Posts made by todamgood4U

Welcome! This is a great place, and probably the best SketchUp forum available. Check out the rendering section on the different programs people have used. This place is well organized so finding what you are looking for shouldn't be too hard. People are very friendly around here so don't worry about asking questions.

What I like even more are his links! Tons of blueprints available at each of them. Planes, trains and automobiles are abundant as well as military, Star Wars and everthing inbetween.

Invader ZIM, you might want to take a look. I am sure you'll find the truck you are looking for and can even set it up to start working on it yourself.

http://www.smcars.net/forums/ (This site requires registering, but well worth it!)
http://www.the-blueprints.com/index.php?blueprints/ (no registration and a huge selection)
http://www.suurland.com/ (this guy even has tutorials on setting it up correctly. Even though he shows it in other programs, the concept is the same for SketchUp.)

I even found complete blueprints for the car I have been looking for for the last 2 years. So now when I get done with this project that has been eating away 16 hours from every day, I am going to start building my first car project. I'm pretty excited!

Very cool. Figured you to be a bike guy with that avatar and such. I used to own a gixxer back before I moved to Cali and always went to the Road America races with my bike buddies. Been looking at purchasing another. I like what Yamaha has done in the last several years. 180 from those heavy steel framed, overpriced YZF and FZR's from the early to mid 90's. Honda has always had a good 900RR and been doing it right with their bigger bikes (never liked their 600's).

I too am into cars. I grew up in the midwest on Chevy this and that and when I saw my first 1990 Nissan 300ZX, I was in love. It was my dream car. Well, fast forward a few years and I finally am out of school and able to buy my dream car. Purchased a 1991 300ZX in clean condition and have been modifying it ever since. To date, I have about $45,000 into it and will be adding another 10K in the next 6-9 months. I started out with an a non turbo 2+2 version and started building it for quickness, but as you probably know, the NA is limited, and you can't just slap some turbos on those cars. So I worked on the rest of the car, adding a $25,000 Rockford Fosgate stereo system rated at about 10,428 watts and full video including Playstation 2, TV tuner, DVD, 5.1 surround, etc. before most even knew flip out screens existed. With all that power in the back, I realized I needed more power up front. Not sure what to do next, I just waited and spent the year taking my car up and down California to all the shows. I placed 1st at every show including Import Showoff (second biggest West Coast show). I would usually take home 2-3 trophies every time for Best Nissan, Best Interior, Best Sound System, etc. Even got it photographed and put in Car Audio and Electronics with a 3 page layout. I was suppose to have another 2 photoshoots, but as luck would have it, my show car, which was also my daily driver, started having engine issues. Brand new motor from ATK ($3500) with less than 12K miles started knocking. They admitted it was manufacturing defect, but refused to fix it because it was 2 months out of warranty. Go figure. So it sat in the garage for a couple months. I spent some time thinking about my options when after a freak August rain, my buddy rolled his 1994 Twin Turbo over with very minor damage. So minor, it didn't even scratch the rear wing. Engine and tranny were untouched and infact, he had just put a new engine, upgraded turbos and new tranny in 500 miles prior to rolling it. He had over 10K in that alone and was offered a buy back at 3K. I told him I would buy it and he took the offer and I gave him the cash. Now I'm in the process of doing the swap and when it's all said and done will be pusing over 600HP.

Very cool. Are you a car/import/tuner nut?

You just put the ruby in the C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 6\Plugins and then restart sketchup. They should appear in a drop down menu from top or right click depending what they are.

@unknownuser said:

TDG4U, what spec machine are you running the renders on? I'm interested so I'll know what kind of times I can expect from various spec machines.

I'm running a Gateway Intel Pentium 4 3.6GHz, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 video card and dual 24" widescreen monitors.

Overall, I've been very happy with it. Been using SketchUp on it since v4.

My Kerky render that I let run from Friday noon till 8:00 AM this morning was at 43% anti-aliasing. I stopped it, but got this as the result.

