More colour swatches, this time from Resene New Zealand http://www.resene.co.nz/comn/services/sketchup.htm#sketchup, also check out the bottom of the page, some useful colour/color tools down there

Have a look at this, a terrain and cloth draping discussion http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=21379&hilit=drape+cpoints

As thatched roofs are normally quite organic and a little lumpy, the above process plus maybe the addition of running the jitter plugin over it should help introduce some randomness.

It's probably using a sledgehammer to crack a nut but check out Kirill's LSS Toolbar, first image shows face to face via a path which should work:
https://googledrive.com/host/0Bwmt-Rax8alUNkFEMjZkOWhfRFU/index.html, also http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=47399&p=426612&hilit=kirill#p426612 and it would appear to be version 8

• I won't be upgrading any time soon either; the tide of rage from the early adopters makes me wary.

frv - it does seem latest VW does have more natural navigation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfTwNsjdf-E but go and have a look on their forum and see what users are saying e.g. VW 2013 has become a crashing monster: http://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=186680&Searchpage=1&Main=37293&Words=%2B2013&Search=true#Post186680.

Cost is another issue of course as while SU is about NZ$700, VW is around $4500 and SU has better support and a great forum/community!

A core difference is user experience eg on here (SU) the thrust of most questions is How can I...?, whereas on VW's forums it's Why can't I...?

I'm wary of VW overselling - I've used VW since 2005, and while I haven't tried the latest (I'm running 2012), I have seen a wide variety of odd program behaviour when attempting complex ops in VW.

Has VW introduced natural 3D navigation which compares with SU or Acad? If not it won't be a nice experience.

A few other oddities with VW to be aware of:
It uses Quicktime to display some functioning, but normally the version required will be well out of date, which can cause serious printing issues.

Raster images outside the viewport are included in .pdf output (means your pdfs will be HUGE), so you have to tile your images and put each tile in its own class to turn it off!

Additionally VW always had 'issues' with dimensionally large models (more than a K across)(very slow etc).

While it has some useful tools I tend to build all my stuff in SU and kerky and then do page layout in VW - the only cad I really do in VW is plant counting.

I believe it works better on a mac but have never seen it working there. I tend to put VW into inspiteof-ware, you don't do good work becauseof the program, you do it in spite of it, whereas SU enables you.

Implementing true arcs and circles would be a real game-changer,
but would it be possible?

Enable Excel to read SU directly (and OpenOffice etc.) - autocad can do this but it's a pita. Few other CADs have this.

OR put an integrated worksheet into SU to enable .excel-like analysis. Oh and make sure it can handle real job-size projects - a large planting plan can easily involve 500,000 plants.

AND/OR better support for component export to enable analysis in other programs, for instance counting plants - this IS possible, but lacking true-circles even the simplest symbol becomes a multitude of triangles (within a symbol) and needs cleaning up.

Seconding an option to have LO integrated into SU or at least open the api (as noted above) - maybe there could be two versions? or a way to completely switch LO off to free up resources for SU.

Also I do not know if 2013 LO has implemented this, but in SU8 LO it was not possible to have a symbol at different rotations on different LO pages, e.g. The North arrow.

Fix the thousands of toolbars in registry issue that we all have to deal with.
Fix plane clipping! - a bit of a passion-killer when you're doing a live present!

The ability to parse a feed from surveying equipment - from total stations to hand-held laser distance meters - to enable real-time site drawings. This could/would also enable SU to show dynamic info such as sensor data as a 3D field.

At the moment SU works well for me, but Rhino and Formz are improving all the time and when they have my point 2 above and improved their LO equivalents I will probably switch.

I would buy this if it was NOT subscription-based; many of us live in rather remote places, with patchy internet (southern or rural NZ being a case in point)

• always-on is not always possible.

why don't you use something like this: http://www.promap.co.uk/pricing.php, there seem to be cheap options and you can always do a screen grab and trace it .

Must remember to assume that free google data is usually only accurate to +/- 4-7metres vertically, whereas info from Promap and even OS is often drawn from LIDAR (laser radar) and is accurate to 200mm or better. Often the best way to do accurate terrain is to trace and loft a surface (using SU) from an accurate paper or screen map.

