Frequently Asked Questions
General
Yes, you can. A couple things you need to know:
- By default you can activate Skalp on 2 computers per license (e.g. your personal workstation and your laptop). On these computers you can have multiple SketchUp versions (e.g. SU2016 and SU2017) using the same license. However, you can only use Skalp on one computer at the same time.
- If you wish to transfer your Skalp license to a third computer, you will first need to deactivate one of your previous Skalp licenses. Please use the following procedure (you will need an internet connection): from the top menu choose Extensions > Skalp > Tools > ‘Deactivate on this computer’. After doing so you can reactivate Skalp using your original license activation code. There is no limitation on how many times you can transfer your license.
- If you wish to use Skalp on more than two computers, or on more than one computer at the same time, you will need to purchase additional licenses.
Sections
In essence, Skalp searches and selects particular sets of faces from the model, intersects them with the section plane and looks for 'closed loops' in the results to fill. Only closed loops can get filled. Skalp will track and process your model 'context by context'. A 'context' is a Group, a Component or simply the Model itself. So, the process starts by taking your top level context: the model itself. Next, Groups and Components are taken one at a time. The resulting 'fills' will be updated and placed into one managed group in your model. While not necessary, it is good practice to try to create components and groups that are 'manifold', 'solid' objects. These objects will be processed faster and are likely to produce cleaner section results. If a selected object reports a'Volume' in the entity info dialog, this indicates it is a valid solid object. Skalp does track nested objects. That is: groups or components inside other groups or components. So organizing your model in smaller nested groups/components might help getting better section results.
Styles
I sugest to start testing with a simple style instead of making a complex styles. You have 4 simple styles:
1. Only a default material -> everything will be sectioned with the same material.
Video Tutorial - default material
2. By object -> the objects will be sectioned with the material attached to the object
Video Tutorial - by object
3. By layer -> the object wil be sectioned with the material defined to the layer the object is on
Video Tutorial - by layer
4. By texture -> the objects will be sectioned with the same material which is painted in SketchUp on the group or component.
Video Tutorial - by texture
At first the Skalp styles look complex, but you can use them very simple or you can make them very complex if you want to do special things. But normally you adapt them once for your own way of working and you don't need to look at them anymore.
Layout
Skalp materials are optimized to be printed. Layout rasterize everything to 300 dpi (high) or 150dpi (medium) depending on the Document Setup > Paper > Rendering Resolution > Output quality setting.Even if you use vector the lines will be rasterized by you printer driver before it’s send to the printer. Only a pen plotter plots real vector information.
Skalp materials are made at 300dpi considering the chosen scale. This means if you use a skalp material on the correct scale you get the best result your printer can print. If you zoom in on your screen this texture look jagged and blurry.
The difference between SketchUp and layout is pure a difference in rendering engine between the two programs. If you change Document Setup > Paper > Rendering Resolution > Edit quality setting to high you improve the quality on your screen to 150dpi, but it really slow down your computer! Keep in mind if you set ‘Edit quality’ to high you get 150 dpi, if you set ‘Output quality’ to high you get 300dpi. It is not really WYSIWYG.
Troubleshouting
The problem is Sketchup having troubles with special characters such as 'ç' in the user profile path. They will need to fix this in a future maintenance release of SketchUp. This Sketchup problem will manifest itself on a lot of plugins from the extension warehouse also.
Currently you can work around as follows:
- create a new user on your computer without any special characters in the name.
- Install and use SketchUp on that users.
- After you have create the new user profile, you may change your user name back to your real name including the 'ç'. On renaming a user, Windows will NOT change the actual profile paths themselves, so everything keeps working.
I do understand this is not an elegant solution, as you end up with either 2 user accounts and having to switch back and forth. Or you end up having to move a lot of stuff over to the new profile.
For windows 7 Microsoft also explains how to change your existing user profile here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/19834.how-to-rename-a-windows-7-user-account-and-related-profile-folder.aspx