Thanks all for your help, and thanks Mitch for your plugin, does exactly what I need. And it looks like I'll be buying vertextools soonest thomthom, that's a cool tool. cheers, nigel

The Export to 2D DWG and 3D DWG in SU returns two different results as pbacot said. 2D DWG - all elements are moved to AC Layer 0 3D DWG - all elements follow SU layering names. The 2D Export is not creating the desired effect, but it has to be some reason why the 2D DWG Export looks like 2D DXF Export. Many years ago I used to export 3D DWG files into *.wmf and 'Import' them back through AC's Insert > Windows Metafile... to get 2D representation of roofs, elevations or sections and apply colours or hatch. Step 1 From SU Export to 3D DWG > and open in AC Step 2 In AC Export to *.WMF Step 3 In AC Insert > Windows Metafile... (AC's top menu) Change the view to get plans or elevations. Use AC command HIDE to hide elements in the background and then export to *.WMF Unearthed, I don't know if the 2D is good enough for you. One thing's for sure, it keeps the SU layering in the AC 2D drawing PS. Windows Metafile - was the useful vector based format for Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw and few other graphical packages, which worked better than the DXF or DWG vectors when imported. Regards

Thanks Tig, I've tried to save to C:, to Desktop, to a zip drive, plus trying the save as LO 1 and 2. Unfortunately the backup.layout is 20 minutes older than the main file, so while it is 'only' 20 minutes lost, it's still frustrating as, if it happens again, I'll know this'll be the outcome. In the end I got the sheet as I wanted it and exported it to a nice .pdf (and a .dwg) and now I'm going to unplug it from life support we need a smilie with a black armband for such occasions. cheers, nigel

Hi John, thanks, yes it was part of an installer package (result of promiscuous approach to installing untried plugins!). I uninstalled all plugins and reloaded them one-by-one, but never found the bug, although it might've been product connect. Now I've got just the plugins I need...and no more. I've also set up a manual entry .txt file in the plugins folder to keep track of installed plugins and their dependency files.

Good tutorial. Another option to consider would be using TIG's Drape Cpoints and Triangulate Cpoints scripts ( http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=21379 ). You'll end up with a uniform level of detail unlike what you have in your tutorial but it may be a tad faster method. -Brodie

Thanks TIG, but that method takes removes the information (the tags) from the dxf - I'm hoping that there's a way to import each block's attribute data into a DCs attributes. Seeing as your script parses the incoming data stream to create the 3D text, would it be possible to create a text block for each icon, from each Autocad Block? Certainly it does what it says on the tin though, thanks and yes, you're right it does run for a while - for my data it was best to do it in batches of 100 icons at a time: [image: W2He_treetest.JPG] bjornkn, this would work well as a complement to Alan's method above, thanks.

Ah yes, I didn't understand from your first post that you had the default background visible in the overlay nor that your "terrain" was an image from Google Maps. I was thinking you wanted some of the model to be transparent or translucent. It does appear that you've got it, though. That's good.

Thanks thomthom - the clipping bug was driving me nuts - I spent ages looking for what it was. And now I've moved back to origin everthing's fine.

Hi Tig Thanks for reply. Yes that looks promising, however I'm not remotely a programmer, so do you think someone may consider this an interesting/useful plugin - I'm sure many of the landscape folk would find this useful in a number of ways. Also would it be possible for such a plugin to make each face a component and then each face-component could hold attributes (I think this is what you were alluding to in your post on colour by slope in viewtopic.php?f=323&t=20635) such as solar gain incidence, surface erodibility, soil type etc. Sorry if this is a bit vague, but people are doing interesting things with SU and I don't know what's possible. cheers

Hello Tig, thanks for looking into it. Just the SU Material file "colors" contains 310 Colors. Each Color has to be selected and applied to some surface in order to get the color into the model. It`s the tedious manual work that discouraged to make a color guide. Is there perhaps a another way of mass-loading materials into a model ? Uli

Hi Aerilius That was it, exactly, thank you very much. cheers Nigel