Hi Gaieus, how long did you say have you been modelling ?

Color: by axes will do the trick!

Oh! and maybe stick to quality beer only.

Where‘s my coffee? *$%&#^!?

@edson said:

a very weird thing is happening. whenever i draw anything, the color is no longer the one assigned to the front and back of faces in styles, but some texture i used before. look below: everything i draw comes out in the texture of some corrugated metal sheet.

any clues about that?

Edson,
Do you mean anywhere in the model or anywhere like connected to an already textured face? For I think that weird behaviour was discussed before.
Actually I think you are drawing in edit mode, adding things to a painted component or group. Anything added will inherrit this texture!

Wo3Dan

For the happy few:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg8w2dp_6djbrz3cz

Maybe I should wait till there is a Base Camp 2008 EU.

Simon,

I see that you finished your horse shoe shaped stairs, resulting in a very nice model.
Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to what curved complex shape you have in mind now.

cheers,
Wo3Dan

Simon,

Fait avec plaisir! Je regrette que mon français n’est pas comme il faut.
J’ai oublié presque tout se que j’ai étudié pendant 7 années á l’école, beaucoup des mots, grammaire etc.
Chaque fois quand ici quelqu’un écrit an français j’essaye de lire tout.
Il me faut, pars que près que chaque année je passe mon vacance en France.
Et chaque année (avant de..) je me promesse encore une fois d’ étudier français.
Mais malheureusement je manque le temps.

About P/P, I did not even include ‘wild’ plane contours in the list. As I said before, sometimes
it just is not worth it to know all these things for it is much easier to correct/reverse faces.
As long as you remember the basic rules with P/P.

I did something similar with textures and how they are applied to faces when deleting a mutual line from two adjacent coplanar faces with different textures. My list became so complex since not only the size but also the used shapes and many other things seemed to be involved here. Which face inherits what texture? I simply gave up. I learned a lot from doing that though. Now I know how to go about if something isn’t right.

I followed the other thread about the spiraloid shaped stairs. There is another way (as always) to do this but it takes a lot of work. But first you need to figure out what slab shape you want.
One thing you found out already. To create a nice curved shape for the stairs with ‘Follow Me’. I might participate in that thread if I find some time and when the results do not satisfy you. Don’t forget to use the P/P here to repeat pulling out the separate face-segments from a single curved surface (in ‘show Hidden Geometry’ mode). This could in one way help you to get the basic structure.

cheers,
Wo3Dan

@unknownuser said:

I'm such a sucker...People show up here out of the blue from time to time and I pour a little heart into some request they have...in return I get a "thanks guys" and the author of the post is never seen again. There is no way that "dou" dude could have built this thing....you wonder why he would post.. what was on his mind.....I must say regardless that I learned a few things that will be valuable.
Do I sound like a cry baby...? well yes I guess so. It won't stop me from falling into that trap again though. It is so consuming...genuine thanks or no thanks.

Let me tell you, I know exactly how you feel. And as if I knew this was going to happen to you.
But do relize that there are others here too, following this thread, appreciating what you are doing.

cheers,
Wo3Dan

Simon, Remus,

About why or better when SU reverses faces at the time you create them…….:
I was looking for this thread about single faces drawn on the ground (by default purple), see postnr 2:
http://groups.google.com/group/SketchUp3d/browse_frm/thread/98e3cb2af03aaf11/0769cc30ef806304?lnk=gst&q=noel+dent+reverse+faces#0769cc30ef806304
But there is more so I surged for some logic predictable behaviour and comprised it in the attached skp.

In addition:

• a new face B adjacent (shared edge) to another coplanar face A will inherit its
  orientation. When more connecting faces are involved it gets complicated. Usually it seems to depend on where (along back or front face) you start drawing the new face. If only one of these adjacent faces is coplanar this one seems to determine the priority for back/front orientation for the new face over not coplanar faces. Try connecting rectangles to a box in different situations.
  (There was a discussion going on here months ago about priorities of front and back faces with multiple faces and which material/texture is inherited, front or back);
• pushing or pulling an isolated face, no matted faced back or front, will leave you with a fully covered white 3D shape i.e. front outside;

Starting with several connecting faces, it seems that when pulling one it will not by default leave a copy behind. With purple outside there is no copy left behind. With white outside there may be a copy left behind. You can always leave a copy behind when using Ctrl+P/P
The orientation is not necessarily white outside. I can’t find the rule SU seems to follow.

