This morning I started SU8, the first thing I noticed was the style I have used for years as default went poof. So I go to change the style to what I want, and try to save it as default. I got an access denied error. Then I got a message that parametric.rb went poof also. It was not in my plugins folder, so I reinstalled it, things were good. Now after I got things working as they should, another error pops up periodically "0.skb" access denied.

I am pretty sure this is not necessarily a sketchup thing, but wanted to share this and see if anyone else has seen this behavior.

In an unrelated area does Sketchup Make do every thing SU8 does? Or is it one of these upgrade and get less features things, that have happened in the past?

Got my problem solved, what I was doing was not FAKs fault, apparently there is a issue with Follow me helix, and doing what I wanted, I went and got drawhelix13, good to go!

archydro.skp

Trying to make a screw conveyor, using Follow me helix, making a profile, then trying FAK, the result is not pretty, nor round as it should be. Quite frustrated at this point.

fakerror.skp

I cleared the IE cache as directed, the tools plugin acts like it is working, asks if I want to install etc. But nothing gets installed, I did it the old fashioned way, that still works
Windows Vista, SU8m2. No biggy but the plugin sounded handy. No I Haven't ventured into SU13 yet.

I have been using TopoShaper top make some terrains, the plugin works well, but I am faced with a problem (not related to the plugin)I have some canyon terrains and some have water in them, lakes, ponds. So to do this right make a "water" model and insert it into the terrain and move it to where it looks good. I end up with a water model and the terrain model. I tried intersecting the water with the terrain and vice versa. I have either water following the terrain (climbing hills) we know it doesn't do that. Or a large water model stuck under the terrain, it is flat, but is in places where there is no water. Any Ideas?

Fredo, works like a champ here, installation was a tad tricky (no I don't remember what I did to make it work). After p[laying with this a few days, I ran across a issue. The terrain I have is a lake with several high hills around it, I would like to make the water one material and the hills another material, I tried a few gradients, found one close enough to work, but when rendering I cannot make the water reflective and the hills not. The system recognizes the material as one material. I tried freehanding the water areas, but who would of thought water wasn't level?. I know this is not really about this great plugin, but related. If anyone has any ideas please share them.

Very cool Fredo!. Since I used to grab terrains from within SU that were supposed to be geolocated and truthful...I grabbed one today, used the contour tool, to generate the iso-lines then deleted the terrain I grabbed. Used TopoShaper to redo the terrain. It worked well after a few attempts thank you very much!. All is not perfect however, I tried to project a gradient material to the terrain, and I ended up with a bunch of different colored triangles, not a smooth texture, I will see if I can figure out what I did wrong...

SU/TWR, have a happy holiday season everybody!

That's what I did, then I made half columns, and corner columns. Actually doesn't look to bad.

As far as the sloping top goes, in the picture I posted, it looks like they just shaved the top to fit the slope. I don't have a bigger picture to look at.

Now then how would I make a column with a sloped top?

I just tried it again, and realized what I did, one of those duh moments, I had my profile outline in the wrong place.

I tried that Dave, I started with a square box and used the follow me tool, great, turned out just like I wanted, so I made a half wide rectangle, did the same thing with the follow me tool, only one face of the of the three, had the profile. I tried a couple of times, same result. That's when I started, looking in to cutting the full version in half. Also thanks to pbacot for the suggestion.

I tried that but failed, but I tried again and had success. Guess I didn't think it would be that simple;)

Today I made a nice column, but now I need half a column, that looks the same. I tried Zorro, but it can't cut straight, even in "front" or "top" view. I tried Section Cut Face, and managed to get the job done, after a few tries. Is there a better way to make half a column?

And the winner is, the Gilles technique, for ease of execution. I will try the other techniques also. Thanks guys!
I got to thinking in the real world, you wouldn't any one to fall of the steps, so I sandwiched the staircase between two walls, with an entrance at the bottom.

Here is what I need to do, I need a spiral staircase on the outsideof a 18 foot diameter tank. Here is what I tried so far. Using the draw helix plugin, I managed to make the perfect path around the tank, then I made a step 24x12x2"(nothing special here)I then used path copy, to copy the step up the helix, which worked...kind of, the steps were not aligned perpendicular to the path (no rotation). I tried a manual approach by rotating each step 7.5 degrees, then attaching the step to the helix, well, doing this operation, 48 times did not sound like a lot of fun.
I used SDs stairmaker plugin and made a standard internal spiral staircase, which will work for the project but....not what I wanted.

I just tried using the pin method for rotating a texture, with varied results. Is there a way to rotate the texture to a specific rotation, say 16 degrees without scaling the texture?

I hate drawing railings on staircases, that said this plugin works fine, but it would be better if it didn't have auto-smoothing, or an option that would allow the user to turn it off. I have to explode the group the plugin created to make the railing look right. I also have to add lines between segments of railing, to make the railing look sharper. Any thoughts?

Dave these signs are 3"x8", based on what is available on a couple of webpages that sell such things.

Dan, yup that pretty much nails it, if such a feature was implemented, even as an extension that can be turned "on" at the users discretion, like the sandbox tools.