Is anybody from this Forum attending at that show? I would need a favour. SketchUp staff doesn't count because the favour concerns you guys.

1. turn on "hidden Geometry"
2. right click on the texture in one of the segments and the texture dialogue will com up
3. Adjust the position of the texture on that segment as you wish and click "done" when finished
4. In the texture dialoge make sure that "projected" is ticked
5. "sample" the texture in that same segment now that it is properly positioned and defined as projected.
6. Turn off hidden geometry
7. paint the texture onto the curved surface.

Almost 6 years ago, when my daughter was in grade 7 ( she is in 12 now), she expressed outrage that one of her friends was required, before she was allowed to go out with friends after school, to sweep and wash the kitchen floor while here single working Mom was still at work.

I note today that few of her friends are required to do anything at all at home. We live in the suburbs and a good many of these kids come from some very comfortable families but most of them are too old to have nannies any more, so it is just Mom & Dad at home.

1. They never pack lunches ( always buy them) but when it is required, mom does it.
2. They MAY put dishes in the dish washer after dinner, but usually just put it on the counter and leave.
3. They DO NOT help with dinner preparation.
4. They DO NOT make their beds or freshen them in any way.
5. Their rooms are pig stys, with dirty clothing all over. ( the Cleaning lady picks up and does laundry once week).
6. They are not required to do any tasks of any kind. No sweeping, no cleaning, no unloading of dishes from the dishwasher, no laundry, nothing.
7. They don't so much as push in their chairs when they have stand up and leave from having been sitting at my kitchen table.
8. My daugher has had parties, even small ones, where the kids just leave and not a soul has thought to bring their dishes and garbage to the kitchen, much less stay and help her clean up.

My daughter insists that this is the norm out there. She says all the kids are really stresed from increasing school pressures and social pressure that were tough for all of us as teenagers, but are getting crazier and works.

Tell the truth, do your kids do much of anything at home?

Fun fantastic project and really nice presentation. Wish I could work on beach probjects.

Thank you so much for all of that information guys. I knew absolutely nothing about this and it is great to be able to understand something a little outside of my usual experience. Thank you for your time and patience in explaining it to me.

Is point cloud a term generally used in Terrain modelling circles? I used to pass by this script because the term was meaningless to me and I didn't have a need for making "clouds". I had no idea what it was for. So is this a common phrase and is it often that one gets this sort of "crosses" data rather than contours to work with?

I was wondering where AndyPandy was. Glad to have you back.

Dylan I don't think you can download the free version when you already have pro installed. You can but it installs in the same place as the pro version and you end up with what you already had. you can't run both.

Ray, so good to see your delightful work again.

Tom, et al, I am often just galled by people's chutzpa. For a lousy hundred bucks to bother the artist all ove again over a little cartoon person in a little sketch that was intended for nothing more than to convey an idea ( artist's concept) of what the structure will look like.

What kind of nut cases believe that some drawing by a stranger depicts an intimate knowledge of the client's reality? This kind of thing really gets my goat. It is really unfair to the artist and I hate unfair.

I'm glad that I decided to check in here. I was sure that this was yet another thread asking "Is there a lighting plug-in for SketchUP" followed by 500 posts saying, yeah I want one or saying 'never gonna happen' so I didn't even bother looking.

But it has been going on for so long I thought I'd just peek in. This is just astounding. Congratulations on a much needed and wonderful addition.

Bruce, the waterslide tutorial was not posted here but the problem was posted and many people gave input on how to best approach the problem. The tutorial was not for my class but for an individual who took the class and couldn't figure out how to do it. I started the tutorial for her but ran into a glitch becuse I was expecting the ACAD files to be correct and spot on and they were not. I'm glad I posted because it was a lot of fun seeing all the various approaches.
As to the good ideas, that were suggested here, such as including examples of many different types of structures designed is SketchUp: check, I already have that, as I said.
The suggestion to construct something and thereby learn many tools in the process rather than just teach the function of a tool: checkl, I already have that.

For the most part, what I read here was a general agreement that conceptual architectural application is not something that has a place in a "how to class".

Finally, to Phil, I would have lots of fun teaching a class where we can "make a chair" one day and "make a lamp" the next day but I would be concerned that any one specific project may not require the coverage of certain tools that I promised to cover in the class. It took me literally weeks to come up with very directed excercises that covered a maximum of useful tools and techniques and then putting that into a manual with each step explained fully was a huge undertaking.
Leaving that to chance and running into unforseen glitches in class, while a great learning experience, is usually time consuming and again robs the opportunity to cover the required materials. I assure you people taking a class such this are not very patient when something doesn't work quite as expected and you need to re-think it as you go. They get the impression you aren't prepared and aren't knowledgeable. Actually that goes hand in had with expecting an immediate answwer or "button" for how to do this or how to do that. Perhaps what I need to stress over and over in the class, which I don't believe I have ever done, is to verbalize that the answer to how to approach a modelling problem isn't always obvious or instantanesous. That one needs to stop and consider the capabilities of all the tools, make decisions about which may be the best way to go, and be prepared for some false starts and to consider other more efficient alternatives.

Okay, that thought process really helped. Thanks guys.

Shaun! Mazel Tov! What a wonderful addition to your family.
I actally e-mailed you a couple of times but I guess you weren't receiving.
So very nice to have you back. I know what a move can be like. When I moved in 2002 it took 5 months out of my life. Packing on one end. Unpacking on the other and painting and renovations so I could rent the basement. I got no work done at all.

Really really great to have you back.

