perfect. exactly what I was looking for. Cheers

fantastic,thankyou very much both

@cxx said: Hi everybody ! Here's my question : is there a plugin to create gears / cogs ? (I would like to play with SketchyPhysics...) (I'm french, so don't be too "english" !!! ) Thanks a lot ! There is one plugin that I know of, and it's here: http://www.ohyeahcad.com/download/

@unknownuser said: @julius said: how did you do this? I have modified the SU2KT script. I am distracted by many things at the moment and it is hard for me to focus on programming, but the 'technology' is there. Getting it into your hands is just a matter of time. take your time. thx.

@eczkchtl said: We end up with some extra (unnecessary?) special cases. I am glad you have found the solution. What about projected \ photomatched textures? Have you tried exporting them? We end up with a lot of extra very special cases There is no built-in method, I am aware of, that would give you an answer if a face is being painted with projected texture or not!

Hm. Strange that you can extend a Sketchup object, but not subclass it! One of the things which put me onto this path was a post (http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=10299&p=69423) on best practice in coding for Sketchup, which recommends: "Don't arbitrarily extend SketchUp or Ruby base classes. Subclass them with your own class, and extend your class." Perhaps I am misunderstanding what this means? Anyhow, what I'm trying to do is generate a bunch of objects automatically, based on user interaction with another object. The objects I'm generating would have a hierarchical structure -- just like a group hierarchy -- and would benefit from actually being groups which the user can modify at a later date. So, generally speaking, it would be ideal if they were groups. The reason I was wanting to subclass them is because they'll need a lot of associated metadata with various associated methods, and a subclass of a group would seem like an ideal way to accomplish that. Is there a better way that I should be pursuing? Thanks for your help, by the way!

Thanx JGA.. .Im there. I hope this new version of the mirror.rb will do what I want. D

@plha said: Fredo: I like that approach, as it happens, I might use this code in some other place of my silly program, it just does not solve my initial problem - to be able to select one particular face. I am trying to avoid drawing one more edge (on one of the unmarked edges of shaded face in my picture) - so I wil have unambiguos common face - but that lacks elegance a lot. You have to figure out an additional criterion then to say which face you like to have. For instance, the fact that the normals to each edge crosses within the surface, or any other condition.

@chris fullmer said: Bezier Curves is in the draw menu … Yes, of course. But where are the tools for bezierspline? I miss the bezier tools palette. I had them a few weeks ago.

I don't know of an exporter that will do what you want, though there are lots of different renderers out there that might give an option like this. This might help. On exporting, you can choose to export by layer. So you could then have all the geometry separated by layers inside 3dsmax already. Then you could manipulate them there if you'd like. Otherwise, looks like you might be writing your own ruby. Chris

Jim, thank you for always helping me out. I thought I had the right syntax, perhpas some things don't have to be there.

It is called group by materials.rb. You're on the right track. Take a look at Didiers side.

thanks! That seems to be what I need. Bender

ok, it works. Thank you very much!

/ Just to tag onto this thread in case some genius comes up w/ a Ruby (great faith in Google here also..;-) and add my interest. The seven step work around (select/section/create group from slice/explode/delete plane/delete edges and surfaces on one side of the plane/heal the open end) is OK when we trim a rafter or three, but we need to animate a wind blown "explosion" and it would be great to find a Ruby that could slice and dice a group/component and leave the pieces or sections of the orig object grouped and intact. ((If I understood how you all programmed these scripts, I'd probably know this is not easy, so my apologies in advance.)) /Dennis http://insitebuilders.com /

Phil> That video was what I had in mind when I made the 'Sketchup-Life' statement. I see we have some people working on it, and some older threads about it. I like the mock-up, but I would allow each user to have their own view, and just use an arrow to approximate other views for other users, also a color-based highlight showing who has what selected.... Just from my journeys through the documentation, I believe it's well doable with sketchup as it is now, to a great extent. Even things like the texture sharing can be done with ruby and javascript. Most of it can be done with just ruby, but the webdialog would give us a nice update timer, and an easy to do chat interface. Anyway, it's after atleast 2 other scripts I gotta write.... so I can't work on it just yet I hope one of you other guys gets something up soon, and open source is always nice If not, I'll get to it eventually

ComponentDefinition.insertion_point returns the 'origin' axes of the Component Definition as it was originally made or they where later relocated - which affects the subsequent insertion point of instances. ComponentDefinition.insertion_point=[12,34,56] <say> will appear to reset this BUT when you repeat the above although it returns this new value it doesn't move the axes or where subsequent instances are placed... Weird...

Correctly it will be whew: ... @lines = [] extract_lines(group.entities, group.transformation)#!!! ... def extract_lines(ents, tr) ents.each do |e| if e.typename == "Edge" line = [e.vertices[0].position, e.vertices[1].position] line[0] = tr * line[0] line[1] = tr * line[1] @lines << line elsif e.typename == "Group" extract_lines(e.entities, (tr * e.transformation))##!!! elsif e.typename == "ComponentInstance" extract_lines(e.definition.entities, (tr * e.transformation))#!!! end end end and it works!

Hi. I forgot to add another simple question. If I have an entity object, say entities[0]...is there a way to retrieve that entities' present coordinates? Something like: coordinate = entities[0].get_3dCoord Is there such a method? How can I do this? Thank you in advance!

i second the idea of automatic camera recording (if it works with space nav). and if all the created cameras can be joined by a polyline, even if their number exceeds sanity - the polyline can be tweaked with the bezier tools and scenes recreated with flightpath