Thanks--that's the answer, but i sure would like to know what caused this!

Lol! It's just the way it works for me. For example, I tried to export the model--it ran into the zillions of faces on the balustrade and got slower and slower until it froze. So I exploded all until the end (when they went transparent) and undid the problem, leaving the remaining balustrades unexploded. Then I tried the KT export again and it zipped through all those meshes until it came to the unexploded part and this time it crashed!

Obviously, these copies are linked, but how? I tried making the offending ones unique, but that didn't work, either.

I just tried to export it again--there are 270K faces in the balustrades--it zipped right through the exploded ones and then stopped to a crawl when it hit the unexploded copies. It finally froze at 98,800. I need to find a way to explode these!

I explode them because with a high-poly model, it just won't export--it freezes ( and I have 4GB RAM).

I'll try the copy trick and see what happens. Although if I want to explode all the balustrades, copying won't work. I think I might have to get rid of the offenders and replace them.

I would truly like to know what's going on!

I downloaded a balustrade from the 3D Warehouse and copied it several times in my model. To export the model to Kerkythea, I like to explode high-ploy components, so I started going through each copy, exploding them one-by-one. When I got to almost the last pillar, suddenly all the previous exploded copies turned transparent (lost their faces), almost as if X-ray had been turned on (but outlined with heavy black lines).

What is going on? These were all copies of the same component, none of which did this until I got to the last copy. Oddly, when I pan or orbit, the balustrades show up as normal, but as soon as I stop, all the faces are gone.

I can't post the problem, because when I copy it and paste it into a new file, the problem doesn't occur (and I can't post the building itself).

The architect's geometry is fine. The two roofs intersect at the bottom of the valley, and the saddle is, in effect, its own roof with a different slope. My drawing is at fault because it's the result of many tries to overcome SU not liking the pitch changes! Maybe what I should do is to draw the two main roofs, and then draw the saddle separately and add it on top.

What I have drawn is the roof as the architect has it (this is a very common situation in roofs on large houses). The problem seems to be that SU is confused by the saddle. The two roof planes intersect and the saddle is between them, so SU sees this pitch change as a separate plane and wants to make it flat. There is a lot of hidden jumk geometry from all my attemps to overcome SU! I can't redraw what the architect has, so I need to find a way to make it work!

I will post my latest attempt. As you can see, there is a problem where the chimney saddle hits the two roof intersections--SU wants to make it a different plane.

roofproblem.skp

I was using 1' squares--I will try bigger ones. The other weird thing is that when I activate the Smoove Tool on the grid, the yellow cubes appear in many other places on the drawing!

Also, I'm not sure to erase the sandbox grid once I apply it, if I want to change the size, etc.

I don't know how to use the projected texture--please explain.

The problem with the roof on this house is that it intersects various additions at differing heights. Maybe what I should have done was to construct the main roof first and then add the various intersecting roofs to it.

But this particular roof runs down into a chimney saddle (which has its own angle and corresponding pitch change, then changes pitch a bit as it runs down the side of the chimney itself. So SU doesn't see it as co-planar.

I just figured out the Projection Tool--it works very well! But on one of the stitched faces it slanted the material, so I could use a few tips if you have some.

Oh, you have to release the Alt key. I did that and it paints, but the textures don't line up, and the Texture Position option is gone.

Oh, if I let up on Alt it turns back into the Paint Bucket and then it will paint. The textures don't line up, though, and the texture Position option is gone.

It is non-planar, btu that's the way it is!

It still doesn't work!

So I did Ctrl/Eraser, turned on Hidden Geometry which showed the two big triangles I had made to fill in the surface. I filled one in with the roofing material. Right-click>Texture/Position>hit Enter. Then I held down Alt, got the eyedropper--clicked the eyedropper on the middle of the roof area I just filled in, and--nothing, except that it turned the roof mmaterial in the Browser window to the default white/gray color.

Yes, I do hold down Alt. I will try sampling from the bigger area.

There was a time when I was a Latin and ancient Greek scholar--love to see someone else with the interest!

Here's another one--I can't get the eydropper to work.

roofforsketchucation.skp

I posted it already under "Roof faces and materials problem" on this forum!

Yes, I did, and it didn't pick up the material (I clicked the eyedropper on the material I had just applied)! I must being doing something wrong, but not sure what it is.

Quoting Justinian on the SU forum? Plurimus praeclarus!

I don't think it's the hardware (?)--Q9450, 4 GB RAM, Quadro FX 1700. I tried different (older) drivers on the video card, but that only made it worse!

A ractangle with a sky jpeg applied should work for you as well.

Gaieus--

I followed your steps, got to the eyedropper, clicked it on the existing material, and tried to paint the rest of the surface and nothing happened!