One more for the road.
A small note on the model; you need to cut holes in the surface of the whiskey where the icecubes are, if you are using an physically accurate engine.
On the other hand this is actually a situation that render engines(atleast Maxwell) can´t get physically right. When light first enters from air to ice and then into whiskey, that ray of light will think it is in air, as it passed thru the backface of ice (not thru the frontface of whiskey). Still, the difference is probably very hard to see...

SU+Realflow4+Maxwell

@gaieus said:

Well, maybe they thought you are a sexist macho...

Yes, in the E-onsoftware fantasy world of Hobbits and goblins it is not about how big it is, but about how you use it. But we, who are trapped in the gloomy testosterone dripping real world of architecture, are sadly worried about things like the size.
Actually the SU import would be fine if the import scale factor is corrected. It appears to be independent of export/import units, as it should be. It will be easier to work with a SU file directly without having to use a third file format for transfer.

@solo said:

They do import .skp, if you read the literature is says it works with SU6 and Vue 32 bit.

Yes it odes import SketchUp 6 files, only the scale is totally off, or maybe there is some setting I haven't undestood. So, it sort of partly works, but is usesless.
Can someone else import from SU at the correct scale?

This is the company I wrote to a few years ago asking for them to make it possible to import objects with the right size, and they replied by asking why I am so obsessed with size .

I just upgraded from Vue6 to Vue8 complete, hoping things would have improved with the SU import. Unfortunately it still looks like it hasn’t.
I can’t import SU7 files.
SU6 files come in nicely except for the scale. I get a scaling factor of 3,937 on everything. Why?
Collada comes in the right size, but the materials are all screwed up.
3ds looks pretty good, but I should be able to export in decimetres to get it in right scale to Vue. So, I need to manually rescale all imports in Vue? Also when I updated the scene in SketchUp, and resaved the 3ds, it does update, but it looses its size when updated in Vue.

I’m rather frustrated with e-on. They should not advertise they import SketchUp files!
Sheik

Hi Francois,
I´m on XP, and the plugin for MR2.0 works fine here.
I have seen a few posts about the plugin not working, but I wonder if they are all on OSX? Is the plugin working for anyone on OSX?
Sheik

Here is one more from Maxwell. I was temted to test the background images for lighting, so I didn´t spend much time with the rest of the setup.


Sheik

500 would be about 10% of the price of AutoCad, and half of Rhino. I think it is a fair price.
It is less than an architect would charge for a day, so I tink it is not too big an investment.
But SketchUp free is free, so no cometition there....

Well I have played with Bonzai for a few evenings now. It is too buggy to really start working with it, but that will probably improve soon.
I must say I like it. This is close to what I wished SU7 would have been like, and some more.
Some parts of the UI still feel a bit unintuitive and some stuff could have been streamlined, but on the other hand there is a bunch of stuff I would really like to see in SketchUp. There are things that SketchUp definitely does better, like inferensing, so it is still hard to decide. I think some parts of the UI are still not completed, like the materials editor, so Bonzai will still improve (will SU?).
So far I have not found anything that I would consider to be a dealbreaker, if considering it as replacement for SketchUp. But they need to solve some of the bigger bugs before it is possible to put it to a real test.
Sheik

Thanks Matthew,
I'll try that. The value should be zero at zero, so this should be easy.
Sheik

I am trying to learn how to make a Dynamic Component, but I am stuck…
My problem is a bit hard to explain, but bare with me.
I am making a configurable spotlight for MaxwellRender. You can turn it, and adjust the reflecting parabola to get different angles for the spotlight. Just the rotation would have been easy, but combining the scaling of the parabola and rotating so that it stays correctly positioned became a problem because the center of rotation is outside the parabola component, so I had to brush up my very vague memories of trigonometry to define the position of the scaled and rotated component. Probably already lost you there didn’t I…
Now to my actual question:
I can make the trigonometric formulas work, but when entering the angle zero degrees the formula is incorrect, because I get a division by zero. (It works fine with all other angles). How do I awoid this?

I made an attempt to explain myself on a picture in the skippy. Try setting the FrontRotate value to zero, and look at the X position attribute of the Mirror child component.
Well, if I didn’t loose you yet then you are a smart one .

spotlight_Tan_problem.skp

There are more trees, and nice models, from Pepe who made the tree posted by Mateo. The Bates Motel is one of my favorites....
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?uq=08918090659032173266&start=0

The vid looks great.
How about the improvemts in workflow from SU to Vue? I wasn't too happy with that in Vue6. Can I now make a model in SU, like an large scale urban plan, and then (comfortably) populate it with ecosystems etc.?
On the video the render quality looks better than it was in Vue6, is it?

Well it looks like Vue7 is out. Has anyone tested it yet?
I have always hated Vue for the lack of realworld units, but it is now said to work.
Can I now really import my SKP file, so that it is ín "real scale" in Vue, and I can then place plants that are properly scaled to go with the model, and even the environments work in scale (like fog doesn't become too strong)?
How well is the SKP import now working? Does it come in with textures ok? Are softened edges soft or faceted? Does a SKP files still import as one object?
Sheik

Thanks again Julius,
I already had that connection there before I made the group on that problem joint, but it looks like groping cuts the link (even if it is still visible when you select the joint).
It works perfectly when I start by making all groups, and then make all connecting of joints after that. (Doing it the other way, connecting joints and then grouping, doesn’t work).

I also realized that if you want to connect multiple objects, so that they move together, the logic to connecting two boxes is to group the joint to one and to connect it to the other.

To make the UI on this connecting more intuitive I suggest making it possible to connect and group joints in a random order. Also making the joint “un-static” should make it move together with the objects it is connected to, without the need for groping the joint to the other object.
Sheik

I am getting there, but there is still something I don’t understand.
Linking two boxes with a joint by grouping the joint to one works fine, but when I group several boxes the same way the connection of the last link seems to be lost. (I am a bit confused as I seem to be getting inconsistent results…). In this model I marked the problem joint with a question mark. Why is this part not connected, as I think it is linked, and grouped just like the other one?
Is there some setting I am missing, or is there some specific sequence that the joining and grouping should follow? Or is this a bug?

Wouldn’t it be more logical that a joint would follow the objects it is linked to, if it is not static? Isn’t the groping rather unnecessary, logically speaking?

groupjoints-2.skp

Thanks Julius,
My problem was I tried grouping the joint to both boxes.
Sheik

I found the manual, but I still can´t figure out how to group joints.
Say I want to drop this "thing" in the attached model, and see what happens. I think I have the joints there, but the "thing" won´t drop. Is it suspended by the joints?
What is "group state change" and "group shape change"?
Sheik

groupjoints.skp

I just started playing with SketchyPhysics (2 beta), and I love it.
I could figure out most things, but not everything... Is there a reference manual somewhere?
One thing I havent figured out is how to make the joints move with the objects, like in the "whip" created with the "door". It looks like the hidge is grouped with the box somehow?
EDIT: Ok, found it. Didn´t look under Docs, silly me .
Sheik

Bingo! ArchitectBoy gets 3/3 points. Notice how the middle one, the low-poly version, has strange uneven shadows and reflections.