TIG...thanks for the advice. I guess I am trying to make the program behave in a way that I truly understand. The best example of this is in the youtube videos I mentioned in an earlier post. http://www.youtube.com/user/ely862meg. In these vids, Ely APPEARS to simply offset a section off of a ready-made wheel, then starts adding and modifying a wire-frame-style model....it SEEMS as tho he just adds and adjusts sections to suit his desires. This type of modelling makes sense to me and I believe it would be easier for me to use. But i have yet to make sketchup behave like this.....I MISTAKENLY assumed it was the advanced plug-ins he was using. Push-pull, I understand....now how do I push-pull exactly where and when I want?
You are right, I need to LEARN the program and its intricacies BEFORE I attempt to be so bold as to attempt these types of projects.
I guess I just "SEE" all the possibilities in my mind and get excited...I WANT THIS.
On another note, i DO consider it an honor to hear from a moderator...thank you for your attention....it lets me know I am NOT just another hollow voice on the net

thanks again,

Tony

sure...just lemme get my brain wrapped around this program! i was reading the daily catchup last night and saw the "eye candy" posts....WOW!!!! that boat was awesome...and the water effects were spectacular.

Thanks for the replies Jim and Numbthumb. I guess part of my problem stems from the fact that I have NO budget for this hobby and must learn to do it all for free. I-mistakenly- thought that getting the whole ruby package would save me time in the future. I thought that if I needed the plug-in, I would have it...as opposed to getting in the middle of a project and realizing that I need this particular plug-in and have to stop and go looking for it. I didnt even stop to consider that some of them may be incompatible with others.
I have watched the training videos several times and looked up even more tutorials on youtube and visited many sites and looked through many galleries and I have seen some amazing things done with this program.
I basically started over by un-installing Sketchup and deleting all evidence of the entire google folder from my hard-drive and deleting all the plug-in zip files and totally re-installing a copy of sketchup 7.1. The error messages went away.
The kind of work I will do with the program varies ALOT because I have so many interests. I am into scale radio control aircraft--VERY detailed flying models. With today's economy, computer pixels are MUCH cheaper than balsa wood, so this program gives me the ability to build detailed models in 3-d and even convert them to plans at a later date. I am also into all automobiles as well as historic buildings and I am a BIG history buff...especially World War 2...so I could even imagine 3-d dioramas.

i am not new to art or modelling, but i am new to Sketch-up and 3-d in general as well as this forum. My name is tony and i am quite lost.
first problem i encountered is a problem with plug-ins in sketch-up 7.1 free edition. i downloaded a file named us_all_scripts to my desktop, then extracted it to the plug-ins folder in sketch-up as i was instructed to. the file came from the ruby site. now i get a whole host of error messages when i open sketch-up. essentially it tells me it cannot open the files because they do not exist.
i have spent weeks toying with this program and found it simple to use in many ways, but very hard to master...there are a LOT of tutorials out there but most seem WAY too advanced for a user such as myself or WAY to easy and redundant to teach me anything i havent learned already. i am just past "brand new" and not quite "beginner".
saw a vid on youtube by ely862meg modelling a super-car in sketch-up and was amazed at this person's talent. here is the link http://www.youtube.com/user/ely862meg. this is the type of modelling i would like to do, but as you can see the vid is VERY fast. links from his vids and site took me to kerkythea and i am interested in learning to use it as well.
for those that will inevitably ask: i am using free edition sketch-up version7.1 on a dell XPS420 with three gigs of ram and a quad-core processor running windows vista service pack 1 and my graphics card is an ATI radeon HD 2400 PRO

can someone point me to the right place to get started?