Daniel, I quite agree with you. I do believe that is what they want and that is where the failure to connect is. Some people are able to make these intuitive leaps and others need to be spoon fed. Being spoon fed is of no earthly use because it solves only an immediate problem and does not assure that they will be able build on what they have learned when they hit the next challenge. For someone who learns this way, the only way that they can be truly effective is either to learn a limited number of techniques that they can use over and over again because they are not required to do anymore, OR if they are required to do more, then they must be exposed to every conceivable problem solution and digest it. This would require many many hours of exposure. 3-1/2 hours cannot do that for such a learner.
Conceptual thinking lends itself to a "design" problem, as in Phil's example. Conceptual thinking does not apply itself to a "how to use a tool" problem.
The conceptual part is in answering the sorts of questions that Phil cited in determining what sort of structure to build and what sort of terrain is likely to result. Once that is determined what remains is how to use the tools in SketchUp to build what it is that has been determined to be required for said concept. I am not attempting to teach a University Architectural Design course. That is out of the scope of the little 3-1/2 hour classes I teach. I am teaching a course on how to use a specifc sorgware applicaton to represent the design. There are 4 courses of 3-1/2 hours each. By the Advanced courses we are indeed doing excercises where we are building complete objects. For instance,we do one where we make a sink. This excercise allows the introduction of several tools in the process. I sometimes get Landscape Architects who express that they would have wished for a Landscape Example. Accordingly at one part of the class we "lathe" ( using follow-me) a shape. I say out loud in the class that , for the Architects we are making a Cap for a Bannister and, for the Landscape Architects, this is Fence Post Cap. The point I am trying to make people understand is that all designers use the same shapes and the same tools and whether you are making a sink or a water cistern or bicycle helmet the principles are the same.

From a pure business standpoint it is impossible to advertise and sell a class that is basically going to be a call to "show up" and we will shoot the breeze and explore your particular problems together. That isn't going to work. There is a written manual and a curriculum. People want and need to see what will be specifically oovered in a class before they can determine if they want to shell out the money to take it. This is not a college course where we have weeks to explore everyone's issues.
These courses are intended for busy professionals who want a directed and concentrated course to quickly learn how to use SketchUp from simple tools to more complex problems. They are expected to know how to extrapolate further from what they have learned, as I would expect any employee of mine to exptrapolate.

I reailly think that the problem is that one cannot be taught how to be 'creative'.
I also have the odd person who thinks that the Advanced courses are not Advanced enough because I haven't hit upon the one specific problem that requires the sequence of use of tools that they would need to solve their particular problem.
In the early days, when there were fewer functions in SketchUp, it took some clever people to show us how to use the existing tools in creative ways to accomplish that which we did not think we could accomplish in SketchUp. Not all of us were able to use our previous experience in any other thing we may have done to come up with such clever solutions.
That being said, classes or short: 3-1/2 hours each and to spend it on showing a group how to resolve one very complex issue would not be the best use of time and would really be short changing people.

I do try, in the Advanced courses, to show how one might solve the problem of representing some difficult forms in SketchUp but even those are nowhere near the complexity of things that one might hit in daily practice. But the germ of the idea is there. After all a complex problem can usually be broken down into several simpler problems. It is preferable to show the basis of use for many tools that will all lend themselves to exploration and creative use in tandem, then to show the solution for one problem that may indicate an in depth exploration of only a handful of tools. I can't imagine that everyone will feel that they have got their money's worth.

I do offer all my students that option to contact me with problems that they cannot solve on their own and I help them out at no additional cost. Not all people take me up on it but I have spent hours putting together tutorials. Most notably of late was the waterslide project that you all provided input on.

I do direct the students to this site to get help with creative applications of the tools for unusual or difficult concepts/problems. No matter how clever an individual, our minds all function in a different way and there is always someone here who can suggest a more clever approach.
But any Architect or Landscape Architect worth his salt should be expecte to have some measure of intuition and creativity and if they are so unable to extrapolate from the small to the large, from the simple to the complex, I certainly wouldn't want to be their employer.

As an aside, BTW, my screen saver for the class is a slide show of a multitude of SketchUp projects takne from the old SketchUp Forum gallery and it kicks in when my computer has been inactive for over a minute. Many people sit and watch before we begin the class, during breaks and while I run around and assist individuals who are stuck.

I must reiterate: You can't teach creativity.

Tom, I think that is very much improved. It adds a whole level of sophistication and interest. I think perhaps I like the first one better of the two. I am so glad we all have each other here as a sounding board. I have benefitted countless times from your input.

Hi Edson,
I'm going to have to ask you help me to understand what you are getting at here.

I'm not sure what it is that you are showing me that one cannot simply "do" by learning the tools to use to do it?

examples from my favourite illustrator re gradiation of colour on building surface:

http://elizabethday.com/

Details are very lovely but I would still add gradiation of colour upward and away from the viewer.

jenujacob, that sounds just like using tools too. paint bricks on the surface. No, paint cladding on the surface. Draw a line push-pull out a portion of the wall.
That is exploring "what-if" scenarios using tools. It is still about the tools.

Actually my real opinion on the matter is:
Typically there is a trade-off between the representational power and the inference efficiency. There is no a priori reason for using the same language for both requirements. Thus one can build a system on two levels. The epistemological level supports an expressive language. The heuristic level consists of a lot of special purpose inference engines that gain efficiency on a subclass of problems by using appropriate representations and algorithms.

Oh oh- it was our dear friend Juju a couple posts above who suggested that I make sure to cover "volumetric exploration". I'm sure Ray was not referring to our Juju when he was talking about the "idiots".