@thomthom said: What is off target and plain wrong? A question I can't answer until I can answer my own question: What's a symbol? The link was a good one but after a too-quick read I was better versed in what you could do with symbols that what a symbol was. In most languages there is a symbol table, under the covers. Ruby symbols seem to be bringing this capability forward, allowing us to add to the table in some way that I'm not sure I understand. Edit: make that "in some way I'm sure I don't understand." end edit Nagging questions: if "foo" is a variable name it will be in the symbol table and :foo will be a symbol. What about "foo.bar"? Is that a :foo plus a :bar, or is it :foo.bar?

@thomthom said: @unknownuser said: see also The Ruby programming language By David Flanagan, Yukihiro Matsumoto Interesting link. I think I need to read further into that book. No Kidding! Yukihiro Matsumoto is "Matz" the inventor of Ruby! I didn't know Google Books had this.

@jim said: Does there exist some sort of .zip installer? As I recall, WinZip could create self-extracing archives (.exe extension,) with a 'suggested destination folder'. When run, a confirm dialog popus up, allowing the user to override with a browse button, or simply edit the destination path in the edit control box. Still in use today, but I believe is a pay WinZip Pro version that only will do this. Cabinet files (.CAB) are free and native to Windows, I believe at least the extract exe is installed on all Win32 machines; the cab maker (filename slips my mind,) is in the SupportTools package. BTW, MSIs use cab by default I believe.

[Portuguese] Acho que talvez vc esta pensando em meu plugin chamado "Three Line Tools" (tres utilidades de linhas (mais ou menos)). Pode acha-lo aqui: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=16923 e o plugin esta ao baixo do primeiro "post" meu. E si nao é aquele plugin qeu esta buscando, fica a vontade de explicar em portugese como funciona o plugin que esta procurando E desculpa si meu portuguese esta rui, sou da California e foi dez anos atraz que eu vivi em brasil. Chris [English] I think you are looking for my Three Line Tools plugin. Here is the link: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=16923 and the plugin is at the bottom of my first post. And if that is not the pluing you are looking for, feel free to explain in portuguese how the plugin you are looking for funtcions. And sorry if my portuguese is horrbile, I'm californian and it was over 10 years ago that I lived in Brazil. Chris

That's too bad. Thanks for the repsonse.

You want to count the instances in a selection... counts=[] ss.each{|e|counts<< e.definition if e.class==Sketchup;;ComponentInstance} countsuniq=counts.uniq compocount=[] countsuniq.each{|e| count=0 counts.each{|c|count+=1 if c==e} compocount<< [e.name, count] } ### compocount is an array, with each item as an array of the instance's definition.name [you could change it to just the definition itself 'e' ?] and then its number of instances as counted in the selection (ss)...

hmm... I can use the SU preferences to detect the AA settings of SU. On Windows it's under GLConfig > Display. Then I need to locate that on OSX. Only thing is that reading registry requires more files and makes for more complicated dependabilities. And I don't get the make of the card from SU's prefs...

A "Selection" is a collection of entities (lines, faces, etc.) In order to get the line, you have to get the first object in the Selection, since you only have one thing selected: line = selection[0] Then, once you have the line, you can get the start and end vertices like this: vtxStart = line.start vtxEnd = line.end To get the positions of the vertices, just type either: startPosition = vtxStart.position or endPosition = vtxEnd.position Hopefully this is clear enough to get you started.

That looks great! Thank you very much, you really helped me...

@martinrinehart said: ... I stumbled acrossthe Ruby File.expand_path() method that looks like a better replacement for the little fixup() function I wrote. If you File.expand_path(__FILE__) you get the full path back to the root, on a Mac, or the drive, on a PC. Perfect! If you look back at the original thread, and reread more carefully, you'll see ThomThom told you to use File.expand_path() two weeks before you "stumbled across" it! I've been wondering why you didn't take his advice... (and do you have a copy of the 'Pick-Axe' Ruby book in chm format?)

