Notepad ++ is a good choice. It's quite used around here I think. I use it to. But I don't use bridge. I reload my scripts having robycode editor open all the time during developping. Can't remember why I do it this way Just letting you know there is that option to. @unknownuser said: From your experience is it a good idea to use core ruby classes with Sketchup and I am not sure how it will effect the working of plugin on Macs (Like I said. My experience is poor, so don't take what I have written as solid good advice. I must stress that. I just jump in and ask questions or give advice when maybe I should keep my mouth shut. ) At some point you must use the API ? Doesent matter if youre on Mac or not. What I meant was that if there already exist a method in the API, one should use it. Most likely it will be a faster method then what you will create in Ruby. Automatic Sketchup is really good for getting grasp of transformations and such. But you should really poke around other peoples scripts to get a feel of how to do things.. http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=25305 There are some recent performance tips here. And a few things to avoid.

Actually a EuroZone court found that you can transfer your license. But that was a paid license not a free one. And would most likely only be applicable in that jurisdiction. But alas Russia and some other places don't care what kind of copyright law you write. They do as they please. And I never had any issues with registry keys. Although I run CC cleaner on my registry every few months just to keep it tidy.

@tinhnguyen20 said: What is a normal and can somebody give me an example? The vector perpendicular to and pointing away from the front of the object's plane. See Wikipedia: Surface Normal from which comes this image: [image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Surface_normal_illustration.png/222px-Surface_normal_illustration.png]

Material.write_thumbnail is bugged in its design. If I remember it preserves the aspect ratio but exports the largest dimension no larger than 128px (or something, at least the cause why it fails most of the times is when one dimension is rounded to 0). I'm still searching for the detailed forum post and bug report on this. Don't use it, but use Jim's suggestion with a material applied to a group. It will retain the color shift and colorized properties.

@unknownuser said: What does "reuse the iteration" mean? Hm. maybe my explanations and english where bad. Hash.each{|k, v| v.do something } is called an "iteration", right? Iterate a Hash. Depending on something do the same iteration on other Hash with different values. Seams like waste retyping the same code again.. I know you are asking why I don't pass in a nested Hash, or array and just do everything in 1 go. In this case I just cant.

Any other ways you guys can think of?

@sdmitch said: So even though the global variable retains lts value, the entity it references doesn't exist? I don't know the internals. But as yoou noticed, even when the global variable appears to reference a valid menu object, new items are not added after some short amount of time.

Standard Library isn't compatible with SketchUp Ruby. For instance, the Set class that SketchUp bundle isn't compatible with the STL Set class.

@unknownuser said: OK.. then why not ALSO have a premade collection of Materials in a "plugins/folder/materials" directory ? Might be better to grab the materials from components in this case. The idea is that the end user should be able to add new components to that folder and everything updates. Anyway, I "sort of" have it working already now with option 3 (wich was pointed out earlier). Thanks for the suggestion.

(1) Please go to the User Control Panel and fill in the statistics so we can better know about your level and use of SketchUp. (2) Follow the Guide to learn standard Ruby basics, then simple SketchUp Ruby projects, before attempting advanced projects. If you are attempting to program manifold solid features with or for the SketchUp Free edition, then you will need to be a very advanced programmer. Look at the code that others have done in this area first. (It can save you a lot of time.)

Aye.

@driven said: @slbaumgartner said: John, do you have a custom WebKit installed? Or some kind of PDF viewer plugin? Are you insinuating that I may have tampered with my SU instal;) I have the standard WebKit SU WebDialog doesn't seem to use Safari's WebKit built-in PDF — from file “”. MIME Type Description Extensions application/pdf Portable Document Format pdf but instead seems to be using Adobe Acrobat and Reader Plug-in Adobe Acrobat and Reader Plug-in for Web Browsers, Version 9.5.2 — from file “AdobePDFViewer.plugin”. Nice plugin scanner, John! I got Adobe Acrobat and Reader Plug-in for Web Browsers, Version 9.0.0 — from file “AdobePDFViewer.plugin”. So maybe there's a version sensitivity involved? In any case, it seems to support Dan's feeling that PDF display via WebDialog is not reliable from machine to machine.. Steve

Does it happen if you have only your plugin loaded?

Thank you so much...This solved my problem! The one I am using is your second suggestion since the revert method didn't produce what I wanted. The time it takes to save is not much so I am happy. Again thanks!

Just in case here was a discussion about this topic I happened to find. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/sketchupruby/ymKyqD_nxBU/AczVTLjFld4J

It's an debug message from V-Ray for SketchUp.

@alexmojaki said: Incidentally, I haven't tested any of this on Windows yet, so we'll see what happens when I try there. This might not be over yet. Aaaand...I'm back! Indeed, this solution doesn't really work on Windows, because as soon as window.blur() is called, it doesn't just remove focus from the dialog, but from the whole Sketchup application! Sketchup goes into the background, yet somehow it is the window that is open according to the taskbar, and if you click on it in the taskbar to try and reopen it it minimises it.

Are you still using SketchUp 6 Pro ? There was a bug in the Geom::Vector3d#angle_between() method that was fixed sometime in the 7.x branch.

I've decided to abandon the tool route. By running outside the tool stack I am able to change the view asynchronously, so the user can navigate without having to explicitly invoke or change tool modes. It's a much more fluid experience, and with the exception of a few minor cases that I think I can work around, it doesn't disrupt tool operation. Thank you for the useful tips, everyone. This is a really fantastic forum!

A component is a skp file that is loaded into SketchUp, from either a local directory (treated as a library,) or from a remote website. Encapsulting skp files within another file container just adds unneeded complexity. If you wish you CAN have a database that keeps track of the directory of components.