Nice Max, you've even got a gardener watering the lawn! Not often that engineering drawings contain even a little humor.

It'd sure be great to have less clicking (version 8 here), I have two screens and for some reason the dialogs come up on alternate screens - it's like watching tennis - or playing pong!

Mike, Interesting - Don't know if you've heard of waste exchanges, where say, I have 300 tonnes of broken bricks, and you have a hole you need filling in, or you need broken brick for a special concrete etc. etc
e.g. http://www.nothrow.co.nz/

Waste exchanges are basically the start of a spectrum that goes thru to a discipline called 'industrial ecology' e.g. http://www.is4ie.org/ which involves swapping tangible 'wastes' and less tangible 'items' such as waste heat, gas flows from processes, an industrial oven that needs to stay hot 24/7 but is only used 7 hours a day and so on.

Unfortunately the downturn led to a number of initiatives getting put on hold, so so far there's a lot of plans and words but few networked factories (crosses fingers for the upturn).

It'd help us if you put your SU version in your profile, and please don't SHOUT - it's pretty hard on the eyes.

Looks like one of your stairways is not a true radius curve - would pay you to analyse your cad needs a bit more maybe...

try this for starters http://sketchucation.com/resources/tutorials/37-beginner/24-how-to-make-a-spiral-stair

This is a great plugin from SD Mitch: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=350969#p350969

and then Howard put up a DC http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=289%26amp;t=29484 which is pretty amazing

with so many different versions now would it be worthwhile (or possible) to have the subject line be automatically appended with the version in a user's profile. Often now I don't read posts if it looks like a 13 or 14 issue / interest, and this will get worse.

Agree with Pilou 100% - the plugin writers on here are coming from dozens of different design backgrounds and cultures - so you can expect some individuality in interfaces (and some unique and different approaches to problems), and fredo's tools are great tools - out of all the tools I suggest you start on something like vector or normal (multi-face push-pull) they're pretty amazing all on their own, some serious time savers here.

It differs in that you first predefine a line around your object for site grader to adjust the terrain to (oh and the line doesn't have to be on the same plane), and then you set/adjust the grader width; in the image above I tried several widths until I was happy with 4metres.

The stamp tool by comparison (while it has it's uses) is a very blunt instrument.

Instant site grader is your friend the grey band around the house is SiteGrader's work and blends nicely with the Google patch. Pro version (US15.00) is well worth it as you can vary the skirt width more than the free version.

I've tried Cutnfill and it's amazing (will buy hopefully this week), a real time-saver and produces nice red (fill) and green (cut) color-coded solids from surprisingly complex (i.e. real jobs) terrain.

Hi Mike, Why Auckland (I lived there 12 yrs)?, is it for a job, because if not there're much nicer parts - I live about 1600km (allow 4-5 days for a comfortable drive: there's a lot of windy bits) drive south of Auckland and have lived all over NZ , with the last 15 yrs in the South Island, which has much lower population and is more scenic than the other one, if you want any other info pls PM me

Inflation unknown as fudged by government, supposed to be 2%, but probably 6% as food basics keep climbing. unemployment ~6% and probably rising. banks all bailed out by current right wing gov. recent earthquake in Christchurch being hailed as economic boom, but really is just NZ$40 billion that could've been spent elsewhere. we still have free education and medical care.

NZ's core economic problem (IMO) is cultural, where the economy switches en masse to new ideas, so we've had rural booms (manufacturing has been gutted by a no-tariff system and most goods now imported from Asia - if we ever have a real oil shock, we'll be in trouble as there's little industrial capability left) based on: kiwifruit, deer, forestry, grapes, a brief flirtation with olives, and now dairy farming. But at core the focus is on quantity, so the result is a sudden correction, either when the market saturates, our competitors catch up or a disease occurs - most crops underlying this are monocultures with the attendant disease risk - e.g. kiwifruit got a virus and died off.

