Thanks Todd and Rick! That is exactly what I needed to get started, I appreciate having 2 pros giving me a hand. To be honest, your scripts are mostly the ones I've been digging through to get ruby nuts and bolts down. Thank you for documenting!! To start with I am just restricting the camera view, and later on when I get a little more versed in ruby going to full 2D i.e. restricting drawing to a plane without having to draw one first. Just the XY plane to start, but eventually I'd like to switch to any plane perpendicular to the camera to allow for front/side etc. drawing. Exactly which perpendicular plane will be tricky I think, someone in the Google groups suggested using a section plane as a reference and moving it manually to adjust the drawing plane... don't know how exactly that would work best, but it could be a good starting point.