Armchr Arch Cont... Judges; the moment of truth is NIGH

[Garland Bayley]

After much consternation, I may have figured out what makes this so hard for novices like Dugger and myself. This program gets into modes and does not come out of them like one would expect them to. If I click a new operation on the toolbar palette, I expect whatever operation I was doing to quit and let me do the next operation unhindered.

The thing that has been the most onerous has been the drape and stamp tools. A novice wants to do the operation and then examine the results. However, the program stays in that operation and when you attempt to do other things it crashes or locks up. I believe this may be the problem Dugger was threatening to throw his PC in the river over when he got to drapping.

Charlie,

Is there a way to terminate the drape or stamp operation after having done one drape or stamp?

[Charlie Goerges]

If the progress bar is showing at the bottom of the screen, you pretty much need to let the drape or stamp finish and then use the "Undo" command under the Edit menu. If you haven't done the second "click" yet (where you click the 3D surface), you can hit the escape key.

[Kalen Braley]

What is you processor situation like...sounds like it might be time for an upgrade.  Additionally, adding a couple of gig in Ram can greatly help out as well.

[Garland Bayley]

So Kalen,

How's your design coming?

[Kalen Braley]

So Kalen,

How's your design coming?

I haven't started yet....with my mad computer skillz and even awesomer natural course design skills, I thought i'd make the competition fair and put myself on a tighter deadline.   

But yes, I've been procrastinating....2 nite I'll print out the topo and get a routing in the ground.   

[Garland Bayley]

Kalen,

Wouldn't you be better served by forgetting about this contest and spending your time practicing your golf skills so that you won't totally embarass yourself again at KP this year?

[Kalen Braley]

Kalen,

Wouldn't you be better served by forgetting about this contest and spending your time practicing your golf skills so that you won't totally embarass yourself again at KP this year?

Embarrass myself?  No way man.

Evan and I were AS on the last hole at Pasa in the singles matches before getting practically buried alive in that fronting bunker. 

At ODM on Friday, I put Huck on my back on the back 9 and carried the team to victory against two other guys with single digit caps. 

And on Saturday Bob Huntley and I were putting the wood to Tim Bert and Dave Miller, both of whom had lower caps, before they stormed back to tie it up on the last hole. 

[Garland Bayley]

Kalen,

Wouldn't you be better served by forgetting about this contest and spending your time practicing your golf skills so that you won't totally embarass yourself again at KP this year?

Embarrass myself?  No way man.

Evan and I were AS on the last hole at Pasa in the singles matches before getting practically buried alive in that fronting bunker. 

At ODM on Friday, I put Huck on my back on the back 9 and carried the team to victory against two other guys with single digit caps. 

And on Saturday Bob Huntley and I were putting the wood to Tim Bert and Dave Miller, both of whom had lower caps, before they stormed back to tie it up on the last hole. 

All that says is that great kudos go to Evan, Huck, and Bob for the Hurculean accomplishments.

[Michael Dugger]

Garland,

I suspect sketch up needs a boodle of RAM to move along seamlessly in "real time." 

[Charlie Goerges]

Garland,

I suspect sketch up needs a boodle of RAM to move along seamlessly in "real time." 

I've done this kind of thing with 512MB RAM, but I like it a lot better with 2GB.

[Garland Bayley]

Garland,

I suspect sketch up needs a boodle of RAM to move along seamlessly in "real time." 

I've done this kind of thing with 512MB RAM, but I like it a lot better with 2GB.

Then my 3GB ought to do just fine. Does that qualify as a boodle?

[Michael Dugger]

No, I'd call 3GB an a**load.

It's befuddling.  I have a brand new Vista machine with oodles of RAM and harddrive space, but it is soooooo slow.

[Kalen Braley]

No, I'd call 3GB an a**load.

It's befuddling.  I have a brand new Vista machine with oodles of RAM and harddrive space, but it is soooooo slow.

3 GB of Ram should be plenty, but you can still do more as my PC at home has 4. However, how much hard drive space you have will not have any effect in the case.  The other things that need to be looked at is what type of processing power you have, and the size of your cache bus...these could also be potentional choke points.

