I did miss that you were on a Mac, but the Mac instructions look very similar to what I described. Sorry I couldn't be more help.

When you turn perspective off, you should be able to edit the Scale settings in the Print dialog box. Uncheck the Fit to Page, check Use model extents, and change the scale to 1:1. To get rid of the blue background, open the Styles dialog (Window>Styles)>Edit Tab>BackgroundSettings (the 3rd icon) and uncheck Sky and Ground.

Tig is correct that an 8' box won't fit on an 8.5x11 sheet, but you could take the image into an image editor and put the two pieces back together. Alternatively, if you have a PDF printer, you could print to an 11x17 PDF and crop it in Photoshop down to 8.5x11. You might have more options to adjust print margins from there than you do natively out of Sketchup.

Bill,
Looks like Boo beat me to the punch on this answer, but I may add a couple things for you to consider.

First, for your paint question, try drawing a line on the wall where the paint colors change. Then right-click the line and click Hide. Now turn on Hidden Geometry by clicking View>Hidden Geometry (shortcut key 'H'). You should now be able to paint one color on the lower half of the wall, and another on the top part above the ceiling. Adding a second parallel face/group as you described causes problems (commonly called z-fighting) when two faces occupy the same space. As you discovered, Sketchup cannot resolve the conflict so you get a blended/shifting color surface.

The second part of your question I think could be solved by grouping the geometry. You mention groups/components in your question so maybe you understand how to use them already. It sounds like you need to create a group of the ceiling and possibly a second group of the 2' black strip. You could put these groups on separate layers to control their visibility, or you could hide them as I described above. To unhide an object, turn on hidden geometry, right click the hidden object and click Unhide. If it doesn't seem like this will work, maybe you could post an image to better show the issue you're having.

There are some great tutorial videos on these topics if you need more help. Others here will likely chime in with some advice too.

There is similar function in autocad dealing with parametric constraints. Constraints can be applied to edges to keep them, for example, always perpendicular or parallel when an object is stretched, or to keep a one object a set distance from a radius point or edge of a second object when the overall component is scaled. These functions may be more robust than what you're requesting, but they are very useful for mechanical designs and other things where relationship of elements is very important. Maybe something similar could be created in ruby, though I haven't the foggiest idea how. Perhaps someone will find the parallel to these existing CAD tools useful.

Great stuff, Chris. Thanks for posting this.

I've had trouble (on two computers) with Camstudio not recording audio from the speakers. I now use Debut Webcam/Desktop Recorder when I need to capture sound. http://www.nchsoftware.com/software/video.html

Jim Foltz has a custom toolbars script that you might want to look at.
http://sketchuptips.blogspot.com/2008/06/custom-toolbars-release-08-06-01.html
It doesn't necessarily dock the window like you want, but it would allow you to open/close it with a toolbar icon. Jim's script doesn't actually include the Entity window, outliner, etc but it's pretty easy to create them. Look at the format of the Model Info button and use the sketchup.send_action # that TIG also mentioned. Other send_actions can be found here: http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/sketchup.html#send_action. I actually set up all my dialogs like this recently. I'm not sure yet if it's a huge time-saver or not, but we'll see.

Another thing you could try is assigning a shortcut key to Window/HideDialogs. This will close all the dialogs that you currently have open. Repeating the shortcut will open them again.

You can set shortcuts in Window > Preferences > Shortcuts. Almost every command can have a shortcut assigned to it. You can also run ruby scripts directly from the Ruby Console which is similar to the Autocad Command Line.

Good memory, Dave! I checked my settings at home and had the same problem with the menus. I found sketchup.rb in Plugins, removed it, and the extra items went away. I wonder what plugin came packaged that way?

I'm not sure how long I've had this problem, but I noticed this today:

Is this a known issue with some plugin? I've removed the last few I've installed trying to locate the problem but so far nothing changes. If I can help it I would like to avoid uninstalling my entire plugins folder due to the time it takes to reset everything. Ideas?

The high/low/middle work correctly now. Thank you for this script.

I think this will be a very useful plugin. I can't get Lowest, Highest, Average, or Middle to work though. No matter which ones I pick, all the vertices go to zero. First I created a surface with undulating edges, selected the outer edges, and ran the plugin. I thought that's what I saw in the videos, and that process works for the other tools. Did I miss something, or is there a bug in the .2 release that wasn't there in .1?

For the first question, you could erase the outer edges of your grass area. Then select the outer sidewalk boundary and the new inner grass boundary and run Sandbox From Contours. There will be some clean-up you have to do, but it should fill the area nicely.

For the second, I think Sandbox Stamp should do that.

This is great. Thank you!

Here is one of the best methods I've seen for replacing skies in Photoshop:
http://www.digital-photography-school.com/how-to-replace-a-sky-in-photoshop
It will make that foreground tree look much better.

Is it possible to define a path in GE and then have the camera follow it? I'd like to be able to navigate a specific path, following the topography. I have a space navigator and thought I could use that to control my movement but I can't move smoothly enough through the landscape. (Of course it has nothing to do with user error. ) Is there a plugin or any tips to make my virtual trip smoother?

Mr. K, I think you're right - it might be a version issue. It happens with almost every SP model I've opened, but most recently on your conveyors.skp you made for someone on another thread. I think you must have made it in 7? Anyway, I copied it into a new file and it worked. That's a good enough workaround for me. Thanks.

I get this error every time I open a model with sketchyphysics that someone else has created:

Error starting the simulation: undefined method 'parent' for nil:NilClass
C:/PROGRA~2/Google/GOOGLE~1/Plugins/SketchyPhysics3/ClassExtensions.rb:59:in 'definition'

Usually if I explode and reconnect a bunch of the joints in the model I can get it to work, but that's tedious and shouldn't be necessary. If I start a new SP model, the sim runs without any problem. The models typically come from this forum or the SP forum so I know they should work. Any ideas?

Eerily close to middle school. Yikes!

And just for fun....

I knew he wasn't born in the USA!

My current work-around for this situation is to use Random Select and then the native Replace Component tool. Random Select can be found here: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=6922 Automating this function in some way would of course be better.