.. I was able to install the beta of vray 1.6 againg so that is good! Anyway, I was looking for soap skin and bubble and could not find it in SU Extension or Sketucation Store... is there a new version of this plugin or something better I should be using in its place? or am i naming it incorrectly? Thanks again.

@dave r said:

Glad it seems to be working. Don't forget to get Fredo's LibFredo6 while you're getting Curviloft.

If you do install the Vray plugin, you'll be able to disable it from the Sketchucation Plugin Store manager so you can leave it in a disabled state and load it only when you need it.

That is funny you mention Fredo's LibFredo6 I was just going to ask you about that... I remember that I had to install that to make round corners and other plugins work that are his...i guess Curviloft is his as well?

I just installed LibFredo6 from Sketucation Store! That thing is great! The plugin store makes it so much easier to install!!!!! now Curviloft is working and I also installed round corners which was next on my list.

Do you know if Sketucation will be sending out update info on installed plugins like SU Extension will?

Thanks to your help I am on my way now... I was stuck all day yesterday...

@dave r said:

I see one major problem in your screen shot of the Vray plugins file. You have way too many folders nested inside each other called Plugins.

You need to fix that. You should only have SketchUp>SketchUp 2013>Plugins>SU Podium V2... You should not have SketchUp 2013>Plugins>Plugins>Plugins.....

I'm thinking at this point it might be easiest to delete the Plugins folder immediately under SketchUp 2013 and then reinstall SketchUp 2013 to repair. That'll replace the Plugins folder with the proper folder and contents. Then you can go through the process of installing plugins again.

As to permissions, by default Windows limits access to the Plugins folder. You need to change those permissions. Right click on the Plugins folder, choose Properties and then click on the Security tab. Edit the permissions so there are check marks for all entries under the Allow column for your log in and do it for the admin log in, too.

Brilliant! I had already deleted all of the excess plugin folders and re installed SU13 but was having the same issues... I did as you said and deleted the Plugin folder then re installed SU13 then i went in and updated the new plugin folder permissions and it appears to be working correctly for now! Not sure if it was the permissions or the deleting plugins folder that did the trick or both but it seems to work so far. I have been able to install Podium so far... I am going to go in and re install Sketucation Plugin store and see if i can install Curviloft now... will update. Im not sure I even want to mess with trying to install Vray again until they release the non beta... but I do need to render soon so I hope they come out with it soon!

@dave r said:

Looks like R2P.rb might have something to do with the dreaded Vray plugin. Take a look at this: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1fb_1375658067 What else have you tried to install?

From your description, it sounds like you have some other issues as well. Have you set permissions to the SU2013 Plugins folder to allow all access?

Oops i think i added the same error message... here is the new eeror message

@dave r said:

Looks like R2P.rb might have something to do with the dreaded Vray plugin. Take a look at this: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1fb_1375658067 What else have you tried to install?

From your description, it sounds like you have some other issues as well. Have you set permissions to the SU2013 Plugins folder to allow all access?

Well you are right the vray plugin is a bit of a pain right now.... with the new beta and all I can not get it to install correctly... it is saying that i have already installed the trial and that I can not install it now... but the funny thing is it is not a trial it is beta so there is not a way for me to purchase it right now and it wont let me intall it... I have a support ticket into Vray but not sure how quickly they will respond due to the fact that they are working on releasing 1.6... I think i removed vray and the previous error for now...

I am attaching a new error I just got... and I am attaching a screen shot of my file structure under SU13 plugins... when I was trying to install Podium.... it looks like it keeps adding a new plugin folder and intalling it there... can you or someone tell me why I would have a plugin folder inside of my plugin folder? and should I delete all plugin folders other than the primary one and why would that have happened in the first place

I tried again to install Curviloft from Sketucation plugin store and it said it was successful but I do not see it anyware...

I am not sure what you mean when you say "Have you set permissions to the SU2013 Plugins folder to allow all access?" can you tell me how I would do that?