When the app is running and you are doing these tasks, open up your task manager to see if its taxing your processer(s) or your memory.

[Garland Bayley]

I guess I don't understand all this concern for my processor speed and the amount of RAM I have. As I posted earlier, it seems to me that most of my problems with this software is its user interface model. I don't know if there is a switch from novice user to expert user, but it seems to me that it is in expert user mode and preserves the current operation while you do other operations. It is so extreme that it remembers its mode between invocations of the tool. I can stamp a bunker and shut down the program. When I come back to it, my first mouse click is taken to be the selection of a group for stamping, and it asks me to select the mesh I wish to stamp on.

Charlie indicated ESC could be used to cancel the mode. I have tried that on my own earlier on occaision, but have not noticed it successfully cancelling an undesired mode. That may be because I had already begun (inadvertently) a sequence of mouse clicks within the mode, and it was not cancelable at that point.
 

[Charlie Goerges]

Garland, Escape won't cancel a "mode" so to speak, only an operation. However, try not to think of the tools as modes. They are more like photoshop tools. Once one is selected, it stays selected until you select another one.

[Charlie Goerges]

I've created a short video showing how to:

1. use the Stamp tool

2. (for you Garland) how to fix a bunker that gets inverted (the principle would work the same for a bunker that is too deep as well)

3. how to shrink the floor of the bunker to give the sides some slope.

There is no voice over to explain it, so you'll just have to follow closely. Also, photobucket chopped off the last 30 seconds because it was too long. But don't worry, you aren't missing much, just me rotating the view to look at the changes from a different angle.

You should just be able to click the image below and the video will pop up in a new window and play.

[Charlie Goerges]

I just wanted to announce that I've received my first submission for the contest AND it's even before the original deadline! So I'd better not hear any more whining  about the date! This person has wrecked the curve for all you layabout ne'er-do-wells out there.

On a more rational note, as it starts coming together for folks, it would be ideal if you could label the hole numbers, there are a couple of ways to do it in sketchup, let me know if you need any help. Also, you'll probably need to zip/compress the file in order for it to get to me at my hotmail account. If you can't, we'll get it figured out one way or another.

Best of luck, hope to see more entries soon.

[Ian_L]

So are we just sending the sketchup file, no screenshots?

[Charlie Goerges]

That's the plan Ian. Though you still need to do some screenshots for your "show and tell" post on the contestants showcase thread.

[Garland Bayley]

So Kalen,

How's your design coming?

I haven't started yet....with my mad computer skillz and even awesomer natural course design skills, I thought i'd make the competition fair and put myself on a tighter deadline.   

But yes, I've been procrastinating....2 nite I'll print out the topo and get a routing in the ground.   

So Kalen,

How's your design coming?

Yesterday was ground hog day.

[Charlie Goerges]

Less than a week to go on the contest. If you've got questions, let me know. To get the file to me, the easiest is for you zip it and then email it. If that is not an option for you, let me know, and we'll figure a way to get it done.

Judges, I'll be sending your scoring sheets in the next couple of days (they are in Microsoft Excel; if you can't view/edit this kind of file, let me know) along with a link to download the entries I have thus far received. If you are not comfortable with using sketchup to view the entries, let me know as well, and we'll figure something out.

Best of luck to all, and thanks once again to the judges!

Charlie

[Ian_L]

Should we describe any earthmoving we have done, like reducing slopes on the greens?

[Charlie Goerges]

Ian, A little bit of explanation is a good idea. I'll attach it to your entry in one way or another.

[Charlie Goerges]

We're getting down to the home stretch. I'm really looking forward to seeing all of the entries. After the judging is underway I'd like to undertake a survey of participants (and those who didn't participate, but might have under different circumstances) to see where improvements could be made for possible future contests. If anyone has ideas on how I could do this effectively and track the results I'd appreciate it.

Just a reminder, don't post your show-and-tell to this thread, and definitely don't post anything before the judging is complete.

[Ian_L]

Sorry Charlie, one more question... how would you like us to mark our hole sequence?