Chris, I would encourage you to persue it if you have the time. For a solution to be useful for time planning purposes it needs to integegrate with legacy project management software otherwise you potential target market will not be interrested, however 'fresh' your solution may be. Project planners will not be interrested in maintaining two data sets and will not discard traditional devices such as PERT and GANTT in favour of 4D, no matter how intuitive your data input may be. @unknownuser said: I think then you agree this Synchro "solution" is half-hearted You are putting words in my mouth. I cannot comment on the merrits of Synchro without looking at it in depth, but what I do know is that the system would have gone through years of development and could hardly be described as a 'half-hearted' solution. .

Dear Taff, Many thanks for the links. I have a small interest in solar heat and power as I have a friend who runs a business installing solar powered hot water systems (http://www.oxfordecobuild.co.uk/). I introduced him to Sketchup, for which he was grateful. I also have a colleague at the Clarendon Laboratory working on a wind power project, but one with a twist, in that it stores energy as hot water for domestic use. Kind regards, Bob

Dear Pilou, That is the good thing about SU. One can imagine it, and then make it a (virtual) reality. I like the colour scheme. Regards, Bob

@sketch3d.de said: not "fast feedback" but the mentioned "hardware acceleration" (one above). I meant the I disabled the Hardware acceleration, which then ticks the Fast feedback and gave me a warning about it. No matter what I do I get a bugsplat. Personally I would prefer the black window problem with hardware acceleration on. I have an nVidia card but I just boot into Windows when doing SU, it doesn't bother me I was just saying what happened to me. I am not looking to fix it. I will just wait until SU7 and the release of the Linux version

Passive solar was bigger it seems, in the 70's. Most designs make for an unusual house type and living styles, but some common sense will help any design. Problems include control of glare and overheating, and providing clear surfaces for absorption (if you are trying to have direct solar gain through windows). I recently saw a trombe wall in a new upscale house. Pretty unusual. So on my second comment above, the obstacle is: are you going to sell a client who already just wants a conventional house with a good floor plan. I think it's a gradual process of acceptance. That's why we have green building tours, to show some great houses that have various features, if not extensive direct passive solar.

Great stuff, thanks.

I love that model! It used to be on @last's homepage and their gallery 5 years ago; I always wished the author would have posted it somewhere. It'd be great to give it the SketchyPhysics treatment. Thanks for the link.

Dear Didier, I cannot seem to get Option 4 to work (drawing a line perpendicular to a face through a point). It draws a temporary line through the centroid, but it won't let me select a point of enter a length. Your perp_line_plane.rb works just fine, and I assumed you had integrated that script into the new collection (hence the 13th icon). Ah, that's it! The 13th Icon!. I like the way your perp_line_plane.rb works: select surface/face and cpoint (on face), then select 'Line perpendicular to face' from Plugins. Enter length in dialogue box and 'bingo', the line is drawn. Beautiful! Kind regards, Bob

you are going the other way round watkins now it is even more difficult for me to build it

Sorry, the last post should have said Figure 3.

Ouch! That clipping is really a pity (I'm kind of getting used to the shadow bug though ) Apart from these, it is nice, indeed.

I guess big brother really is watching us! Impressive images though.

Dear Malaise and Teezer, Thank you for your kind comments. The thread textures (which could be improved) make a difference to the 'readability' of the 3D model, but what Sketchup could do with is a good (low poly) library of mechanical parts, like nuts and bolts. I'm surprised that no one has written a ruby to generate metric fasteners. For example, one could imagine clicking on the icon of a bolt and then a window opening. The window would ask: Size (M1 to M40 say) Type (Hexhead, CapHead, Countersunk etc) Overall length Thread length Data are readily available. For example: http://www.engineersedge.com/iso_hex_head_screw.htm The ruby would then generate the fastener. Ideally, the ruby would also apply the thread texture too. Kind regards, Bob

Found this the other day via bldgblog Not sure where that image is on the OneGeology site though (other than at smallscale on the index page of their website)

Dear Ken, I came across this freeware when looking for screen capture programs. http://www.etrusoft.com/ Perhaps it could be used with your notes script to create illustrated documents. I haven't tried it myself and so I cannot make a recommendation. It does allow one to annotate the image after capture, which is likely to prove useful. Kind regards, Bob