Bill, Serge, Everyone - I've moved the Hotkeys discussion to a new topic. Keep on trussing.

@unknownuser said: sort of off topic but.. when lion is released this month, the user library is hidden by default.. pretty much anything messing with the user library is going to become more complicated to describe to other users as there's going to be an extra instruction needed to explain how to unhide it or how to find it.. Well.. not really off topic... this has become a continuation of anothor thread (also started by Jim I think, titled something like, "Where to store user files" or similar.) In that thread I explained that Windows has hidden (maybe since Win95?) the user's %AppData% path. I can see it because I always go into the File Settings and set show all files types and file extensions. (What can I say... geeky as charged.) Weird that OSX gets more like Windows.. and Windows is now built upon a Linux core.

suberb, and this on a sunday!!! Thx tig and dan, much appreciated!

AAHH! Yes! Now it works. I spotted the . 25cm mistake. But did not think about the spaces. Thank you very much TIG and Jim!! I've learned a lot from this. Now I need to learn what has really happend in the code And acctually I only needed 1 edge in the group. I did not know one could add the entities in an empty group. This is a lot better.

ThomThom thanks so much! Paul

That fixed the 'issue', thanks

Here it is,my first public plugin In some cases the intersections between solids can be considered as mistakes. Just select some SOLIDS and click the Solids Penetration Check from the Tools menu. The intersections between solids will be highlighted (selected) and colored red. What do you think about it?

Thank you for all your imformation! UML seems to be not so popular. But thank you for the link!!

@unknownuser said: You are right again. I found that you have to remove the observer (in the deactivate). Otherwise, in new instances of the Tool class, you will get the observer notifications of the ones previously created! I've begun to make my observers into Singletons. So I can use a factory method to get the singleton instance at any time when I need to add / remove the observer.

@unknownuser said: And you also need to listen to the ToolsObsever to check if the user activates another tool - instead of actually placing the component. That doesn't seem to be an issue. onComponentInstanceAdded gets fired when the component is placed, not when you activate the tool.

If you have made [or imported] a model where the back faces are the wrong way round but have been textured as if they were the front face - visible when viewed in Monochrome mode - then my FixReversedFaceMaterials script tools can help... http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=264134#p264134

Saying that Ruby doesn't have variables is plain wrong though. Even if the variables just hold references to objects, they're still variables, and the term "instance variable" is found throughout most object oriented programming languages (and I think the fact that Matz himself calls them variables is proof enough that Ruby has variables :)) Of course it might be wrong to compare BASIC variables and Ruby variables, but then it's also wrong to compare apples and oranges.

That is great Dan, thanks so much. That is very helpful, and is finally all starting to soak in and make sense. I don't entirely understand where I would use some of this, but I'm sure at some point I'll come across good reasons for things like module methods and mix-ins. I'm just not there yet in my programming needs. But a big big thank you for taking the time to write this out. Its very helpful, Chris

@chris fullmer said: Could we just re-write the sunposition plugin and send him an updated copy? It does not re-write that much. I started doing it yesterday, but in the end got in a little bit over my head. Anyone wanna give it a go? Chris Chris, I did it actually. See this post, which contains the modified version May be we should publish it in a place which is more accessible Fredo

I found a very easy way to auto split crossing edges. Create all edges inside a group when all edges are added to the group, explode the group. Sketchup will automatic split all crossing edges.

@jim said: How's the project coming along? Unfortunately, it's not coming along very much at all. just been too busy to code (which is my hobby, not my job). The initial goal was to make a server-base sketchup environment so that multiple people could work on a model at the same time. However, my eyes got bigger than my abilities and I started dreaming of a completely new way to collaborate, document, and communicate 3-dimensional information. I got a little overwhelmed when I starting looking into webGL and thought that it would be amazing if there would be a way to put sketchup modelings into a browser webGL viewer similar to google's body browser:http://bodybrowser.googlelabs.com/body.html#. Since then I am cooling the programming jets to write a white paper on the future of architectural documentation and what the technology required for an all-digital design/build environment might look like. Thanks for the advice on my previous post. I will be getting this project going again hopefully very soon. -Mike

Thanks TIG as usual you were right on the problem and I found the error earlier in the code and it resulted in dir_y did not exist and program did not actually reach the point I thought was the problem. Keith

@unknownuser said: Of course you can use any API tools within ANY entities context. Thats even better. I learned a lot from this, thanks all! Have to analyze this info and make me understand it fully. Local and Global coordinate system can be a little daunting to dig into for a newbie, but you explained it very well.

oops. thanks Adam. Fixed in OP.

This really is a very basic concept about face orientation... Most exported and 3rd party renderers assume that the part of the face you want to render is the front of that face, with its applied mamterial [if any]. IF you have a sloppily made model where some faces are the wrong way round - so the back of the face is visible [when most sane people would expect to see the front face] - then it might well look OK in the SKP - Sketchup is quite forgiving... BUT most 3rd party tools will ignore that face's back material completely and simply give it a default material like all of the other back faces which are [usually] unseen [often white/black depending on the app]... and then render the face's front with whatever material it might have [which is then 'unseen'!!!] You need to give your SKP and other app's a chance and model appropriately - not sloppily!!! You should never need to consider a face's back_material IF your model has been made properly. If you have a thin object - like a glazed-window-pane - then it should have two skins [faces], each of which should face out so you never have to see or consider the 'back_material'...