hpnisse, I have a question for you, well maybe more than that.
I have be using sp for about a month, I managed to make things work using examples I have found online, but nothing definitive.
My first question, I have an elevator in a model it is set for 132" and -132" or something like that. When I start the animation the slider goes to 0.5, as with other silder operated stuff. When I start the animation, the elevator moves to halfway up, so I have to use the slider to move it back down, I would prefer, that it stayed down until I wanted it to move. Same thing for a ramp on a vehicle, I want the ramp to stay in the "up", position until I wanted to lower it. How do I make this happen? or can I make this happen?

I took an old model of a datacomm chair I drew a year or so ago.
I was feeling a bit ornery last night and made a few mods, and rigged it with SP.
Here is your challenge, from where the chair is, in the model, you need to drive it across the parking lot over to the front of the building up on the sidewalk using one of the existing ramps.
Enter one of the open doors drive around inside the building and exit through one of the other doors, back on the sidewalk, and down one of the ramps(this is important it you try to jump the curb you will probably roll the chair).
Steer with rightx, drive with righty.
Have fun, and report back to this thread about your experience, with the Ultimate Commuter Chair

Have Fun

For me simple is good. Here is what I did, sort of following mitcorb's lead. I drew a line up and down from the origin, drew a line straight down the green axis, down the blue back to my original line at the origin making a simple rectangular plane. I exploded the terrain, moved my blue green rectangular plane, in a few feet, where I could see the terrain just sticking through it.
intersected the B+G plane with the model, erased the remaining terrain outside of the B+G plane. I then moved the plane to the other side of the terrain,repeated what I did previous. I now have a clean square edged terrain. I selected the plane and its boundaries,and deleted it.
And saved the terrain as a new group. A bit tedious but it worked!
FYI the terrain was about 3800 feet long on each side making up about 331 acres, that is a lot of area for a 16 foot SketchyPhysics rigged model to drive around in.
Thanks for your replies, guys I do appreciate it!

There used to be, or at least I thought there was, a plugin,or a technique that used the section tool as a way to shear unwanted, faces, and or edges from a model.
Ok here is what I need to do, I have a couple of DEMs imported into SU, of course they aren't square, narrower at the top (in the northern hemisphere) I would like to clean up the edges of the tins so they are square, or lined with an axis. A simple task for a box or plane, but when have many hills and valleys it is not so easy.

Ideas, suggestions?

Ok I have a simple thruster model I downloaded from the warehouse.
It works great with a slider the ui code is -(0.5-slider("thrust"))*4000, with nonautofreeze ticked on.
I tru to replicate this with my own model, it doesn't work, fact is the slider dosn't even show up. What the heck am I doing wrong?

I had issues with atdi as you know, I also had a problem with mapmart, you click the hidem link (any)then the begin search button at least in my case the next page doesn't load, even after a few minutes it never loaded. Well finally after scrolling down the page I found a button that worked then I jumped through some hoops (more hoops than Geocomm had). I am done with hoop jumping for now.
I had the best luck with Geocomm.
I found another piece of info on sketchup's help page, that said if you import any of the .ddf files extracted from a sdtm compressed file they all will load, looks like about 15-20 files all together, why? I don't have a clue.
I did download 3dem but didn't install it yet.
I clicked Alan's link and found a 7.5 DEM, thanks Alan, and thank all of you for your replies!

Hi gang, I am looking for a bit of advise. I am looking for a source for good dem (digital elevation model). Chris Fullmer has a page that helps but the links don't all work, well the links work, but one of the sites has issues with finding a page I was looking for.
Any ideas?

Thanks Gai, I will give it a shot

Hi all, I am looking for a plugin to make a copy of an object, and scatter them about. I have a terrain that needs rocks, I have rocks(sort of)and I need to copy and paste them to several "random" locations.
Any ideas?

Ok guys here is another toy to play with. Working with this model it occurred that even subtle changes to the model, effects it's behavior.
Running "bone stock" caught some good air off the wedgevalley jump,(second hill then a low area) landed pretty much flat with a rear tilt. I added a tall spoiler, running the same course, it becomes rear heavy and goes into a wheelie, and will probably roll sideways during a turn. With a smaller wedge spoiler (current version)slightly rear heavy but less likely to wheelie (but still will)
Max link here
speed set at 10, righty, rightx control.

SP is tough, try some simple stuff first, for example, spin the prop on your engine, which is very well done by the way.
If you get that to work reliably then move on to another item. On the engine/prop. Start by exploding the groups then make one group for the prop assembly, and one for the engine assembly. In the warehouse I have a simple wind generator.
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=eace30d21a3521305c5e8df5dc8d3d85
Start there to get some ideas how to proceed.

New modified version without flanges. The flanges would be cool, with a V-mod on the center of the wheel, so the balls don't land in a straight line, more random placement, in theory anyway.

rototrebwf.skp

I will do that, now it is spinning with the modified flanges, but the balls won't grop into the wheel.

OK here you go, share yout tips please!

I tried to do a rework but I broke it, with side flanges, and the higher drop, it might work if I can fix it. Of course I reworked the working model, anhd I don't have a copy.
Rule Number One in SketchyPhysics, save your work often. Rule Number Two, if you want to redo something make a copy and rework the copy, save your working original, if for nothing else for use as a reference.

I tried to make a working trebuchet, and failed three times to get the "swing" right. So I opted for a hightech version a "Rotary Trebuchet". Using a sphere as an emitter and tweaking the UI settings for a continuous supply of ammo. Here it is. needs more tweaking though.
[flash=420,315:130lzer2]http://www.youtube.com/v/Vgvu8JaJ8e4[/flash:130lzer2]

I would like to get the timing right, one ball per paddle, good throws at least 90% of the time.

I am probably wasting my time here again. I have a model that will use a pin that runs in a slot on a floor, well it is supposed to. When I start the animation the model floats up until the bottom on the pin is flush with the X-Y plane, then the wheels don't touch, and the model doesn't move. Ideas?
I tried making the wheels "taller", and the pin longer, the model now floats up further to make the pin flush, with the X-Y.

I might be able to figure it out, if I had a place to start, mainly I am interested in making, my models do different stuff. I have played around enough to have a basic understanding of the UI, but it's very basic. Things like rightx and righty I can figure out, but things like
-rightx-righty+1, it works but why? and whats the +1 all about?
A place to start would be like what commands there are, and how are they used. There is zero documentation on this kind of stuff that I can find.

Thanks for the answer Chris, so I was wrong, someone did answer, just not the answer I was hoping for. I love SketchyPhysics, most of the time the things I make work as expected. If I had a "manual" to go from I would revise it and make a thorough user guide. But just pokin' and hopin', ain't workin'.

No one will probably answer, but I will try yet again.
I have a servo, controlled by (leftx)that part works good, but when I run the simulation the part I am moving goes to halfway. I want it to start at 0 (straight out horizontal) in a 0-60 range. I tried a couple of things in the UI but I have had no success.
Ideas?

@edtronix said:

If one downloads a Sketchyphysics Model from 3D warehouse directly into Sketchup it needs to be Exploded first in before running it else there will be a Bug Splat!

Never had that issue, but you need to make sure that you are running the same version of SP as the downloaded model, this has been my experience anyway.
Bug Splats are a way of life when using SP, you just keep going, and if you have more than two or three splats on one model, then you may need to figure out why.