You can repeat the ‘offset’ i.e. the distance of the last P/P operation by double clicking on a face, something you found out already.

From all this I find only a few things worth to remember.

1. there is a rule for the orientation when creating a face in 3D space depending on the plane you are working in, so no unpredictable behaviour. (forget the list, to much)
2. with Ctrl you leave a copy behind. Never mind its orientation. Check later and reverse if necessary. The new shape however is white outside.
3. The new face inherits its orientation from adjacent faces if possible.
4. double clicking lets you speed up the process of P/P-ing multiple faces by the same distance.
5. (not mentioned before) Alt+P/P moves the face perpendicular, dragging/stretching connected geometry with the face. (I seldom use this feature).

I attached an …skp with the orientation list mentioned above.

Sorry for the delay but not being really satisfied with the results I found made me forget all about it till you returned in this topic.

Hope this helps,
Wo3Dan

FaceOrient.skp

Just one button to toggle on/off 3D orbiting.
Once you apply 'Align View' on axes, a face or a section plane you could simply proceed drawing semi 2D in the aligned view without worrying about orbiting. Only panning and orbiting 2D.
I know you could save some scenes but....

@jclements said:

......If there are a series of contiguous segments which are equal in length and their common angles are equal, then it has all the characteristics of an arc or a circle (sum of common angles = 360°). You would think there would be a way to "regenerate" SU's arc or circle.

JClements,
In case of retrieving the arcs information:
What you need is the centre of the ‘arc to be’ which is easy to reconstruct.
(intersection of two lines perpendicular to two segments (not to close))
Also an even number of segments in the ‘arc to be’. When you are one segment short you’ll need to rotate/copy one accurately as an extension to get the even number. Input that number as xs (= number of sides) when you now apply the arc tool on the ‘arc to be’. The result is an arc nicely replacing all the separate segments.

@gaieus said:

Hi Sityu,

You can use the text tool (applied on any arc) and the default text will be its length. I don't know however if it is counted from exact geometry or just added up of the lenths of the segments of the arc.

The length displayed in 'Entity Info' or by applying the 'Text' tool will be the arcs length, not the total segment length. (Unless exploded into segments)
'Weld' does not reverse this for the length information for a curve will be the sum of the segment lengths.

@juanjo06 said:

hey... hi... i speak a little english but i like it... so i am going to do my best!
I have just finished a course of sketchup and My examination of course is done drawing sketchup museum milwaukee of Santiago calatrava, So I would like someone help me with an idea of how to do it, I promise to pass on some tips and the video of the course, and many ideas I learned... thanks so much and i will be waiting for your help..

Hi Juan,

Maybe you can find something useful in the attached file to make the wings.
Nice challenge you got.

Wo3Dan

hypar.skp

@mirjman said:

......It seems like one solution would be to stitch together a bunch of zoomed in views, but it I can't figure out a way to import a view that exactly matches with the view next to it. Hope any of this makes sense

mirjman,

in addition to previous info:

• set GE to full screen
• hit R to reset North and tilt
• find the desired altitude (say 200m) with the slider in the top/right corner
• move to the right location with [Alt+arrow key(s)] (much more accurate). In doing so you should note specific marks on one side (things like a corner, a tree etc.) In your next import (i.e. ‘Get Current View’) these marks are just about to go off screen.
  If you don’t get the overlap with the next imported 'Current View' (in SU zoom in to check) you can click ‘Undo’ in SU, slide back a little bit in GE and import again.

Like this I can get an overlap of about only 0,5m to 3cm on a detailed terrain from altitude 200m. (so not much waste.) And visually matching perfectly in SU. I don’t know how exporting back to GE will take multiple ‘Current Views’ (multiple meshes) at once though. Maybe at the end you need to split your final result into more than one file containing only one mesh each before exporting separately.

Wo3Dan

@thomthom said:

With the section cut method I can print from any odd angle in scale.

Unfortunately no luck for me yet.

