Sketchup problem

[arcangle1369]

Help! Have finally learned enough about Sketchup to get the plug-in to work for Train-Sim.(Problem was my knowledge of Sketchup, not the plug-in) However, when I place the object in the route, the Top surfaces (or any 45 degrees or less from horizontal) are not colored. I am using the colors, instead of textures right now. The other 5 surfaces appear correctly! When I open the same .S file in shapeviewer 2.2, the top surfaces are colored (????). This occurs on any shape, regardless of the color.

System: HP DV6125 (yes it's a laptop), with NVidia chip, (not card)
Windows XP Media Center (all media center tasks on manual), and without SP3
(From what I've read SP3 for XP is Blue Screen of Death for Laptops)
Minimal Startup tasks (8)
All non-required windows tasks on manual
Plain Jane Desktop ( I had a fancy one, until the frame rate hit 2 (or less).
Yes I have seen framerate 1 and lived to tell the tale
Current AVG free running in background (but not internet part)

Trainsim: Installed from disks, Content update from Microsoft (SD-40, and such)
Bin ver. 1.8.052113

Any help greatly appreciated. Please be aware my internet access is sporadic. Regular, but sporadic so it may take several days for me to reply. Thanks
Arcangle1369

[danthecpman]

I find this forum vary handy
http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewforum.php?f=176
Happy modeling from a fellow sketchuper

[Nitin]

I found that using small texture files of 128x128 of colours works very well rather than using the inherent colours of the SU(sketchUp). I create these files in MSpaint, save them as bitmaps and use them in SU. After creating the shape and exporting to MSTS, I create ace-DXT textures by tga tool. That way they are very small in size and I can use them in newer models too.

[arcangle1369]

Thanks for the help.
By trial and error it appears that even though Shape Viewer and The route Editor will display the Sketchup colors, the Actual Sim has issues with colors. On retrospection this is probably a hardcode problem in that the sim expects a color to be some kind of light like a headlight, and without the rest of the light coding it's going to stop.(the program) To me it seems kind of silly to make .aces of a color it will render elsewhere, but then again we are talking about MSTS.
Thanks again
Arcangle1369