Ben,
knowing where you are located would give us a bit more context in order to help you; data quality varies a lot on a global basis. Does your city/county/state have an online GIS where contour data is shown? Even in NZ now some areas are accurately mapped with downloadable dxf files.

Also Google data has usually/often has an accuracy of +/- 7metres - it's mainly downgraded NASA data from the early 90's.

Even 'flat' images of accurate topo lines are useful - for instance have you done a search for nearby permit applications? Often these map terrain well outside their project area and then effectively publish online when they put their application in.
Are you near a major highway or railway? They often have their own high quality maps floating around the web....

Hi Chris, Google> "3dem" "mac"

Ben, What are you using for data? Your own lidar/point scan or someone elses?

Photomodeller US$2595.00 http://www.photomodeler.com/products/default.html

Check out macdem US25.00http://www.treeswallow.com/macdem/, I haven't used macdem, but have had good results with 3DEM which is a windows form of the same. This is primarily used to handle NASA terrain data.

Chris Fulmer from this site explains it here http://www.chrisfullmer.com/tutorials/sudem/index.html using 3DEM.

I've never had problems getting location data but recently I've got this:
"3D Warehouse has not been enabled by the administrator of the domain@mycompanyname.co.nz" I've followed the link that google provides but its all Greek to me. I use Gmail and pop it to my own account, and while google says to sign into another account I still get the same result. I've tried clearing the cache/deleting history but no luck.

Has this been disable outside the US or something? Will I have to go back to messing with free NASA or aster data? 'cause that wasn't much fun at all.

This http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=41885 might be what you need, but read the post associated with it carefully.

Also there's Chronolux (which I keep meaning to try out) http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=40569&p=374650&hilit=chronolux#p374650

cheers, nigel

Thanks TIG, I had no idea, overall SU is so much more user friendly: in Acad and Vectorworks if something like this happens a reinstall is the norm.

Thanks Dave - Window>Preferences>Workspace>reset workspace did the trick: I was reluctant to use it as I thought it would take Su back to its default toolbars which I think is implied by 'reset workspace'.

TIG what do you mean by a 'repair'?

Hi, my Entity Info dropdown has vanished (Window>Entity Info), funny thing is it's still ticked but there's nothing on screen. I haven't changed screen res recently and the only recent plugin (since the problem noticed) is Anton_s's Sketchup Fullscreen, although when I removed Sketchup Fullscreen and restarted I still have no entity box.

SU is 8.0.16846 PRO, system is Win 7.

Apart from .rb and .rbz I also keep the odd text file and .pdf to explain some plugins, along with a couple of folders for plugins that I only need occasionally and with these I install them and then put them back in the back when I'm finished, although none of this has ever caused an issue.

I include a list of my plugins folder with file and folder names in case that helps.

plugins_info.txt

Hi Charly

The .jgw file is key to the solution (I don't know what bpw and prj do, although the latter is probably the map projection), as it holds the real-world location coordinates and orientation for the centre of the top left pixel. Normally a dwg/dxf file will have an associated raster file, along with a jgw file which is simply a .txt file, which looks something like this:

1.000000
0.000000
0.000000
-1.000000
263111.187500
4375666.000000

where the bottom two lines are the upper left pixel coordinates.

Do you have Autocad or something similar such as Bricscad? If you do this http://www.centremapslive.co.uk/files/autocad_images.pdf shows how to bring the files into .dwg format. At least this way you'll have the images correctly positioned in space, and (assuming the image and dxf file are the same shape), you can then safely position the dxf under the image file.

Hi Charly

I've found a discussion on a linux forum which appears to be about decoding that data format, but my German's a little rusty... http://debianforum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=92002, seems like a lot of your countrymen and neighbours are fighting with this file format.

Partial solution (maybe) - copy a tile and change file extension to .txt and open in notepad; if file too large for notepad use metapad (freeware http://liquidninja.com/metapad/download.html). Do you see any obvious locational reference in the text?

Thanks Anton for the heads up on how to remove the sounds - please keep the sounds; I'm not exactly a life-and-soul-of-the-party type and not into playful stuff, but I don't want to rain on someone else's parade.