@grizzler said:

i just want to use the same style on each scene in order to export them as jpegs with them all having the same style.

There's no need to edit (or make new) style for each of your scenes - you can simply re-use the same style - like this...

• Enter you first scene.
• Create your new style, name it and save it.
• Right click the scene tab (or scenes window thumbnail) and choose "Update".
• If a dialogue appears, make sure that "Style and Fog" is ticked, and press "update". This "links" the style so that it is remembered next time you select the scene.
• Navigate to a different scene.
• Choose the new style that you just created (just select - no need to edit!)
• "Update" this scene just like the previous one from the tab or scenes window. Your custom style will now always be used for this scene too.
• Repeat for each scene that you would like to share the same appearance.
  The way this works is incredibly handy - each scene just has a "link" to the style definition. So if you decide you want to change your custom style, just edit and update the style - and it will automatically update the appearance of every scene that you linked it to.

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@laurent diaz said:

Do you mind sharing one model (or a part of it) having the issue to our support mail address (support at spread3d.com)?

I'll see if I can post an example - just need to check with boss/clients first as the models are not truly mine to share.
Think you're right about the format. After checking a few more models, it seems that some of our stock company logo images etc. are the tricksy ones - if I convert them from TIFF to JPEG and re-texture, the models work just fine (the TIFFs are very old, I have no idea if they have any compression applied).

@krisidious said:

@unknownuser said:

is pure pants.

I don't know what that means but it's cracking me up...

In the UK pants = underpants (if you saw the state of some of my "shreddies", you'd get why it is such a derogatory term!). Don't remember anyone ever using "pants" in this sense when I was a kid - it seems to have taken over from the old favourite "knickers!".

Looks very handy - just the sort of thing I need for client presentations.
So far it works pretty well on my system (Dual-Core E5200 2.5GHz, 1Gb RAM, G45 Mobo graphics) - tested with the demo's, and a random sample of my SU models.

Hopefully, I'll have time for a more thorough test later in the week, but I have noticed a couple of niggles...

• Models exporting without textures. The textures on the demo models look fine, so maybe this is just a "Free" edition limitation?
• Z-plane clipping on very small or large models. I use SU for product design - actual size items have many parts measuring only a few mm, but I often model 1000 times bigger to get around the "small faces" problem (i.e. mm->m). Zooming in too far on "actual size" models, or zooming out to see all of a "supersize" model results in nasty clipping (much more so than within SU). Re-scaling gets around this easy enough, but if the z-limits cannot be altered, maybe there should be some kind of warning whenever the imported model is over- or under-sized.

But all-in-all, I'm impressed so far - particularly by how simple it is to use (for modeller and 'client').

When a drug dealer profits from his nefarious activities, it is now common that modern justice not only hits him with fines and or custody - it also seizes his ill gotten 'profits' so that the illicit assets can be used to the benefit of society.
Just sayin'...

I think the best way to choose plugins is to let practical work make the decision for you. (for any app' with plugin facilities).

Just get cracking on with some models using the standard tools, and identify..
A) Things you need to do, but the standard tools can't manage it.
B) Complex actions that you need to repeat a lot, and really want a quicker way to do it.
C) Recommendations from other forum users who are trying to solve the same problem as you.
...then do a targeted search for a plugin to fit exactly what you need.

I find this much better than just loading lots of plugins "just to try them"; no matter how clever they are, they will just become HDD clutter if they are not truly useful to your models - and that clutter can be a real pain, as plugin file management (one big folder!) is a totally "manual" experience, and you will be glad that you have only a "slim" collection if you ever need to diagnose slow-boots or bugsplats!

There also comes a point when you can have so many plugin, that going back to the standard tools becomes faster than looking for some tutorial videos, to remind yourself how a rarely-used plugin actually works! So my big tip is this - consider carefully which plugins you DO NOT need, and eliminate them from your HDD mercilessly so that SU boots fast, and you are not swamped by extra toobars/menu items etc. that are no longer meaningful.
That will leave you enough (tidy!) room in your plugin folder for an occasional "experiment" with a new crazy plugin when you need inspiration to break out of "designer's block".

Hi Again,
re: Bug Report
I've now checked out the plugin on a couple of other machines in the office - all working perfectly; an excellent piece of Rubying!
The alternative machines all have a clone of the plugin folder on the troublesome one - so it looks to be a problem with the OS or SU installation on my main machine. The only bugsplat dump that I managed to find was just a mess of raw binary - but if you have the ability to decode it, I can post it up if you think it may be useful.
Thanks for your efforts so far - but as I seem to be the only user having trouble, please don't expend too much effort on this lone bug report. As it happens, our IT team are just setting me up with a new PC - so with any luck, I'll get to use your plugin to make some funky gear trains in a day or two anyway!

