Thanks guys. Thought it was too easy to get a book. I won't use a pirate site. Guess I'll have to buy the books.
This is an outstanding thread and thanks to all who have contributed, with special THANKS
to Dave for starting it and being attentive for over four years. I have read all all 1020 posts and will be using about 890 of them as reference as I try to use this very neat program.
Thanks again to all.
Jerry42

Gerry 42. Sketchup is a great program but it does take a while to learn all of it. For me, I found the SketchUp tutorials that Google provides a very good starting point. Also if you check out you tube there are an enormous number of very good how-to videos there. The one key to using SketchUp successfully is to remember to save your entities as either a group or a component, that will stop reacting with each other when you put them all together. Once you start get the hang of Sketchup the other thing that needs to be mastered is layers, they work very differently to say layers in Photoshop, but once mastered they really make working in SketchUp very easy. I have found SketchUp to be one of those programs but is absolutely brilliant, but can also drive you to screening distraction when trying to do something you thought was really simple. Main thing is stick at it. Good luck.

Originally Posted by CT4

Both links have FBI warnings about being pirate site or just broken links when I tried to go there

Oh OK I only loaded the basic page didn't try to DL anything. I didn't know these were 'real' books thought they were some sort of online tutorials. Amazon has them. Yes these are probably either pirate copies or malware.

Youtube has tutorials for everything, try there. Or, google documents *everything* because without that nobody could use their stuff at all. It'll be in 'programmer-speak' but should be legible.

Well another newbee question, how do I un component something? Thought I was being smart and made a component and now I can't do anything to it. And how do you keep things square I make a wing and it is not true square then when I try to add a Kf segment I can't get them to line up and become one?

Originally Posted by Jerry42

Well another newbee question, how do I un component something?

Right click on it, and choose explode.
You can nest components, so you will need to explode each "layer".

Originally Posted by rcav8r2

Right click on it, and choose explode.
You can nest components, so you will need to explode each "layer".

Thanks, RC, I read about explode but coulden't find it in the dropdowns. never thought to right click. thanks again.

so i got this idea of making a flying wing, but using a puller and with a small fuselage underneath for place to put RX, batteries and a camera instead of gluing it to a conventional flying wing.

I figure a puller would be more efficient, quite-r ( but not as durable ) and i haven't seen anyone make one yet ( at least one with a plan that i can find )
so i'm planning on making one using Google sketchup.

i have been playing around with sketchup for the past few days, still can't figure out how to do a few things :

1. How to make Slots and tabs
2. unfold everything to print out.
3. make the fuselage taper ( nose of the fuselage will start with a circle , then will slowly taper back, to a square-ish shape then taper back into a circle to make a more slippery/aerodynamic fuselage )

are there any useful plugin for sketchup 8 that a person designing/making plan for RC airplanes should get ?

any help will be greatly appreciated.

for a camera on a flying wing see http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showt...17276&page=315 post 4719 that is one of many

Answer to for the above post, go back and read through the many pages here.. some of the various useful plugins are mentioned..
I went to a download site for plugins then had read through what they did ..selecting anything that might be usefull...Ive ended up with more than I need, but there is no limit so it doesn't matter..
The rest is practice.. for taper you can do it by a combination of selecting areas or moving by pulling out the end face and then scaling them...again there is an illustration early in the thread on doing just that ..
You will usually find there is more than one method for doing most jobs, but it does tax my old brain trying to figure out the simplest method...
best answer is the Google search, it often pulls in the appropriate youtube video, or something close enough

Originally Posted by Jerry42
Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual
http://books.sharedaa.com/2010/02/go...ng-manual.html
Google SketchUp For Dummies
http://books.sharedaa.com/2010/02/go...r-dummies.html
These links do not work. Does anyone know where to find them??
Those links go to one of those sites that are a con.. pulling you in without any end result.. there is no download there that I can find

The many youtube tutorials plus practice is the best way of learning

but if you don't mind file sharing through torrent sites
search on http://kat.ph/... you will need a program like vuze to get the files

Just a caution with the plugins, depending on your computer, the more you load the slower SketchUp will open and take longer to respond to some commands. When I first started I grabbed all the plugins I could find. When I had a clean up I got rid of most of then as I really was not using them. SketchUp ran much better. There is a plugin called Slots and Tabs that does a great job of forming.....guess what....slots and tabs. The only caveat is both the pieces have to be the same thickness. You should find it with a Google search.

very true... clear out the plugins you never use...

Is sketchup 8 from google free? Can I download it here?http://sketchup.google.com/download/

-joker

Yes the basic version is the free one... and that will do most everything you want.. the pro version obviously does more.. for our use free is fine..
confused me ........its now Trimble Sketchup...

How do I change the background color?

I just put up some video showing use of Sketchup as CAM software to generate toolpaths for what can be used for any 4 axis CNC hotwire, although the software was specifically designed for the Foamcasualty 6 Axis Foam Cutter, options are available to make it work for any 4 Axis setup (that can run gcode).

The software is only available at this point to people who have decided to go with our machine, although the plan is to eventually release it, we are still in the beta testing stages and there is a lot that needs to be cleaned up to make it readily usable for any setup.

Drawing tapered wings with Sketchup (to create a CNC hotwire path) - Part 1/3 (3 min 22 sec)

Drawing tapered wings with Sketchup (to create a CNC hotwire path) - Part 2/3 (7 min 39 sec)

Drawing tapered wings with Sketchup (to create a CNC hotwire path) - Part 3/3 (4 min 36 sec)

...and here are some different milling operations with the same software:

NCGen Plugin for Sketchup 2D Cut Demo (2 min 51 sec)

Basic 3D toolpath "snake" exported to gcode from Sketchup (2 min 27 sec)

Creating 3d g-code files from Sketchup using NCGen for CAM applications (1 min 56 sec)

Here is a list of the plugins I use most often:

http://sketchuptips.blogspot.com/200...-unfoldrb.html Jim's unfold tool
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=17947 Fredo's tool library support plugin
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=13563 Fredo's BezierSpline tool (used extensively for drawing airfoils and other splines to hotwire)
http://forums.sketchucation.com/view...=28586#p248195 Fredo's BETA Curviloft tool (powerful lofting tool)
http://forums.sketchucation.com/view...t=11212#p76625 Fredo's Tools On Surface tool
http://forums.sketchucation.com/view...=17948#p144180 Fredo's FredoScale tool
http://forums.sketchucation.com/view...=20485#p171721 Fredo's RoundCorner tool
http://forums.sketchucation.com/view...=42089#p373073 Fredo Tools plugin
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=31410 Tig's Mirror tool
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=22199 Jim's FreeDXF Importer (if you really want to try and use dxf files)

Now also compiled on my webpage here:
http://www.foamcasualty.com/?p=463