I was able to directly install Artisan from the SU Extensions warehouse... Or maybe it was automatically installed due to the fact that I had it on SU 8 already on my computer... Can not remember now If it was there when I opened up SU 13 or if i installed it...argh.

THanks so much for your help!

Hey all, I am having a bit of trouble setting up SU 13. I see that there are two great new ways to install plugins and extensions, the Extension Warehouse by SU and the Plugin Store by Sketucation. I am having a bit of an issue with both.... maybe I am jsut starting out with the wrong expectations....

First I tried to install Podium, I use the podium browser library so I need to install Podium first in order to use it... I opened up SU Warehouse and searched for Podium... i clicked on "get this extension" and it took me to the Podium website... So i came to the conclusion that there is not an automatic load of that extension/plugin.... so i tried to install it the old fashiond way by downloading and running the exe file... but for the life of me I can not get it to install on SU13... I have gone through all of the tutorials on installing Podium on 13 and tried to intsall 32 and 64 bit... I have checked the location of the plugin folders I have un installed and re instaled SU 13 with no luck....

So I gave up on installing Podium for a bit and tried to install another plugin... Curviloft...I did not find it in the SU extension library so I installed Sketucations Plugin Store and tried to install it that way.... I found Curviloft and it said that it was installed but I do not see it anyware...It is not in my plugins or in my extensions or my tools... i re started SU 13 and still no luck....

I was able to install Artisan through SU extensions library... so....

I am attaching an error message that I got the last time I opend SU 13... maybe it has something to do with the fact that I am not able to see curviloft?

I am just not sure what I am doing wrong here.... also, I guess I am a little confused between the difference of an extension and a plugin so if someone would not mind clarifying the difference that might shed some light on what I am doing wrong...

@valerostudio said:

I am not a member of the team at Chaos. I have been in the beta testers group since the early private beta though. Devin or Fernando frequent these forums, so I am sure than can answer your questions.

I am very knowledgable about installing a GPU, but my understanding is that you will have access to higher power cards on a desktop rather than a laptop machine due to limitations on cooling fans and power supplies (I think).

Thanks! I wonder, is there a way to tag someone in here so they see the thread?

2. A dongle is a physical piece of hardware that contains your license. It will be a USB thumb drive and will arrive when you purchase/upgrade to 1.6 once it comes out of beta. You need to have it plugged in for V-Ray to work.

Thank you for the reply!, It sounds like you are someone over at vray so maybe you can help me with another issue I am having. I Recently purchased vray and will be able to upgrade to 1.6 for free once it comes out... I installed the beta version of 1.6 on SU 8 about a month ago... then I noticed that yall had released a newer version of the beta 1.6 so I tried to install that... During installation it removed my first beta then it would not re install the newest version with an error saying that I had already downloaded the trial and that I needed a key or license in order to make it work... I dont have a key yet because I dont think it is out of beta... the problem is, I no longer have vray on SU 8 and I can not render my projects.... So I downloaded SU 13 and installed it there... but when I render with it there I get Vray watermarks on the renderings... I tried re installing 1.49.01 but am running into errors (i dont really want to use the 1.49.01 as I would rather continue using 1.6). Any help here would be much appreciated!

Also, how easy is it to install a GPU? I have a ASUS Gaming Laptop, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670M, 16 gigs of ram. Approx how much does it cost and is it possible to install it on my computer? Does it make a huge difference in rendering time? is it like having a separate rendering engine... so i can continue to work on the model wile it renders?

Thanks!

Hey has anyone else started to play around with the beta of the new vray 1.6 for Sketchup? I have been trying it out and it looks pretty cool! I was watching a webinar earlier and it looks like there are some really neat features. I have a couple of questions that maybe someone hear can answer

1. What is a GPU?
2. Why would the Vray people say I needed a dongle? what is it and why do i need it?
3. It looks like Vray now supports rendering proxies and it looks like they have an add on that will allow me to convert any maya, 3dmax etc... model into a proxies... this looks cool, so i was wondering two things about this, where can i get my hands on some cool high polygon models? and how can I edit those before using them in sketchup (should i invest some time in learning Blender for this?)