@chrisglasier said:

...for use on line... ...the only owner being the manufacturer

Which brings its own problems - what if the software developer goes of business, or has massive problems with their servers?; the end user, who may be a professional relied upon to get a job done, is left without the tools to do their job - possibly part way through a project. And if the software is unavailable permanently, one then has to waste time learning a completely new tool set (always assuming that there is a suitable alternative).
Also, once software is web only, there is no longer the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" option, as only the latest upgrade will be made available (our machine may be to old to run it, we may have a legacy OS, or simply dislike the new version). This gives the largest (and most profitable) software corporations much greater leverage to arbitrarily increase prices, knowing that the end user has no choice other than to use the latest version or risk changing to a possibly incompatible new platform.
I agree with Gaieus, consumer choice and the policing of rights violations should remain two separate issues. Companies enter the software marketplace with their eyes open, and the risks are spelled out clearly in many places. If they don't wish to risk their investment in an industry with security problems, then no-one is forcing them to - penalising law-abiding users only increases the perception that they are their own worst enemies.

Hello Again,
Apologies for my earlier bug report being rather scanty - had to dash out of the office mid-way through posting. So here is some hopefully more useful detail...

The dialogue box appears OK, and I am able to enter new values. The 'splat' happens as soon as I press the 'OK' button - too quickly to see if there are any messages in the Ruby console.
I checked whether it was a clash with some other 'rogue' plugin by temporarily clearing my plugins folder so that 'SPGears' was the only one available. I've also tried using alternative units and having some/none other geometry in the SU session. Sadly, a bug splay every time.

I'm using SU Pro v8 (latest maintenance release to 8.0.14346) on WinXP, and my PC is nice and stable with my usual plugin collection.
Got my fingers crossed this can be fixed without too much trouble - I've been after a simple, versatile way to draw gears for a while, and your screenshots have really whetted by appetite!

Welcome, and thanks for sharing.

No joy getting your plugin working so far, I'm sorry to say - instant Bug Splat.
Does it require Sketchy Physics in order to draw the gears? If so, a non SP version purely for drawing them would be really nice.

I don't know of a solution for .dxf files, but there is a plugin from FlightOfIdeas that works how you describe for exporting .svg files - gives a context menu item to export a dimensionally accurate vector file regardless of face oreientation. I use this regularly to export faces to prepare parts for laser cutting.

Hi There,
You may be able to do what you want using only SU by exporting an AutoCAD .dwg file - but only if you have the 'Pro' version, SU 'Free' does not have this feature.
To make the export work correctly...

1. Your model units must be inches or millimetres (maybe metres is possible in newer Corel versions?)
2. In SU, turn off perspective with the menu item 'Camera -> Parallel Projection'
3. Using the 'little house' menu bar, select one of the standard orthographic views (top, front, left, etc...)
4. Now export the file (Export -> 2D Graphic), selecting the AutoCAD .dwg format.
5. Now import this file into Corel - after selecting the file a pop-up window will appear. Choose the units to match your SU model, and make sure that the "Reduce Nodes" option is NOT ticked. Place the drawing by just hitting 'Enter' - if you try to place it with the mouse, the scale will be changed.
6. Use Corel's 'Weld' and 'Close Curves' tools to tidy up the imported drawing (shapes will be made of many individual lines that are not joined together).

Take care when cleaning up the drawing in Corel - for 3D objects you will often get many superimposed lines in the imported file. I find that it is sometimes simpler to use the import only as a guide for 'tracing' new Corel geometry (for making true vector curves etc.).

If you are using the free Sketchup version, you may be able to use the 'SVG export' plugin from FlightOfIdeas - but this only exports individual faces, so there will be much more work to re-construct the drawing.

Welcome to the forum.

Your first problem sounds like it is to do with a strange behaviour of DC's.
Any time that you change a DC property, it will become a new component definition - if you look in the component browser window, you will see the names get changed (suffixed with "#" followed by a number). Once this has happened, the part has a new independent definition within SU, and will no longer pick up changes made to the original "parent". Very annoying in my opinion.
On the other hand, if you interact with a DC with regular tools such as scaling, or painting on a new colour (i.e. not by altering a DC property), the part retains its original definition, and remains related to other copies.

There are two ways I would suggest tackling your colour problem.

1. SU's built in colour 'inheriting system'. Assume that, within your component, there are some parts which you painted with a colour during construction, and others which are unpainted (or painted with the 'default' colour).
   When you use the paint tool to paint the whole component (i.e. you haven't double clicked to go inside it), only the unpainted parts will pick up the new colour. This 'inheriting' of colours is nested through layers of sub-components.
   There's a good example of this HERE.
   The great thing about this is that is does not involve messing with DC properties, and will work for regular components, and even groups.

2. When editing your DC equations etc. you should see that there is a nested structure to the parameters, with a heading for each group and component within the 'parent'. The trick here, is that you can make a custom attribute for the 'parent', and then use it as a 'global variable' within the attributes of the nested parts.
   So in your case, you might define a 'global' attribute at the top level where the user uses a click to cycle through the colouts. The sub-assemblies would then each refer to this variable in order to set their individual attributes to follow the 'global' setting.

