@ashscott said:
I had a go with SU Animate a long time ago and I didn't get very far - would you recommend it for the kind of object animation I am describing?
I believe SUA has a free trial so it can't hurt to give it a try. I've not used it a lot, but found it easier to set up than Proper Animation. SUA recently released a pretty major update that now includes key frames. I've toyed with Keyframe, but haven't used it for anything so I don't know how it compares.
Can you not simply move them out of that folder? Customize Settings (the wrench) > Bookmarks > Bookmark Manager
Just select and move all your bookmarks to the appropriate folders. Maybe that's too simple.
SU Animate and SketchyPhysics are also possible options for object animation. I do mostly drive-through animations, and SP works okay for that...cumbersome to set up, but the results are pretty cool. I've seen similar drive-throughs done with SUA. I don't know what kind of machinery you're trying to animate but I'd bet both of these would work, depending on what you're trying to do and how physically accurate you need to be.
Dave, maybe we're talking about different things, but I don't think that's true. Grouped faces can cut ungrouped edges with the Intersect Faces with Model command. The group doesn't necessarily have to be "solid." Unless someone is using the Solid Tools, there is no way to get a "not solid" error simply by intersecting geometry. The default "intersect with" tools don't check for solids. Maybe I misunderstood Mitcorb's original answers, but I don't think he was suggesting the use of the Pro Solid Tools.
I guess it depends on the result clayc is looking for. If he needs a frame around the cut edges (which I'm guessing he does in this case), then Jean's method of adding faces is definitely the way to go. If he doesn't need that frame, then Intersect Faces with Model will cut the lines just fine.
If you go the component route, you probably only need to make the tubes 4 or 5-sided, not true 24-sided circles, as that is probably more detail/faces than you need.
I'm surprised the intersect with... command didn't do what you wanted. That's a standard command, not a Solid Tools command so it shouldn't have given you the "not a solid" message. Are you sure you were following mitcorb's suggestion correctly?
Shaderlight renders scene-based animations only so it won't work with sketchyphysics.
Do you have any transparency on the trees? If you do, turn it off and that might help. Atlernatively, you don't have that many trees; could you swap them for low-poly 3D?
Also try turning on hidden geometry (View>Hidden Geometry). That will allow you to edit/delete portions of the terrain mesh that shouldn't be there.
Still not perfect, but I'm happier with this one, also from Shaderlight.
You can use the Tape Measure tool for this. See insructions here http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=95006
Keep in mind that this will scale in all directions though. If you've extruded objects in your model to a the correct height, they will be scaled along with the horizontal geometry.
There is an option to clean the selection only.
I have used SP on one project. I don't have a need for it in my daily workflow, and I am by no means an expert. I owe most (all?) of my success with SP to users on this forum who held my hand and wrote/edited code to help make my models do what I needed them to do. There are a few very talented physics modelers here, though I think many of us fall into the category of "SketchyPhysics is really cool, but I don't really need it for what I do." That's my perception anyway.
I really need to find a different hobby so I can stop taking out my frustrations on this plugin. I break it because I love it so much.... 
LOL
This build is much faster and it no longer requires that the target surface be the default material - excellent! I haven't found a group yet to break it. Components, however don't work. Maybe that's intentional; maybe it's not necessary - in fact I can't think of a reason why I would need to drape a flat component, so this is more of an FYI-post. Just for kicks, I tried adding a construction point to a component and making a group of that, which caused an incorrect result.
I've experienced this problem too. Usually if I undo and run superdrape again (or undo, explode the geometry to be draped, regroup, and superdrape again) it will work. For highly detailed drapes, this is still faster than applying materials by hand to the mesh.
Thanks, TIG. Unfortunately I had nothing better to do at work today than try to break your plugin. Thanks for updating it!
Hey Tig. 1.8 works sometimes, sometimes not. When it fails, the plugin appears to draw the physical geometry that intersects with the terrain below, but does not delete the geometry or drape the colors. I assume those actions are normally run in the background, but somehow they're happening in the model. I get this error: Error: #<TypeError: reference to deleted Edge>. If I undo and try it again, it will sometimes work; sometimes I have to explode the draped group and regroup it before it will work.
