Unreliable SU6 (free)

[fostertom]

I gave up on SketchUp - maybe time to try again. Does anyone else have the trouble I had? I found SU6 (free) hopelessly unreliable at uniting lines drawn colinear and that had many effects like areas not closing as surfaces; never sure what I'd selected. Even with continual use of Plug-ins Make Faces and Stray Lines, I spent so much time chasing faults. Someone told me that's typical of SU on a PC but happens not at all on a Mac - that's hard to believe.

[CADken]

not sure what OS you have, but Vista and SU were known to have some common issues that can easily be resolved.

It sounds like you may have had a driver issue.

Post your computer specs.

[fostertom]

OK - XPHome, AMD ATHLON 64 x2 3600 GHz, 4GB PC3200 400MHz, GIGABYTE K8N-SLI ATX BOARD, GEFORCE 6800GS, 500GB SATA 8MB CACHE 7200 RPM (sorry, caps as copied from the spec/invoice). Logitech wireless kbd and mouse, 3DConnexions SpacePilot. Any good?

[97catintenn]

Your specs are more than enough for SU. As for your surfaces not closing in (or areas not closing in), that happens to me all the time.

I have to keep to flipping the picture around so that the program will fill in the surface for me, so that I can then cover it with whatever material I want.

I think it's just something that takes getting used to.

[fostertom]

Thanks for reply. By 'flipping' you mean pan/zoom/rotate? - and that causes recalculation? I don't find that - and I'd have said that was just a graphics/presentation change, wouldn't cause recalc of the underlying database? Still, if it works for you ...

[97catintenn]

rotate, orbit, whatever it takes to get a different view of the object, and then I redraw the lines that I need to complete a surface.

It doesn't cause a recalculation.

When you have several lines and surfaces, it can be difficult for the program to understand what surface you want to be whole or finished.

So, I rotate or orbit around, and then there are less lines for the program to see and SU generally figures out that I want to make an area a surface.

And sometimes, this takes several tries...


edit: sorry, in my first post, I did make it sound like it happened automatically. It does not.