If anyone has tried vray 1.6 and the proxy rendering, do you know if it is possible to at least edit the materials inside of sketchup for each proxy?

I have a lot more questions on 1.6 but I hope this gets the conversation started : )

@mitcorb said:

@Shanna:
Theoretically, you should have no problem with either of your questions.
I was just going to mention that many of the plugins have been updated to play nice with Sketchup 2013 and if you use the Sketchucation Plugin Store utility, it should be relatively simple to load your favorite items.
As for Windows 8, it is still windows core program, just a different interface.

Thanks, looks like it would make the most sense to do a new install of the plgins to make sure i have the most up to date versions for 13. I am currently only using one computer for all of my work so I dont think i need to do the drop box thing for my plugins but if I do get a desktop do you think it iwll work the same with 13 as it did in the example for 8? I am guessing that the plugin store utility still puts the plugins into the plugin folder and if i move the bluging folder to dropbox and follow the intstructions for pointing sketchup to that folder I should be good. I was just wondeing if anyone had done this yet with 13? Also, i did not see my favorite Lib Fredo plugins in the plugin utility.... is that because his plugins require that because his require something else to be installed prior to using his plugins?

Thanks for your help!

Anyone know if using dropbox for the plugins will work for going from sketchup 8 to 13? Also, will it work on windows 8?

@cotty said:

Copy & paste for images in the clipboard would help here too.

I think the problem with this is that you have to cut the entire image... often times I only need a portion of an image so I use Jing to grab a region of an image (say the front of a bathroom vanity) then I save it to my computer then I import it... I tried to copy the image from jing but when i go to Sketchup I dont get a past option with right click or edit?

@rich o brien said:

So you want an internal browser within SU that can region grab imagery of a page using the dimensions of a selected face. It then imports that imagery as a texture and applies it to the selected face.

That's a great idea actually.

Pretty much, and it would not need to be exact dimensions just generally the same shape/proportions, it sure would make adding images from the internet as textures that much faster and easier... Pretty much exactly what google earth is doing but expanding it to the entire internet not just the street view and the associated images of the specific location. It is not really all that hard to grab the image and save it then import it but I was thinking it would be kind of a cool plugin.

I have been using Jing to grab portions of images and then I save them to my computer then I import them as textures... It works just fine and is pretty handy as with Jing I usually dont even need to edit or crop the image in photoshop before i use it as a texture... The thing i thought was cool about the sketchup earth thing was the ability to do this without even having to save the image to my computer all you have to do is select the region you want in the image and click grab and wallah! (basically one step) ... I was just hopeful that since the technology was already there they would add the Google images to the mix... I know Google no longer owns Sketchup so I guess they dont have the "will" to do it but maybe someone else might make a plugin or something cool like this? : ) Or maybe Trimbled might pick it up?

I see the Sketchup has a really cool feature where you can select a plane of your drawing then go out to Google earth and select a region of the street view or or a region of images associated with that Google earth location the "grab" it and it is automatically applied as a texture. This is really cool, but what would be even cooler is if we could do this with Google images as well! It seems like a very simple request as it looks like the technology is already in place....

Anyone know if this is in the works or if it is available somehow?

Thanks!

I tried all of the above and no luck... so strange...still getting the same results

Hey, anyone know what went wrong here? See attached image. I have used Irender and match photo in the past to create "virtual staging" where I match a photo of an empty room then add furniture and accessories.. I started a new project and did a test render with Vray (which i have not used for this application yet) and got this funny distortion of the window... any ideas why?

Ok so the window component worked! FYI, I am sure yall already knew how to do this but it is a huge time saver for me! I created a generic box right on top of one of my walls then i double clicked it and created a component, I made sure to check the glue to any surface, then the cut opening option became available, so i clicked it. then I went back and opened the component and added the window sash and any other detail i wanted to ... now I can drop it into any of my walls that are that same width. I can slide it along the wall and and even re-size it at will and the opening is automatically created.... did the same with a door with the door swing... all in top view 2d plan. Super cool...