???

1. get a picture of a go go dancer and import into sketchup.

2. Size it so the picture is the size of the window that you want.

3. Position the picture where you might want the window to go relative to your surface but a distance in front.

4. Explode the image.

5. Carefully draw edges around the shape of the go go dancer in your image file until you have a closed shaped outline and surface of said dancer. Also ensure that you have a rectagle shape drawn on the surface outside of the shape.

6. Push pusll the shape that you created through your surface.

7. Select the surface and the push pulled form and "intersect with model"

8. Erase the form and it's edges leaving the 'intersected" outline on your surface. Erase the surface of the window or push pull it in for an indent. This can work with a wall thickness too if you erase the forms push pulled on either side of the window but leave the bit inside the wall thickness.

Is this what you were getting at?

oh, never mind. I'm canning the whole idea any way. I can't believe you would do that for me, seriously??
Thanks Ray. Anyway, another great idea bites the dust.

Thanks Alan. I was a little distraught at the apparent lack of good sense that our civilzation had descended to.
I guess my good sense needs some polishing as well.

I totally agree. That was the very first thought that struck me. No one asked any questions. He just got arrested. How chilling. No wonder the courts are overflowing.

ACTUAL AUSTRALIAN COURT DOCKET 12659 ---CASE OF THE PREGNANT LADY

A lady about 8 months pregnant got on a bus. She noticed the man opposite her was smiling at her. She immediately moved to another seat. This time the smile turned into a grin, so she moved again. The man seemed more amused. When on the fourth move, the man burst out laughing, she complained to the driver and he had the man arrested.

The case came up in court.

The judge asked the man (about 20 years old) what he had to say for himself.

The man replied, 'Well your Honor, it was like this, when the lady got on the bus, I couldn't help but notice her condition. She sat down under a sign that said, 'The Double Mint Twins are coming' and I grinned. Then she moved and sat under a sign that said, ' Logan 's Liniment will reduce the swelling,' and I had to smile. Then she placed herself under a deodorant sign that said, 'William's Big Stick Did the Trick,' and I could hardly contain myself. But, Your Honor, when She moved the fourth time and sat under a sign that said, 'Goodyear Rubber could have prevented this Accident'... I just lost it.'

'CASE DISMISSED!!'
Now keep that smile on your face and pass it on to someone else!!

There are a number of known bugs with inferencing that surfaced in V6, they were fine in previous versions. Because I teach in many locations and the students are often on a variety of different computers I have found that the severity of the bug varies by the video card. Things work only slightly poorly on my computer whereas the same bug is much worse on another.
What is your video card?

Hey ED! Thanks much. Would you ask them on my behalf? Thanks sooooo much in advance.

Acrually this is a topic that is raised again and again on another forum that is dedicated strictly to digital architectural renderers. Everyone there is in the field so that is a good place to search for and read the discusssions:
see the CGarchitect site and in particular these threads discussing the very subject:

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/6184-future-architectural-visualization.html
http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/30609-lets-source-our-projects.html
http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/23988-changes-our-industry.html

Yes I've downloaded a ton of them, but it would require a whole lot of planning and organizing and modelling to get it remotely the same sort of composition as the Costantino one and I was hoping to get to work straight away on the rendering experiments. Thanks, for the thought.

It doesn't have to be an SKP. I am trying to put together a Piranesi class using the work of "Masters" to replicate their styles in Piranesi.
I'm trying to replicate this work by Frank Costantino : http://www.fmcostantino.com/portfolio/colpencil/turnerfield.html

Frank no longer has the model so he is unable to help me out with this.
There is one I found for Google Earth but it is very "gross" and I really need something a bit more detailed. If you have and you are willing to share, I would very much appreciate. Many thanks in advance.

Looks like a ton of work Eric. Models of High Rises always look so impressive. I really like the ones where you have placed it in context and done some colour studies.
Thanks for sharing. Nice work.

boy oh boy, what a complicated set of instructions. Assuming that you follow Anssi's advice and you do know how to "Photo Match" a photo, all you need to do is "IMPORT" in an existing model and place it in front of the photo or on the grass or ground on the photo and it will be in the correct perspective because at that point the world axis has been set according to the perspective in the photo.

Nothing fancy once the photo match is done so long as you remember to "import" in your SketchUp Model.

what you are describing was a bug an SketchUp 6 several releases ago. Are you certain you have the latest updates? Make sure you are working on the most current version.

Tom, I never knew that! I just checked, and even though the entity info is set for eache to "receive shadows, it won't. I also checked inside the component to see if the face itself is set to receive shadows, and it is, but it won't!) Interesting. I can't think of a good reason why that would be so, though.

BTW, if the compoenent is "painted" with a material that is less than 70% opaque, it will neither cast nor receive shadows.

Thanks for responding to this guys. Always like to help my customers on the one side and my friends here on the other side.

I have a customer who doesn't yet know SketchUp himself and has a small projcet that needs doing. He anticipates it is no more than a day's work. It needs to be completed this week. I think he prefers someone in the Toronto area but I assured him that it really doesn't make a difference where the person is. I have attached a prelim sketch of the project.
If you are interested, contact him directly:
george AT jib.ca

Wait a minute! what about this, remember hypercosm?
http://www.hypercosm.com/download/index.html

mp amount of hovering works. The only thing that works is to change the world axis temporarily but that is such a paing if I have a lot of diagonals.

I could swear that I used to be able to use the diension tool so that the "leader" is aligned to whatever orientation I wanted. I can't do it now. If I am pointing to an diagonal, the leader still insists on aligning with an axis direction and then bending 90 degrees to point to the "end point".
What have I forgotten? How can I do this?

Thanks for the links, and all the other suggestions.
I took a look at the links, and, if I understand them correctly, they are not "intersactive" which is what I believe this fellow wants. They all generate a static image much more quickly and effeciently for the purpose than SketchUp does, but they don't allow the sensation of "travelling along a path" in whatever direction.

Could html do that? Interactive and giving the sendsation of moevment in 3D (multiple directions)
Would we use html with links to a "page" that is a sketchup animation? IF you take a link to one animation, how would you get the next html "decision" to make to take you to the next animation and so on? Usually when animations complete, you need to manually close the window and go to another page on you're on, no?

I think he may content himself with just using the zoom/pan/orbit features in Sketchup following a delineated path for a given decision, but I was hoping to automate that a bit more somehow. I think this is a very creative idea on his patt, but I sense that you guys are right and that there may be some more appropriate application out there for him