I am in the process of doing the site and background landscape at the moment. In the next month or so, I'll run another render and see what pops out.

Fixed first image so you can now view full size.

Enjoy.

Sorry for the first image not working correctly. I'm not sure what's up with that. It was made on a pc and opens just fine locally. I had the same issue when I posted it over at GSU. I thought maybe it was a board issue, so never bothered to check it here. I'll get it corrected today and upload another.

Thanks everyone for the excellent comments. Definitely makes me want to keep going. I'm leaving early today, so maybe for fun I'll run another render over the weekend and see what I end up with on Monday morning.

Left this run overnight and 13 hrs later was at 3% ray tracing. I stopped it and figure I will finish the site work before taking that journey. But this gives a good idea what it will look like with the neon turned on, which the actual playhouse will also have.

This is the post I made over at "old" place. But since uploads are available here, I am going to start sharing here.

---

Ok, I am partially finished, but enough to show. I decided to show it here since I gave up the teaser and no one has taken a guess as what it might be.

It's a charity event we do every year for less fortunate kids. All the builders get together and build a playhouse that is designed by volunteer architects. They are built and put on display for a few weeks to let the public see them and then they are given away.

Last year we designed Spongebob's pineapple house, which was the biggest hit at the show, runner up being my old firm's entry of Shrek's house. This year we decided to do something from the movie Cars...and Flo's V8 Cafe was picked. The design, which I am not overly happy with because the designer didn't bother to notice some very important details before submitting the drawings to the builder. I did the SketchUp of it complete with framing and chose the colors. I did note the details, but was too late in getting them corrected. Oh well, maybe next year.

Anyway, here is the drawing as presented to the builder completed in Layout and printed to 1/2"scale. I have to say, when Layout gets out of beta, it sure will be a nice tool!!

For fun, I wanted to model the whole corner complete with valve covers, spark plugs (as shown in the teaser image), pistons, gas tanks, etc. Still looking for the gas tanks by the way if anyone has one. I still need to do most of the site work, but I'll get it all done at some point. Who knows, maybe I'll do the whole little town.

I'm not sure if I understand your question correctly, but if you want to move a lot of things, you can make a selection box around what you want to move by clicking and holding from upper left to lower right (solid line). This will "grab" everything inside that box. Clicking and holding from upper right to lower left will "grab" everything inside that box AND everythin gyou cross through (dashed line)

Also, everything becomes sticky once you create it. Meaning, you can't just pull a face off a box and move it. To do that, you need to make it a group to "unstick" it and then it would be movable.

To move multiple objects (faces, lines, components and groups, you can click, then shift click to add/subtract, ctrl click to add, or shift+ctrl click to subtract.

Hope this helps.

OMG...I'm so with you on this one!

Actually the "walkstation" would be good for that. They are taking orders soon...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/workplace_treadmill;_ylt=AvksBI7JGDILEwRRyeTZ0SDq188F

@shaun tennant said:

yeah, um, michael, yeah, if I could just get you to add a "reality" portion to the script, that'd be good mmkay? I'm just going to get you to make it so that after you make your dream car with a couple fast clicks, the ruby will make it actually real mmmkay?

Oh, and I'm going to need to have you come in on saturday to add in lots of custom car designs that you need to design yourself to this ruby. I'm going to get you to include a cover on your TPS report to as per the memo also mmmkay?

Thanks.

HAHAHA...office space...one of the bestest movies ever.

Quite nice...and timing was perfect. I'll fit it into my model this week.

Very nice, thanks!

Adding another small lot massing model.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!
Morrison-Fite Plan 2B.skp

I am going to start off by sharing a massing model we use for sit studies and just see how thing might lay out. It's acurate to an extent, but remember, it IS just a massing model. I have enough of these to create a whole community. If people are really interested, I can post more.

Enjoy.
Morrison-Fite Plan 3C.skp

Ah yes...much better. Did you get those ACO files I sent the other day? If so, do you think they will be of use?