Here's some getting started tips to SketchUp Extension development: http://www.thomthom.net/thoughts/2012/01/golden-rules-of-sketchup-plugin-development/ Check out the rest of the blog for more articles.

Note that when computing the area of the faces you want to apply the transformation of the parent context in order to get the correct size. The Face.area method accepts and optional transformation argument.

I agree! I am using the LinksManager Plugin by Dieder...His instructions on using the plugin require that you unzip the file into the Plugins folder. It will not work to copy and paste the folder into the Plugins folder. ThomThom recommended that I try to open the plugin from a sketchup shortcut using an argument. It creates the icon. But because the encrypted part of the plugin does all the functional work, I can not modify it to look to another drive for the files. (The error I get when I run the .rb part of the plugin in the ruby console is that the .rbs is undefined). I am thinking it will be best to try and create one .zip package that contains everything I need to distribute, and puts it into the Plugins folder so that I don't have to remap the location of the .rbs file. My group of users is small~10, they have no experience with sketchup, and they may or may not have access to the internet...I know--the dark ages. I need to make the process of accessing the collaborative model as easy, painless, and complete as possible. The group requested that I distribute hard copies of all needed peices--software, plugins, model, files, on a DVD drive. The next best option is an external hard drive. I have to get this to work, so invent I will! (Unless someone comes up with a slick way to solve this ) Thanks for your help!

you could store the value/flag on the model instead, then it would also change with the undo steps model = Sketchup.active_model model.set_attribute('maricanis', 'dl_materials_changed', true) #... model.get_attribute('maricanis', 'dl_materials_changed', false)

Oh, if you're only intending to use the data locally, then any remote data source would be overkill. If you want to just save it to the model, you can just save it as an attribute to the model. Entity#(g|s)et_attribute can store a few different types, including Point3d objects. model = Sketchup.active_model # Save array of points to the model model.set_attribute('my-points', 'some-key', [ORIGIN, Geom;;Point3d.new(1, 2, 3)]) # Get the points from the model, or an empty list if none are present my_points = model.get_attribute('my-points', 'some-key', [])

PickHelper I will have to read up on this? Thanks tt & eneroth3 I will be following on what you find out - dj

Hi, sorry about the delayed response. One important thing about the current SDK is that it cannot work with the in-memory model that's live in SketchUp, it can only open existing skp files. So you'll have get the file saved first. Here are some answers to your questions. For the ones I skipped, it means we should be able to do it. @th3lurker said: 4b. I used to create new faces using a mesh(because of speed issues), but this poses several problems. The face does not "exist" until i use fill faces from mesh, so i have to store the texture information separately. Fill from mesh erases all entities that existed previously in the group, so i have to wait until i am sure i have no more faces to add to the mesh. Could i use SUFaceCreate instead? Like i said, speed is an issue here, some of out projects have thousands of entities, and 10+ faces/ entity is not uncommon. Yes, you can use SUFaceCreate but using meshes (i.e. SUGeometryInput*) is currently the only way to map textures due to various reasons. We are looking into adding that to individual faces as well. @th3lurker said: Locking the group is not that important We do not support locking groups yet. I'll make a note. @th3lurker said: Are the .skp's backwards compatible?(sketchup8, maybe even 7, i have no real idea what the clients use). We currently save only in the 2013 format. It's on our list to be able to save in older formats. Thanks!

I sent it in a PM as a 'code block', just copy paste, no zip... john

@tig said: You can only really parse through entities 'collections': model.entities/model.active_entities and group.entities/definition.entities AND model.selection... However, once you have a collected set from that, you can parse that set to find just the things on a certain layer, with a certain material etc... Recently the use of 'grep' has been found to speed up entity parsing significantly, I recommend you try it... So to find all groups in a selection use: gps=model.selection.grep(Sketchup::Group) Now 'gps' is an array of all groups in the current selection. To find every selected group that's assigned layer 'XXX' use xxx=[]; gps.each{|gp| xxx << gp if gp.layer.name=='XXX' } If you want to find absolutely everything in the model using that layer, then: gps=model.entities.grep(Sketchup::Group) and process 'gps'... To get matches within a group use: gps=group.entities.grep(Sketchup::Group) and process 'gps'... To find everything in the model using a certain layer try: xxx=[]; model.entities.each{|e| xxx << e if e.layer.name=='XXX' } There are several alternative methods, like 'collect', but here I just show you make an empty array 'xxx=[]' and then we add to it using 'push' [<<] when we get a match... Hello TIG, This is once again very helpful. I think I understand your examples to experiment a bit and report back what I develop using this information.

Hopefully next API update includes this function...Thanks TIG!

@maricanis said: However, I've never used start_operation and Undo related features, so this is good opportunity to look them too. Indeed - they are essential for a good UX so the user an go back and forth. Another note on the ToolsObserver - the tool state of the tools vary and are not consistent so you need to dig a little to figure out their behaviour. I described some of the behaviour of Move, Rotate and Scale in the comments of AutoSmooth. You can view the source at GitHub: https://github.com/thomthom/AutoSmooth

Done.

I did not understand point.offset, with this example I understand a little more, thank you very much Thom, very interesting this

Not is you want to use the native Select tool. But if you want to avoid observers and gain more control over your plugin's environment you could make your own tool.

Everything I have tried in attempting to use Thread in SketchUp has failed miserably. This works for me: timer = UI.start_timer(1.0,true) { start = Time now loop do break if Time.now-start > 0.8 ... long computation involving many loops ... end } ... call stop_timer(timer) when appropriate, perhaps from within the loop My computation is copying a file to a WebDialog; the file is output from another process, and can grow over time to be quite large. This code updates the WebDialog once per second, and permits the "Kill" button (in another WebDialog) to work. Each loop reads 1024 bytes from the file and uses WebDialog#execute_script to append it to a textarea (escape \n and " to keep the JavaScript valid); it handles multiple reads at EOF as the file can grow.

This is the reason the Animation class is there for: http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/developer/docs/ourdoc/animation.php

Make the bolt a group or better a component, edit it and use tape tool to scale it to fit. http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=116447&topic=2458211&ctx=topic [image: vy36_bolt.jpg]

Great, thanks for the update!

TIG, Thanx for your answer, it completely elucidates my question.

As far as I know the FOV frustrum is always symmetrical. Good luck in you endeavors...