@jim said: I agree about needing to read or write on the disk in order to accomplish this; however... if you are going to be reading and writing files, why not copy the .skm, load it, and make the adjustments? Either way, it looks as if the best you are going to do is a clunky work-around. Well, this is to create programmatically a semi-transparent material from an existing material. This is the only way to build a macro that would show part of the model in Xray (as the View mode of Sketchup applies to the whole model). At the moment, I can do it with color of material, but cannot get the textures to be Xray'ed. See discussion thread in the forum at http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=6638 and also in the French section (http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=6589&start=0) [image: 0DFA_xrayhousepartial.jpg]

Yep, that's it ! @unknownuser said: the reason it fails, it because it is looking for: "=", and this line has: " = " Thanks Al. I was thinking that the strip method didn't care of spaces, and it does in fact. Since components.strings is the stock file that is installed with the french package of GSU: to SU Team

@unknownuser said: because WebDialogs are not using the default browser installed on the user machine, but instead a Internet Explorer shell (the same that you see when viewing .chm files for example) on Windows version. there is no option to use other browser engine for displaying WebDialogs. btw, why do you need another one ? Just another point on this issue since this was the only thread I could find that was related somewhat to my problem. I was using the get models button to access 3d warehouse for the longest time, no prob. Then one day the model images would not appear in the popup browser and I couldn't download them to my sketchup model. I tried restarting SU, rebooting the computer and eating some chicken soup...all to no avail. Since I use FF as my default browser I assumed that SU was using it in some weird form as the get model popup. I now know that it uses IE, and was able to solve the problem by locating my deleted version of IE and purging all the cookies and caches. Too bad we can't choose to have FF used as the default dialog. Would be less confusing in certain instances. cheers...

@wikii said: Hi all,I want to get the Group object that contains the selected objects. such as: > First I select a Group > Sketchup.active_model.selection[0] => <Sketchup;;Group;0xb79eb20> > I open it ,and ,select an edge > Sketchup.active_model.selection[0] => <Sketchup;;Edge;0xb79ea48> > Now I want to get the Group object contains '<Sketchup;;Edge;0xb79ea48>' ,that should be '<Sketchup;;Group;0xb79eb20>'.Using 'parent' methods，it can't work at all. > Sketchup.active_model.selection[0].parent => #<Sketchup;;ComponentDefinition;0xb79e958> > Please help me. So far so good, you have the ComponentDefinintion. Let's say you set it to 'cdef', then cdef.instances[0] will return the group you want - there's only one instance of a group's component-definition - I know it's convoluted !!! NOW you have the parent of the edge... = the group ?

Wireframe is even simpler, as you just hide / show the faces The big problem for Xray, is that I don't find any way to create a material from an existing one, or to assign the new one the same texture as the old one, especially with SU v6, as the JPG are now embedded in SKM files. So the macro works without texture at the moment. Does anyone see a solution?

RBS files work as RB files. They are Secured or Scrambled by the author but SketchUp can still read them. There should be no reason to change the extension. Which plugins did you download? Knowing that will help us get you going with them.

Yes. @tig said: Or put another way - you want a method something like: ComponentDefinition.export or ComponentDefinition.save_as ...

View.write_image. Todd

Why automate? It can save time, if it works reasonable well. I would not expect that automated mapping can do all what you can do with manual photo match, but I am fairly confident that if make3D would be made as plugin it would find users. Anyhow... code is there.

Also, some "search engines" aggregate content by trying to provide a better way to serach it and find it, and, of course, perhaps adding their own advertising to the search pages instead of the Google Ads which you have to suspect will appear someday.

Try this search argument: http://groups.google.com/group/Ruby-API/search?group=Ruby-API&q=webdialog&qt_g=Search+this+category Todd

Hello Koos, I understand your concern about publishing your code. I'm sure you can help me in my other post. http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=6543&p=41849#p41849 Maybe you could have a look there and put me on the rails? I'v solved some of my problems nut still have no idea how to put more text boxes in my form and retrieve each single variable into sketchup. I feel this : dlg.add_action_callback("ValueChanged") {|d,p| $avariable = p } is to short to do so because i can retrieve just one varaiable. Isn't it? Do not hesitate to reply in the other post so that I can end this one. Thank you Koos.

