@edson said:

hi diego,

this is understood from the beginning. then if i decide to keep some edges black i will have to paint them black. is that what you are saying?

Edson,

A group or component can only have one colour. In this group or component each entity whether an edge, a face or a nested group or component can again have its own colour. (faces even two, one for front and one for back).
If an entity is not the default it will overrule the colour of the ‘one level higher’ group colour or component colour.

b.t.w. instead of painting edges (or faces) black you can paint them default.
For edges this means they appear black on screen even in mode ‘Colour by Material’
This may be better then painting them black, to avoid confusion

Wo3Dan

@solo said:

Two days ago 5 confirmed tornado’s touched down in North Texas, North Dallas was ground zero. With winds around 120mph they tore a new one in many suburbs, mine included. Though I was lucky and only lost a few trees and shingles off my garage, my neighbors lost much more down the road. We have had some serious power issues since the incident so things have been pretty dodgy, we are instructed to limit our water consumption as our water plant is down and until power returns to it the pumps and filtration are not working.

Okay, I can live with this, nature has spoken ...right? but what could be worse than this I joked, then on the news I got my reply.

What is worse than 5 tornado's hitting North Dallas?, George Bush moving into my area after his reign as supreme commander, lord of war.

This just sucks!

Solo,

As for the tornado’s, I hope you are all doing okay.
Forget all the unimportant things for this moment and take your time (and precautions!!!) to absorb the power of nature. It will give you the opportunity to put things into perspective.....what's really important and what's not. Take advantage of this forced situation, there is not much else you can do.
(I do remember experiencing an earthquake in Greece (6.4 Rigter-scale), like driving a truck on a bumpy road )
As for Bush moving into your area. Give him a warm welcome so he will stay. Thereby doing so many people a favour!

Wo3Dan

@shipaddict said:

Hi

I am new here, but have been playing in Sketchup for a while. I'm not a great modeller but find it fun all the same

Does anyone have an easy but effective way of making a ship's bow? If so, would you be able to provide some screens?

Thanks in advance!
SA

Welcome SA,

A ship's bow is just a coplanar curve. May I assume that you have the plans of a particular ship? You could use the arc tool and draw connecting arcs to represent the bow. Look out for the blue arc connected to the previous one, showing that you get a smooth curve. I think you should provide more info to answer this question.

Wo3Dan

@travboss said:

How do you get the transparent hazzy plane off on the section plane....I cut a section but then I want to see my true rendering not through the hazzy plane. Let me know Thanks

Uncheck "Display Section Planes" leaves section cuts displayed (unless you uncheck this too)

@taffgoch said:

Huh! Bizarre...

...actually it is there, but 'invisible.' I generally use the 'point at center' plugin for circles. I created a circle centered at the origin, used the 'point at center' context menu command, then deleted the circle.

No guide point is visible, but if you select with the 'right-drag' select box, the 'entity info' box indicates a guide point is selected. Doing the exact same thing, just off center, creates and displays the guidepoint.

Turning off axis visibility makes no difference, so that's not the problem.

You can select and move the guidepoint, but it remains invisible!

To me, this behavior looks like a reportable bug...

Regards,
Taff

Yes, left>right selection reveals these guidepoints in 'Entity Info' but right>left does NOT! (*)
Another thing is that they are actually there. Move them 50m from the origin and do a 'Zoom Extents'. You will zoom out in a way that these invisible points are on screen. I don't know how (in what way) they could contribute in causing the 'Clipping Plane' effect when they are far from the origin. You don't seem to be able to use them for snapping to.
My advice: don't create any guidepoints in the origin itself. (you can snap to [0,0,0] anyway)
Or maybe only with the 'Tape Measure' tool by draging from the origin (dashed line incuded)

Wo3Dan

(*) thanks Gaieus / (right is where your thumb is left, right? )

@lapx said:

Hello Jean,

How would you get your method to rise from a low point to high point. One advantage of your solution is the wall is same thickness from top to bottom.

