Hello All

I re-visited this thread recently and would like to share what I have been doing in relation to hatches in Layout. This is very much experimentation but it may be of use to someone.

Start in Photoshop with a new file. After a few tries with different size layers in Photoshop I went with a 1400px by 1400px transparent base layer and drew lines to form the hatching using the Path tools. These I believe are vector elements. I had an idea that if, instead of drawing the hatch lines themselves, I could fill the negative spaces with wide lines and leave the hatch lines as transparent spaces. The image is saved as a PNG. I formed just two (hatch) lines in the image as this was near the maximum that the Path line tool can cover (1000px max width of Path line). I'm no expert in Photoshop (or SU/Layout for that matter) so my explanation is probably lacking in detail. However, it does seem to me that the Path tools give a better/crisper line result even when zoomed.

In Layout, the PNG can be loaded into the Pattern inspector tab. A solid fill is enabled in the Shape inspector and this is masked by the PNG. The colour of the shape fill is, therefore, visible through the transparency of the PNG. Thus the hatch can be any colour. The limitation with this method is the hatch lineweight is fixed by the PNG image although when zoomed the line does thicken.

Attached is a version 2015 Layout file with three hatch pattern PNGs plus a PDF of the same. These are used at different scale factors and fill colours.

Have a look and see what you think!

PS Did anyone catch the Sketchup April Fool on Youtube? Worth a look!

Hatch tests 02.layout

Hatch tests 02.pdf

Hi Ken

I came up with this method which may suit your proposed application - not 100% accurate but could be okay for underwater!

Use ordinary volume calcs for the rectangular parts of the unit. Isolate the tapered mid section (yellow in the screenshot) and group so its volume appears in the Entity info tab. (The top tapered section will be a similar exercise.)

Slice the yellow shape into, say, 10 equal thickness horizontal slices and make each slice a separate group so that each can have its volume noted.

Construct a graph (see screenshot) with Volume on the X axis and Height on the Y axis. That should be the other way round logically now that I think about it but the result will be the same. In my graph Volume is in units of 'one m3' but for the Height I increased the unit distance by a factor of four just to make it easier to read. Plot the equal slices on the Height axis starting with the top most slice at the '0' x/y point. Click on each slice and read off its volume. Plot each volume on the Volume axis, I used a dot with cross made into a component. I then used a Cubic Bezier curve (BezierSpline by Fredo6) to join up the plotted volumes. Hide or erase the dots and retain the curve.

Just for convenience, I scaled the oil tank drawing so that it was approximatley 40m3 and this would allow for 10 levels of 4m3 to be marked. So now, by using the measuring tool to intersect the plotted curve at each required volume (4m3 in this case), the corresponding thickness of each 4m3 slice can be read off along the Height axis. (A division by 4 is needed to get the correct measurement having made the height units wider.)

I used 1001Bit Pro tools to alter the thicknesses of the slices - 'Extrude selected profile - maintain taper'. Saves a bit of work but can still be done with native SU tools of course. Check each new slice for volume. I think some levels will contain both rectangular and irregular geometry so some adding/subtraction needed.

The tank can be marked from the new slices - I haven't shown this. No doubt there will be a maths guru out there who could come up with a formula but this is as good as it gets!

Hope this is useful and reasonably intelligible, if not it kept me happy for an afternoon/evening!

Kind regards

In the Dimension style tab there is a 'Display units' box at the right hand side to do this. Select the dimension tool first and then go to the dim style tab and click the box. Dims will now not show the unit suffix until you re-click on the box.
Hope this helps!

Thank you Daniel and a belated Happy New Year to all!

Thank you Bryan, much appreciated! I am thinking of trying a railway themed model next.

Once again, thank you all for the comments and observations. I have had a go at addressing some of these and the attached images are the result. Still a long way to go but the process is always interesting! In particular, I tried to adjust the lighting to better reflect the historical period, as suggested by L i am. Initially I added a dash of yellow to the pendant lights but this looked terrible! I looked on-line for RGB values for incandescent light and there is plenty of information available for all kinds of different light sources. Incandescent appears to be more orange and that is where I started from. (RGB = 255,197,41 for a 40w lamp)

Haven't managed to update yet (got side-tracked, which is easy with SU) but will do so soon!

Hi Nemesis, I debated with myself, long and hard, about lagging the pipes and valves but decided to model the said pipes and valves as a bit more interesting/challenging and have them 'on show'. Not correct I know. I operated steam plant for a number of years and would be the first to appreciate the skill of the industrial lagging specialists so it was a toss up between the two options.

Thanks for that tip L i am - its something that I should have twigged to!

Hi Mike,
Thank you for your comments. The semi-circular lower doors provide access for removal of ash which will have fallen through the grate which spans the widest part of the fire tube. These doors would also regulate the combustion air. I agree that they would not all have been open to the same angle - I should have taken them out of the component to show variation on each of them. Fresh coal is fired through the much smaller fire door in the upper semi-circle and these would be kept closed except when firing.

Thanks John, love the frog!

Thank you both for the much appreciated praise and comments. It may just tempt me to try another post at some point down the line.

The brickwork texture (and a number of others) are from the Sketchup Texture Club. The membership fee of Euro 12 per year is well worth it. Other textures are from SU Podium Browser - my render engine plus a few of my own making.

Thank you for the kind comment Ntxdave. Adding plenty of dust & dirt would make it look more like a photo but as with the steam it is harder than I suspected!

I have been inspired (and not a little intimidated!) by all the fantastic modelling to be found within these forums. This is my first post to the gallery and hope that it will pass muster. The model represents a common type of steam boiler that would have been installed in countless factories, mines, hospitals etc., probably up to the 1960s. I did try and add some wisps of steam, post production, but wasn't happy with the result - more work needed!

An update.

The cause of this problem appears to be a folder or filename starting with a lowercase 'u'. I am grateful to the person who described this on this or another forum (couldn't find the post again) and Yogesh at SU support.

I didn't think this was what was causing the problem on my setup as I knew that I never name files or folders with lowercase letters. However, the culprit was further up the file path in the C:\ directory thus: C:\ Users\ user. It was this last folder name with its lowercase 'u' that was at the heart of the problem. How the folder came to be there (in the SU file path) I do not know. I think I probably messed up right at the start when naming my desktop account on the new PC (three years ago now).

My solution has been to do a reset of the whole PC, which it needed anyway, and then being careful about names and file paths. SU support say they accept this problem as a known bug so there may be a fix at some point without going to the lengths of resetting or meddling with the PC inner workings.

Hope this may explain what is happening for anyone else who has the problem but apologies for not being able to offer a quick fix.

Hi
This looks like a great collection but where can I find the download? I can only see the 2015 version in the Plugin Store?

In the VIEW dropdown menu check HIDDEN GEOMETRY and/or EDGE STYLE/BACKEDGES. This will allow you to see the hidden parts of your model and use any available inferences.

Thanks for your reply Garry, I have indeed already updated as you suggest. I can add that in an unsaved file each DC shows in the attribute dialogue but not in the DC options panel.

Help please!

I am running SU 2015, 2016 & 2017 (all Pro, Windows 10) and am now getting the attached error messages on all three versions when using the Component attribute & Options dialogue boxes. I have tried using example DCs from the DC training collection as well as simple DCs of my own. They all seem to work ok in unsaved new files but after a 'Save as' the error messages appear.

This was happening after I installed SU2017 and I followed the advice of the time to install the latest DC extension in the earlier versions. I haven't used any DCs until now (and am very much a newbie with DCs). Has anyone else been experiencing this issue?