@fletch said: all my scenes were playing smoothly inside of SU. then I ran the FP2 script to create a 'better' cam path (instead of SU's natural 'pillowing' or 'arcing' effect for the cam transitions) After that I ran the scene timing script... trying to eliminate SU from stopping on each frame. 2 things occured. while it exports smoothly as an .avi, it plays stop-n-go in SU next time I tried to add some SU cams moving along another are of the same model, they were stop-n-go, instead of playing smoothly. Fascinatingly... I opened the file the next day, and the transitions were smooth even with the scenes that were stop-n-go the previous day. I don't know what to tell you, Rick. It's completely unpredictable. I am running SU on a very hi-end graphics card and have 3Gigs of Ram... so am very confused. Hi, I have noticed that animations within SU are smooth and quick, until I start checking and unchecking layer visibilities for each scene. Sketchup 'hiccups' when it has to load or unload layers between the scenes. Could that be what you were experiencing? Does anyone else have this problem?

I just noticed a similar "bug", but it occured when I supplied a nil value as a point3d to the draw_text method. So I thought I had recreated Thom's bug, but really it was just because I gave the method a non-existant instance variable. Chris

@jhauswirth said: There's no limit (at least in the code). RAM and HD space would be the limits. Might sound like a silly question. But are you certain of that? I believe there is a buffer overrun somewhere if you have large data attached as attributes somewhere in the handling of it inside Sketchup. LightUp stores Lempel-Ziff compressed hex strings on entities and by trial and error, I came to the conclusion anything larger than 700000 bytes kills Sketchup. So I split up data into <700000 char chunks it works fine.

@unknownuser said: Perhaps it refers to the color of the letterbox bands when you change the aspect ratio. Bingo!! I would not have guessed to try that. Makes sense now - since the default colour was 50% black. That's a very interesting property. 50% white looks nicer.

Can one at least find out if the User has Section cuts enabled or not? (not induvidual cuts - but the global setting) I'm looking at the Rendering Options - can't see anything related...

I don't know if/how one would issue that in SU Ruby :/. What is more: I closed SU and renamed my plugins folder - testing only my own script. The points where drawn as pixels as I saw at the office. When I restored the plugin folder I still saw the points drawn as single pixels! So there must have been some odd glitch. I did have that SU session open for a few days where I just put my computer in sleep mode. Maybe some other plugins changed the point size - when I ran it. Or some external glitch.... Really don't understand how it occurred. But I do want the effect of that glitch.

from Windows SDK, WinUser.h, line 2373... [language=C]: *` %(#008B8B)[/ Key State Masks for Mouse Messages / #define MK_LBUTTON 0x0001 #define MK_RBUTTON 0x0002 #define MK_SHIFT 0x0004 #define MK_CONTROL 0x0008 #define MK_MBUTTON 0x0010 #if(_WIN32_WINNT >= 0x0500) #define MK_XBUTTON1 0x0020 #define MK_XBUTTON2 0x0040 #endif / _WIN32_WINNT >= 0x0500 /]`*

@unknownuser said: So.... being the inquisitive guy I am... I removed the "false" from return false;. That did the trick!! Go figure. return [( [expression] [)];] @unknownuser said: "If expression is omitted, or no return statement is executed from within the function, the expression that called the current function is assigned the value undefined." http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/22a685h9(VS.85).aspx void expression @unknownuser said: "The void operator evaluates its expression, and returns undefined. It is most useful in situations where you want an expression evaluated but do not want the results visible to the remainder of the script. The expressionargument is any valid JScript expression." http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e17c7cbe(VS.85).aspx .. this is why you often see void(0); used in the HREF attribute for controls (such as a <A> tag,) that display popups or alert boxes. ADDED: See SCF topic: [url=http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=25252:dqe1rmdx]Webdialogs and Javascript void[/url:dqe1rmdx] therefore... you should be able to do it in the input tag thus: onclick="void( window.location='skp:setvalue@' + toHex(document.getElementById('ifield').value) );" .. and shouldn't need to have a function call. EDIT: put MSDN quotes in quoteboxes for clarity.

TT to the rescue again. Many thanks. I tried it the first way as well but found the send_action call didn't work either. Your second method works like a champ. You're a star.

One additional problem with raytest: if you have a group/component open and you want to get a list of visible verties/3d points, then raytest won't be any good if there is geometry outside that scope between the camera and the vertices. Even if Hide Rest of Model is enabled. Alternative to that is to manually iterate all faces and intersect eye-point. Horrendously slow!