@thomthom said:

"How many SketchUp monkeys does it take to print to scale? (Insert punchline here)"

Four, I guess. One with tape measure, one with calculator and one spraying the ink.... And one supervisor!

When orbiting in 'Parallel Projection' mode I now notice that even these 'Front, Left, Right etc' words are (within a small tolerance in viewpoint) in a way 'connected' to the original unrotated axes, even when axes are rotated. Like other tools are: Paint bucket applying paint straight from the material browser, creating components etc.
So if print to scale is only possible when these words appear on screen then this is a major drawback with buildings oriented other than north/south. I assumed that print to scale only had to do with being in 'Parallel Projection' mode.

(Good thing I said in first post: try with one first.)

If so this is one for the 'Wish list'

Wo3Dan

Gaieus,

I have no clue why the word 'Top'is not in the top/left corner.
Maybe that has to do with not being able to print to scale.
See if you can with the last 4 scenes in this attached file?

Lewis, You may be right and I could be overlooking something.
But can you even get it to see the horizon not horizontal on screen?
That is what I was referring to. Sometimes necessary.

Wo3Dan

Aligned for 2D.skp

Thomthom,

see attached file.
remember that red is left to right and green is to top unless you need a different orientation for the print. (That's the drawback with the section plane methode)

Wo3Dan

align A and B in frontview.skp

Thomthom,

Please see updated text above.
And you aren't supposed to use the 'Views' icons to get this working for they
always use the original (unrotated) axes, no matter what!
It's about 'Align View' on (rotated) axes and Blue running 'down' in the right direction when applying this alignment!

Wo3Dan

Thomthom,

sorry, I was away for a while reading other things blablabla....
I updatet the text a bit, hoping it will be clearer now:

@wo3dan said:

Try this to see if it works.

• For each face (to be printed later) create a scene in which you have the Blue axis running 'down' towards the face that you want in front view. (don't save yet, well you may)
• Select 'Parallel Projection' (you only need to save or update when you temporarely want to switch to another scene. Ultimately you only need one scene for each face) (so do not save yet, you may)
• And right click on one of the rotated axes will let you choose 'Align View', (learned that from Suzan, thanks).
  The origin will be in screen center and you will be looking 'down' on that particular face.
• Pan and zoom to right view/position.
• Now save (or update) this scene ('as a new style') with the right scene name as a scene, for use any time.
  (in top of the screen (left) you will see 'Top')[/color]

I hope this will do the trick. (try with one first)

Wo3Dan

@thomthom said:

I got a model where I have two buildings at different axes. I've set up a scene for each building with custom axes to match the buildings.

Now I'd like to print off a parallel view of each side of the buildings in scale. The problem is that the print scale option only occurs when I've clicked on one of the Standard Views. And the Standard views only matches the original axes of the model, not the custom viewport axes.

Is there any way around this? or is the only way to rotate each building to match the original model axis? I'd rather not have to take the model apart and mess around every time I want to do a scale print.

And I don't understand why a Standard view has to be selected to get the print scale options. As long as the view is parallel it shouldn't matter.

Thomthom,

Try this to see if it works.
%(#0040FF)[- For each face create a scene in which you have the Blue axis running 'down' towards the face that you want in front view. (don't save yet)

• Select 'Parallel Projection' (...not yet)
• And right clicking on one of the rotated axes will let you choose 'Align View', (learned that from Suzan, thanks).
  The origin will be in screen center and you will be looking 'down' on that particular face.
• Pan and zoom to rigth view/position.
• Now save this scene ('as a new style') with the right scene name as a scene, for use any time.
  (in top of the screen (left) you will see 'Top')]

I hope this will do the trick. (try with one first)

Wo3Dan

@jean lemire said:

Hi folks.

Of course, my idea is for lines that may be skewed with all three axis.

In the meantime, see attached SU file showing the three methods I have found so far.

Jean,
Thanks for sharing. All three are good. I like the p/p method. Have used rotated axes in the pasted to do this and often wondered why the cicle tool does not work like to the protractor or rotate tool (i.e. drag along to set the plane). So my preference would definitaly be the suggestion you made for the circle tool.

Wo3Dan