lapx,
In this case smooving the top will not work.
Intesection with a vertical cone (preferably high poly) will do the trick.
Place the cone with its vert.axis right in the center of the bottom spiral.
Check if the slope is UP all the way to the center after intersecting, it should be.
(Otherwise undo and reposition the cone a bit)

Note that there is a big difference between Jean's slanted wall and the previously uoloaded ones.
His wall is equally slanted all the way along the spiral.
Ours were going from 'slanted much' to almost vertical near the center. Due to scaling.
(It depends on what you need)
With Jean's wall go for the cone-intersection.

Wo3Dan

In my previous post I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic. Just wanting to point out (in irony) the irony of Stu’s first post. Having said that I’m for an SCF with not too many (sub-)forums to be able to ‘not miss any relevant new posts’. Right now with the constant changes I sometimes find it rather confusing. But I’m not complaining, just being patient and I’m with Phil, we owe these guys (creating, moderating etc. SCF) a lot. I can imagine there is quite some effort and energy put into it. Give it some time… and good criticism/feed back.

Wo3Dan

Gerrit Hubers / age 55 / constructional engineering (a/o related work) / self-employed ’86->now / Papeville (just north of Dordt) / Nl. / stumbled on SU ‘by accident’ just over one year ago / hope to implement SU in my work. At the moment it’s more like investing time in SU, doing small stuff, answering questions.

Hi Pete, (still lurking?), right from the beginning I had the distinct feeling that you are from Dutch descent, looking at your avatar and seeing the name Stoppel. So I wasn’t that far off after all. I do have a neighbour who grew up in SA. See if I can throw in a few SA words once in a while to check if you are still lurking.

Hi Coen, I wouldn’t mind a local ‘base-camp’, also hoping there will be an EU-one that I can attend in the (near) future. It would be to see some people in person, to exchange ideas about SU (amongst…?). Although I must admit that much of my time is involved in building my house at the moment... which seems to take forever.

That’s it for now, cheers,
Wo3Dan

@stu said:

......
I think there are still many groups or sub-groups that aren't catered for.....it would be very easy to break some of the sub-forums into sub-sub-forums and maybe some of those could have links to extra special interest groups.......Lets get with it! and make this a place for EVERYBODY!!!

Thanks Stu for this great HINT! ---> My vote is for a special sub-sub-forum for... lurkers
(and I mean ONLY for lurkers )

@lapx said:

Thanks for clearing that up for me

<-- Why
You drew my attention to something about the sadbox that I overlooked.
(keeps me sharp )
So that's at least worth a 'thanks' to you:!:
cheers,
Wo3Dan

@lapx said:

@Wo3Dan,.......
On the "contour from scratch" I just selected the top edge of the wall and used SU's contour from scratch. From first glance it seamed to work fine with a little clean up.
I will look at it again.
......

lapx,

Now I see what you mean, not "contour from scratch" (and not "from scratch" either) but "From Contours".
And you are quite right, that works perfect when no height corrections are needed.
When you have both the inner and the outer curves selected (spirals in scene 4, without their connecting edges at beginning and end) and apply "From Contours" you get a very good result that only needs some cleaning up.
I guess I was to much focused on "what if height corrections are needed for horizontal cross sections at the top of the wall". Even though the curves are slanted it's best to apply "From Contours".
(Leaving the face in scene 3 > 4 will give bad results when applying the "Smoove" tool)
Well, as I said: "maybe I can learn something".
Thanks for the suggestion.

Wo3Dan

gorygreg,

My attempt to try to explain is in the attached skp.

@lapx said:

Wo3Dan great job. One tip though, would it not be easier to use the contour from scratch in lieu of hand stitching? Just have to erase to to clean up excess.

Lapx,

Leaving the top face in the curved boundary when using the Smoove tool will often result in an irragular pattern of triangles. I find it hard to correct all these lines. Better to do hand stitching, letting you make small adjustments to make cross sections horizontal at the top (if necessary).

