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'...

Thnx for the luck, mitcorb !

nope, it's an imvu user made exporter. there's an improved version in beta, but i haven't installed it yet. http://www.imvu.com/groups/group/SketchUp%2BMeshing/ there's, in the version i'm using, a uvmap, mesh and skeleton... and if this site would let me upload them, you'd see them... nope, it don't like xmf's, i'll zip em. thingy.zip

@pdonner said: I cannot find the corresponding Win32API and win32ole documentation among these neatly structured pages. Those are part of the standard extended libraries. The Core libraries (modules) are loaded when the Ruby interpreter is loaded. Any non-core library module must be loaded afterward using require(). http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib-1.8.6/

@neino said: EDIT: After install Ruby in C:\Programs\Ruby192 the error is still the same. What Should I change/do to use sockets library under Sketchup? Sketchup cannot use Ruby in the 1.9.x trunk. You should install a branch of Ruby in the 1.8.x trunk, and recommend the same version and patch level that matches the interpreter DLL distro'd with Sketchup 8: ****Ruby Binary Installer(s): Ruby (v1.8.6-p287) Windows One-Click Installer Other posts on the sockets issue: Interest in a Networking Sockets Workaround Clients <--> Server Communication (Sockets?) Requiring Socket on Mac crashes SU

Dan Rathbun Thank you so much for instruction. I am now studying "Design Patterns in Ruby" And just learned about Singlton Pattern. Does every one use Design Pattern making sketchup plugin? Or maybe use UML?

Oh this stuff looks great guys, thanks! I'll probably get a chance to test it tonight, Chris

What i need is a quick check if the sectionplane cuts the solid. Because the .intersect_with is a very slow function i want first to check if solid wil be sectioned by the sectionplane to speed up the script. And the check with the bounding box works good except for nested solids. Anybody a tip for solving my problem?

@honoluludesktop said: Thanks Dan, will follow up here with progress. Hi all. I'm the user in question. So, I literally just discovered that the crashing seems occur only when I push the escape key to dismiss the splash screen. I have not had any problems in the past few minutes, so this may not be an issue at all with the plugin. It seems to happen even if I don't have the plugin installed. The reason I wasn't getting this after reinstalling is that SU required me to pick a template, so the escape key didn't work. How about that?

Awhile back, I noticed some quirky behaviour when trying to use innerHTML (on PC with IE7.) I think I switched to using innerText instead and that worked. If you are not actually inserting any HTML tags within the target element, I would say use innerText instead. I have not tested this yet since I upgraded to IE8, (and forget now even what it was I was working on, when I had the problems.) Anyway... FYI, just a note on innerText vs innerHTML.

Those characters are both Ruby operators and instance method names. Use the String concate method + to add those chars (which must be quoted.) my_string = 'Some special string' + ' > ' + 'the last part of the string.' or you can use replacement within double-quoted string: my_string = "The value: #{biggernum.to_s} > #{smallernum.to_s}" where biggernum and smallernum are numeric references. The 3rd way is to use the Integer instance method chr if you know the character's ordinal within the UTF-8 set. Since decimal 60 is the ordinal for "less than" ... 60.chr returns the single char string "<"

Thanks

I changed two linkes to get the os x 10.6 bundled ruby 1.8.7 (patchlevel 174) Also for me everything seems to work. cd /Applications/Google SketchUp 8/SketchUp.app/Contents/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/A mv Resources Resources.back mv Ruby Ruby.back ln -s /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/Current/Resources Resources ln -s /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/Current/Ruby Ruby to change back: cd /Applications/Google SketchUp 8/SketchUp.app/Contents/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/A rm Resources rm Ruby mv Resources.back Resources mv Ruby.back Ruby

Too many variables. How would you for instance determine a harddrive's interface speed, and whether the write cache is on? If you want worstcase, then you could use old PATA speed of 33Mb/s, but most newer computers will have PATA of 100Mb/s. If the computer is late model, and has a SATA drive, the speeds can be up in the 3 .. 6 Gb/s range. So.. the easiest way would be to have the user fill in a WebDialog form for this info. They you would multiply width x height in pixels, by say 24bits each to get a approximate size for the image (if a BMP,) then divide by the interface speed. Estimating compressed format sizes (like GIF and JPEG,) will be much harder, but you might be able find some equations out on the web. (Then of course, there is extra processing time for the image to be compressed.) Sketchup uses PaintLib, an Open Source library. Perhaps there are some speed data on the PaintLib author's website?

I know there are numerous 3rd party apps that can achieve the UV solutions SU lacks, however I really like the Ptex system. I guess I'm hoping for a SU solution still, without needing to add more apps to my workflow, export, import, just a simple, easy solution.

Thanks, Dan. Your advice was very useful. I could have lost a lot of time on the other schemes which I referred to. The 'Programming Ruby' book by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt looks interesting. Downloaded the .so extension modules, installed them and run a Ruby console session: >require 'win32ole' true >ppt = WIN32OLE.new("PowerPoint.Application") #<WIN32OLE;0x11396c58> >ppt.Activate nil That's it: PowerPoint was activated, so I'm ready to use PPT automation in a SU script as desired. Really elegant. This scheme depends on the WIN32OLE extension written by Masaki Suketa. Can anybody give me advice on standard procedures for installation of such extensions on the machines of SU users. My post had another aspect: We are now capable of using Ruby as a client for Windows Automation. What about the other direction. Can SU be extended to become an automation server?

If locating the faces is sufficient, you can start with my code here. Just noticed that there is a link to Chris's post too.

[image: hippo_bump.jpg]

Thanks - works perfectly.