Rural land prices being driven up by dairy boom, but Rabobank has reported that this should end soon as we have no competitive edge, and the quality edge is falling off - it's difficult here (read - unhelpful/antagonistic government) to be an organic (or be environmentally aware) farmer. Farm debt is nz$50 billion and becoming a concern. Monsanto has been visiting a lot trying to influence government and ensure tht organic farming etc never happens (very little reporting on this though as most media Fairfax controlled, also anything technical here seen as progress, also ecological solutions are difficult to monetize and so are a threat to corporations - sounds paranoid but "by their fruits shall you know them").

Forestry has been hard hit as previous gov. signed kyoto, while the right-wing were too gutless to pull us out, and with the carbon price collapse no one is planting trees - rules here around carbon and trees are so confusing that growers have become wary of planting. The dairy boom is also at work here too as poorer land that should've gone to forestry is being made into pasture.

house prices heading towards another bubble. we still have free education and medical care, although health insurance is a good idea as queues are long, cost is quite low though.

A bit like a smaller version of Canada in that each region has its own economy, not that government aportions funding back to the contributing areas - farming makes the money, but most money spent in the cities, so rural roading, hospitals and telecoms generally suffer. And all cities are on major faultlines / volcanoes so that's a winning strategy eh !?

we have a right wing government who are constantly straining to sell off state assets, mine the oceans, legalise GE, frack everything and generally *&^% the planet, as well as run off to war whenever the US whistles.

our climate is seriously out of whack, with extended droughts, winters (generally) much warmer than usual, a dramatic increase in tornados! and larger, more eratic storms. What interests me about climate reporting is how little media discussion there is about the possible causes of the eratic weather - this (http://blogs.channel4.com/liam-dutton-on-weather/weakening-jet-stream-means-stormy-outlook/5923) is one of the few pieces that explores some causes.

That said I've traveled a lot and this is still the best spot on the planet, but it's sure getting expensive to live here.

Thanks for this Ash - A neat plugin - instant satisfaction ! no loading, or switching on toolbars, it simply works .

I wouldn't mind paying something for this plugin - it sure will save some time (and time really is money) - with an (overly complex) file, I recently changed all my broadleaf to fluoro green, when I thought I made the one I was working on unique .

Thanks Deereei, I hadn't thought of that,

and Pbacot, yes - I was looking at Artrage last night http://www.artrage.com/, it's moved along a lot since I last saw it, and with its layers and blending, it should do fine (and is probably as automatic as I'm going to get).

Thanks very much Slave - amazing!

Hi, before I go off and reinvent the wheel, has anyone worked out a way (just using SU) to produce watercolour-like plan view planting plans refer attached picture (scanned out of book as example) . as you can see from the red high-lit area some of these get pretty big and it'd be nice to spend more time on specifying plants and sorting their placement rather than hand rendering.

I've had a go using styles but most styles seem to alter edges only and not blur out the face color.

Ferrari is your tool, link has download as tool is hard to find:

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323%26amp;t=32380

if that fails go here:
http://rhin.crai.archi.fr/rld/plugin_details.php?id=768

Source is here some where but page hard to navigate:
http://en.sergeferrari.com/furniture-design/

if it's just a sun umbrella you need I have a nice one on file, just PM me.

If you have a large OR complex (many edges) model it pays to use proxy (simple) objects for when you're moving the model. for instance I have scenes in pairs, one with proxy objects for moving around and editing, the other with the full objects for exporting to LO or for rendering etc.

How many edges does your 32mb file have? Because it seems (IMO) that edge number is the real determinant of speed.

Thanks for this plugin Anton, it's arguably the number 1 plugin for me as it enables me to quickly clear my screen for online client presentations. The only thing is could the floating black dialog be made smaller?

Thanks,
I didn't know about that />bangs head on desk/ (pity the slider doesn't remember it's previous state).

Doh using selection tools

I often need to select faces inside of some line, usually a very complex line (the built area of a terrain, a river plain in a valley etc.). So I was just running thru the process to make a post to this group...

Make surface, make lines soft, smooth and turn off then group [I hadn't done this bit before]
Drape boundary on surface.
Enter group, click on inner area and presto it's selected:

I went round and round in a lot of circles to get that!