I don't know how you are going to apply the "contour from scratch" tool here.
Maybe I can learn something. In my opinion SU will make a mess of all the extra lines (edges) within the curves. So what did you mean?

Wo3Dan

Scaling symetrical object.skp

If in the event of need for this curious behaviour, “virtual intersection keeping associated dimensions”, here is an skp to demonstrate. Fairly easy to create and it can keep your model clean(er).
I have no use for it at the moment, maybe someone else might.

dims_on_virtual_intersection.skp

@lapx said:

My next challenge is to slope the top of the wall. That is the highest part would be at the smaller radius point and the low part would be at the end of the largest radius.
At first glance I thought I could easily draw a rect and slope the top and intersect this form with spiral wall but ofcurse this will not give the desired result. Any ideas?

edit: Maybe I need to do the top wall slope part before the scaling.

lapx,

Here is my attempt in the attached skp.
(partly Bob's solution integrated)

CurvedTiltedWall.skp

bungo,

If this is a cry out for help than at least include (a) questions in your post.
This is not the best way to quit. Realize that you have yet the best part ahead of you, to discover what great program SU is.
So I’m with Dylan, what is it that you want to do with SU and can not?

Wo3Dan

Simon,

(ground control….)
Why would you make each component as a group?
Why not make components with the property: “glue to horizontal” to keep them on the floor (i.e. the very large square, white up)?

Have a look at this model that I made when starting with SU. It's far from perfect but there is furniture to be moved around, sticking to the floor.
The texture is sort of a reference for distances.
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=42683fa7d88147035dd56b9864c71206

Wo3Dan

No, did not miss it this time. But like Remus I was aware that something was going on other than the obvious.

@tomsdesk said:

Draw everything on Layer 0...everything! Put only components, groups, etc. on other layers as needed for visibility or workability. Now you are always drawing on the default layer as you edit within the groups or components.

And remember: this is one of the places the programers think they are smarter than the users (another is that damn pencil as the default tool)...or so I was told on the beta forum when I requested a change: when you explode a group or component, the pieces within are automatically changed to the layer the exploded whole was on.

Tom, I couldn’t agree more with you, about individual entities (lines, faces etc.) inheriting the associated layer of the exploded group or component. It is completely contradictory to what SU “preaches”:

Important note: Groups and components are also entities, and, just like with individual entities, you control their layer properties in the Entity Info dialog box. To try to keep things clear, this article refers to individual entities (things like edges and faces) versus groups and components. To try to make things even clearer, since groups and components behave the same with respect to layers, only groups are mentioned from now on in this article. Finally, the idea of drawing individual entities on Layer 0 and leaving them there is so important that this article doesn't even address the option of associating other layers with individual entities. If you want to experiment with that, you'll need to take along your own search and rescue team!
%(#FF8040)[…..
Additional notes about layers:]
• Be happy! Always draw your entities on Layer 0 and leave them there. (Did we say that already?)
• …….

I wonder what purpose this feature may serve?

The whole layer story:
http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=38572

@gaieus said:

I'm glad you guys also enjoyed it.

Thanks Gaieus, very nice piece of smooth art indeed!
I saved the best view for last….., turning around and looking at my wife.
.
.
.

I think i’ll let here read this, for extra points.

@unknownuser said:

Yet again Watkins, your in there staight away, us early morning people.

Just a repeat post really. Thanks for the quick response, I just wondered if anybody had any experience or ideas about this. I know an excellent engineer who can fabricate this and I think I'll be fine when it comes to the working drawings, but just thought I'd post it here in case anybody had advice to offer.

Jon,
The attached skp I made might help you a bit to see which way to go.
(For kids you need to adjust the scale though )
And as an example of the helical screw see: (credit to NoelD this time)
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=77d22eb035e66c59244b1e8fee0e9e34

Wo3Dan

pump1.skp