A useful tip is to use SU's 'auto-entry' feature to cross reference attributes.
Just start typing your equation - when you need to insert an attribute reference, simply click on its label in the DC window - a correctly formatted reference will be magically inserted into your equation - and you can then continue typing to complete your definition.

@tig said:

PieAlongPath

Mmmmm, nom-nom-nom!

The moon landings had one critical aspect lacking in most of the more recent space projects...

...it was a race!

A race with real live all American heroes vs. the dreaded 'commies', in a time when folks still fully expected the eventual winners to plant their flag and begin colonisation a few weeks later, with all kinds of cool 'stuff' like they saw in the movies.
And then they just bought back some stones and dust, and some holiday snaps of a big grey rock with dents in it. Hell, it wasn't even made of cheese after all that effort!

Sadly, most of Joe public don't give a rodent's posterior about the scientific value of space exploration any more (or science in general)- all they see is geeky people chewing their way through this boring stuff called 'data', and maybe if you're lucky a few pretty false-colour pictures of something incomprehensible.
Stick some random people they never met before in a field and get them to slug it out to see who is best at doing something utterly pointless - they'll buy in some beers, and sit there glued to it.
I apologise for my cynicism - but, as I see it, unless/until the Chinese catch up enough to lend space exploration an element of competition again, I just don't think it has the 'bread and circuses' appeal to win anything like the public backing that it enjoyed back then. Folks might accidentally miss a celebrity wedding or some such trivial nonsense, and that just wouldn't do!
At the very least, the public like to see real people "boldy go" up there, so that they can identify with their trials and tribulations (tribble-ations?) - but that is the most expensive, inefficient and scientifically restrictive way to find out anything of value. I'm not suggesting that it is a worthless thing to do, but when projects are struggling for funding, it just isn't going to happen.

Still, I don't really feel as if our generation has 'nothing'. Maybe what we have is less 'visceral' somehow, but I never cease to be fascinated by the incredible things that have been discovered by projects like the Hubble telescope etc. In fact, I kind of like the idea that these incredible far-away things are not sullied by humans going up there to 'sensationalise' and trivialise them - science without the 'soap-opera' aspect.

I doubt that the aliens want us out there anyway - at least not until we've learned to behave ourselves in our little play-pen a bit better!

Seems promising.
The use of oversampling in digital audio has been standard for a very long time now - it allows for much less severe anti-aliasing filters to be used (i.e. deliberate blurring to avoid artefacts). The impossibility of making a perfect anti-aliasing filter that butts right up to the limit of the output resolution was one of the reasons for the relatively poor top-end of early CD players etc.(high frequencies being analogous to detail in images). Sampling the signal at a higher rate than you really need relaxes the engineering tolerances required of the filtering, enabling improved quality.
The theory behind digitising signals is the same regardless of the analogue source, or the number of dimensions, so it seems perfectly sensible that digital images should start to use the same processes that are now considered standard in the more mature field of digital audio.
Can't wait to hear them try to explain to consumers when they start deliberately adding noise to the images to make them look better (dithering)!

@hieru said:

The above clearly says...

I understand what the extract is getting at yes - but I am fortunate enough to have had a good education, and am old enough to have had many work contracts to ponder before signing on the dotted line. (and I took the effort to actually read it!)
But not everybody is so fortunate - what is wrong with...
perpetual = for ever
sublicensable = share it with friends
derivative work = the one you changed the colour of
Even when the words used in EULAs do appear common-sense, they may have very specific non-intuitive meanings when used legally.
In reality, the majority of such agreements are signed by folks not able to fully understand what they are signing (that is not intended to sound demeaning) - what else are folks meant to do?- you could not possibly use a PC for anything if you are not prepared to pretend that you read it, understood it, and tick "I agree".

I think that like the EULAs of many "community" sites, the 'legalese' is used to obscure the true intent of the agreement - not for the peace of mind of end users, but to protect the site host from being prosecuted for 'aiding and abetting' illegal activity.
The EULA is Google's way of saying "protecting your copyright is not our problem."

Assuming that the baseline is the same length, those two arcs do not share the same radius - the 'across the flats' version is slightly larger. This is because SU always takes the radius from centre to an apex - the standard arc has lines slightly within the drawn diameter, and No.13 extends slightly beyond.
Whether this matters probably depends on what you're modelling and what the purpose of the model is - but I think there does need to be a consistent method of determining the 'nominal' radius, for those folks who need to dimension their drawings.
A quick way to draw the alternative would sure be handy though.

He he, cooking - now I wish someone had taught me that! (only offered to girls at my old school from what I remember - only boys in tech' drawing and woodwork too!).

For 3D - just buy your kids some Legos - better than all the engineering textbooks I ever read!.