HI
Is there a plugin that let you place components in a brush like manner? Say for placing trees, I choose the tree I want to use and brush over the areas where I want them to appear. Being able to set some height variation would be great as well.

I had a quick look at the Ruby Library Depot, but I couldn't find any.

Sorry if this has been asked before, but time isn't a luxury for me today.

@alan fraser said:

I've used this process here...not quite a Legion but 4 maniples, making up a cohort of 480 men...and it's still navigable (even more so with shadows turned off).

480 armed men always facing your direction... scary...

I found that using using billboard images instead of drawn outline work much faster as well. I tried making a forest with the default SU tree and that bogged down very quickly. And I got a decent card, nVidia Quadro 3500. But using billboards made a huge difference. Something which was a great bonus to me when I render in V-Ray.

Yes, SU doesn't deal with too many polygons too well. Outlines and shadows multiples the strain many times. I tend to only use them when I export images or for very light models.

I found you can untick the tickboexes in the entity window. But I can't find a way to map it to a hotkey...

How can you unsoften a selection?
I know the eraser tool will let you unsoften lines, but how do I unsoften edges I've allready selected?

I made a sandbox terrain. Draped some existing roads onto it, Added colours. Looked good.
Then I stamped a new road onto it and for some reason lots of lines all over the terrain is now hard. Even though they're far outside the stamp radius they somehow changed.
I can't just select the whole mesh again and use the Smooth tool because that'd mess ut the various materials which I've painted. Some the the existing lines are just coloured edges and they'll disappear.

Anyone else experienced such problems with the Stamp tool? Any workarounds?

I will have a look at it. Thanks for the tip.

The problem is at the office everyone has their own set and layout for the toolbars so if one person needs to update some SU images then we end up with deviating images.

I'll add a request for custom aspect ratio.

Is it possible to export with a custom aspect ratio for 2D exports?

When I export the height and width is always linked to the same ratio.

When I export to animation I can choose custom ratio.

What's strange that with a fresh file I get one ratio. However, if I've exported an animation, or even just fiddled with the animation export options, then I get a different 2D export ratio. And that ratio doesn't match what I set in the animation export.

Anyone?

@john sayers said:

I wish there was an option to Tile the scenes, i.e create another row of scenes when screen width is exceeded.

Ditto!
Or even better, manually choose where it should break.

@edson said:

@thomthom said:

When you download V-Ray material you need to relink the bitmap textures.

and how does one do that?

You have to examine the material in the V-Ray material editor. Whenever you see a large M inspect it and see if it's a Bitmap material. If it is, then you have to relocate the bitmap file on your computer.

Once you've relinked a material you can export it. Then you don't have to reload the bitmaps every time you import the material.

Just thought I'd share this tip.

I often end up with many scenes for my models. Often it's various sets for various purposes. For instance, a common set is sun and shadow studies where I have many scenes for the various times of day which is of interest.

What I've come to do recently, in order to make the number of scenes more manageable, is:

• Create a new SketchUp file.
• Import the original model as a Component
• Create my scene set

Whenever the original changes I just reload it.

Another benefit is that I can reuse the scene set with another file. I often have to do the same sun study and the projects is within the same city. So I've saved an empty file with just the scenes with the various sun and shadow settings. Whenever I need a new sun study for a new project I just open my sun and shadow template and import the project into it as a component.

@remus said:

All you really get when you buy the pro version is the exporters.

Personally i tihnk its only really worth it if you work in an environment where you need to be able to switch between apps easily, even then its possible to convert GE 4 files (which can be exported from SU free) fairly easily using blender.

And High Quality print.

@zootsuit said:

Hi there.

I'm working on a large scale residential estate for an architectural project. I have a PDF of the plan site which I want to use as a base to trace over in Sketchup.

I have converted the PDF to a jpeg in Photoshop then imported it and used it as a material on a base rectangle. The problem is that it needs to be scaled up so much that the image is very blurry and hard to trace accurately. Is there a better way I can do this ? Should I model on a much smaller scale , i.e the original size of the jpeg, then scale the model to size after? If I try to scale the Jpeg up in Photoshop the file size goes through the roof!

Many Thanks

Zootsuit

Is it a bitmap embedded within the PDF? Or is it vector graphics? If it's vector you can use Illustrator or similar to open it and then export the lines as DWG/DXF.

I wore out the F5 key...

@remus said:

As a general guide:
ATI cardsare not quite so well supported as nvidia cards, although some of them work fine it can be a bit hap hazard.
Nvidia 7000 cads are generally a pretty safe bet.
Nvidia 8000 cards are pretty safe as well, altohugh i tink there has been a few issues with the 8800gt card, this has probably been resolved, though.
Nvidia 9000 cards are probably ok, altohugh i dont really know as i dont know anyone whos got one.
Nvidia quadro fx cards are a very safe bet, although they are expensive.

I've got a 8800GT card on Vista and it's working fine. At least by itself. If I use my old 6800GT to power my other monitor all OpenGL apps becomes dead slow. But running both monitors of the 8800GT and everything is quick and snappy.

I found some into in their last newsletter in regards to units that I'll look into.
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/about/newsletter/

If a Vue unit is 10cm then I should be able to just import and scale everything down by 0.01. However doesn't work either. The units isn't off by factors of tens.

I've set Vue's diaply options to mm, and when I import a model where an object is 1737x883x50 in SU, it comes out as 6841x3499x196mm in Vue. That's importing with no scaling.

@chippwalters said:

I use SU Pro a lot with Vue. I work in feet units in SU and Imperial Auto in Vue. I export as OBJ from SU and import it into Vue.

To convert from SU to Vue:
Export from SU as OBJ with the following settings:
X Export only current selection (optional)
X Triangulate all faces

X Swap YZ coordinates (Y is up)
Units = inches

Import into Vue the OBJ with the following settings.

X Center object (leave off if you want to maintain center)
X Resize object
x Manual resizing = 0.254

Hope this helps.

-Chipp

Why don't you import the SU file directly? Is it more reliable using the OBJ format?

You said you worked in feet in SU, why do you have to manually resize by 0.254 in Vue when Vue is using imperial units?

Another thing. Some object doesn't remain at their original position when I import SU files in Vue.

Has anyone here used Sketchup with Vue? What's your experience been like? Cavecats, gottcha's?

I'm having a look at it now, but I seem to be running into some scaling problems. For instance, when I render everything is hidden behind coulds because it's too large. And painting ecosystem doesn't seem to fit unless I scale the ecosystem units first. I've checked that Vue uses metric units. SU models I make is all in mm.