You are right, Al, the Ruby section has been all transferred for long (credits go mainly to Eric/Boo...)

(I think that was the thread I was thinking of...) It doesn't qualify as a Ruby script because it depends on two pre-made components - one for horizontal dimensioning and one for vertical (you could rotate for the vertical, but I chose to place the vertical dimensioning outside the lines.) Also, the .rb files assume another routine to locate components. ($component_folder) But I will share the code if any other ruby developers want to use it. def hdim(ploc, len) model = Sketchup.active_model entities = model.active_entities sname = "CS_hdim-240" clen = 240 # size of component in inches # see if we have already loaded the component definition = model.definitions[sname] if (definition == nil) skp_name = sprintf("%s\\%s.skp",$component_folder,sname) definition = model.definitions.load(skp_name) end#def instance = entities.add_instance(definition, ploc) transformation = Geom;;Transformation.scaling(ploc, len/clen, 1, 1) instance.transform!(transformation) end#def def vdim(ploc, len) model = Sketchup.active_model entities = model.active_entities sname = "CS_vdim-240" clen = 240 # size of component in inches # see if we have already loaded the component definition = model.definitions[sname] if (definition == nil) skp_name = sprintf("%s\\%s.skp",$component_folder,sname) definition = model.definitions.load(skp_name) end#def instance = entities.add_instance(definition, ploc) transformation = Geom;;Transformation.scaling(ploc, 1, len/clen, 1) instance.transform!(transformation) end#def Let me know if you want to components as well. They both have the dimension lines pointing to 0,0.

@tim said: Although the cutlistandmaterials.rb creates an amazingly useful spreadsheet it writes it to a realyl dumb place; not by design but because the filename is constructed by namecsv = mpath + "/" + mname + "-CutList.csv" and 'mpath' is found with mpath = Dir::pwd Sadly on my Mac this appears to prodcue an empty string since the .csv file is always written to the root directory and not to somewhere useful like, say, the same directory that the model came from. Is the Dir::pwd method simply wrong on a Mac? Is the plugin using the wrong way to find the path? Change the line... mpath=Dir;;pwd to... mpath=model.path.split("\\")[0..-2].join("\\")if model.path That will save the list in the same folder with the model, using it's name+suffix - if you haven't saved the model then it's 'root' again...

See this thread: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=153&t=1528&p=41330#p41330 And once more, thanks for helping!

It's an infrequent and usually non-repeatable bug in SUp that Mirror.rb seems to encounter now and again. Some set ups and systems seem more prone than others. I developed this version of Mirror and the BugSplat comes when you mirror collections of certain types of geometry that aren't grouped - can't see a common denominator AND I've never had one***. You can try grouping before mirroring and exploding afterwards and see it that helps. It seems to be something to do with the way/order that SUp processes grouped objects - Mirror.rb temporarily groups your selection, makes the copy and mirrors it and then if desired deletes the original - it's often this deletion can lead to these rare splats. There is a recent discovered clash between the Demeter.rb script and Mirror.rb (and Grow.rb) because Demeter has an aider-plugin called blankslate.rb and that seems to rewrite a bit of the way SUp+Ruby processes groups. This causes a crash every mirror+delete-original so it's unlikely to be your cause since it's intermittent ? ***I HAVE experienced that ! Until someone in SUp+Ruby fixes the flaky interpreter and group manipulation coding then occasional splats might randomly occur. So save beforehand and try pre-grouping what you are about to mirror - please let me know if you get any joy...

@cadfather said: ...btw Fletch, thanks for all the KT help you have been giving - i have been a silent recipient of your wisdom for some time. Me too...

I did check with Google on this topic yesterday, and they see it as a flaw. Todd

It's very useful! And,it works good in SU 6 PRO!