Thanks for all that info fredo... It'll certainly come in handy

GUI like TopoShaper and my other plugins' are drawn in the viewport and constantly refreshed (at each view.invalidate). So this is a very different technique compared with HTML dialogs. Benefits: you can use a state driven approach, since the refresh is permanent you do not have problems of focus between the Sketchup window and the dialog box Drawbacks you have to draw everything with the OpenGL methods (i.e. view.draw2d()), and manage the interactivity with onLButtonDown, onLButtonDown and onMouseMove()). The GUI takes some real-estate on the Sketchup viewport. And also, it disappears when you Orbit or pan Some users don't like it, as it is 'non standard' (by the way, when looking at Web Sites, this difficult to say that there are standard in HTML too!) Note that HTML / JavaScript / CSS, you can make the programming state driven by using frameworks like Vue and Bootstrap. There is a learning curve but overall it's working fine. For the focus, this is more complex to handle, but there is a technique to force Sketchup to give back focus to itself. Fredo

I had a similar problem where I are getting this message every time I tried to save: "*** Problems were found that could not be fixed! *** The name for CMaterial (290526) is not valid". It would still let me save the file though. I was able to solve the problem by opening the materials window and hovering over each material to look at the name. I found 3 materials that somehow had blank names. After renaming those materials the problem went away. I don't know how those blank named materials got there in the first place though, I tried to recreate the problem but SketchUp won't let you name a material with a blank name.

It worked wonderfully! I was using the load_from_url method with a file:// prefix before, and it also worked... but this makes more sense. Thanks!

dude, did you know that everytime you save a scene there is the option to save it with the current settings? Maybe this wasn't the case back in 2013 but there you go

Most users of the plugin are SU 2018 but I've received some kickback from others so I may have to put this plan on hold and go a different direction.

You may find information on this in: "Automatic SketchUp - Creating 3-D Models in Ruby" by Mathew Scarpino Permissions may be sought directly from Eclipse Engineering LLC: Fax: (925) 262-1757 E-mail: info@eclipseengineer.com Appendix B: Advanced Geometry..................................... 391 B.3 Introduction to Transformation Matrices .........................................406 B.4 Combinations of Transformations...................................................415 B.5 Transforming Points and Vectors....................................................418 B.6 Mathematics of Combining Transformations....................................423 You may find helpful links here: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=10142&p=573943&hilit=automatic+sketchup#p269709

@einstein said: Hi! I know, it's a dusted thread but maybe someone will make me know. Is it possible that Offset on Surface would treat separately several neighbouring surfaces selected at one time? I mean, instead of creating one big offset from selection border, it would make several offsets, each out of one surface separately. Not sure I understand. Could you be more precise or give a concrete example. Fredo PS: you can use the Thread of ToolsOnSurface, or start a new discussion thread for this subject.

That sort of thing is done with a Transformation. Look up Transformation in the SketchUp Ruby API documentation.

Thank you very much for this explanation and for the special case. It helps a lot.

Thanks Mitch your code worked very well once I figured out the transformation I needed. The code also left the component entities on Layer0 which was a problem for my code. The forum is an amazing source of info thanks to the many people who are willing to share their knowledge. Keith

Oh wow, thank you! It works great. It's actually pretty simple and straight forwards. I did hope that start and end positions allow something like this to be done. Regards, Karl

You can replicate an offset for a face. The code is not so simple. Install my old tool https://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=TIG_Smart_offset Read the code and try to understand how it works... It's somewhat more complicated than you need, but you should be able to extract what you need...

Any news on this topic? Can model specific states be safely indexed by the model object now or do we still need to use hacks such as using the DefinitionsList object id as index?

@dan rathbun said: @juju said: 1: No direct Revit import. If you want to import Revit files you'll need to export from Revit to a format that SketchUp will import. SketchUp User Guide: Using SketchUp Data with Other Modeling Programs or Tools @juju said: 2: IFC export is possible from SketchUp Pro, not sure which was the earliest version (2016?) @unknownuser said: ](http://ruby.sketchup.com/Sketchup/Model.html#export-instance_method)":jm81no8r]SketchUp Pro 2015+ added IFC export capability. thx Dan!

Use model.active_entities, working in model.entities IF it's not the current context will BugSplat. You can get references to the objects which result from the explode operation [any previous reference to that line etc will get lost as it explodes] exps = group.explode Gives you an array - in your case it'll probably be an array containing one line... You could then remake a group in the active_entities with group2 = entities.add_group(exps) or perhaps exps.grep(Sketchup::Edge)[0] If you want to replicate the group then after the first group is made you simply add a copy of it, then explode the original, so that the edge is now in the copied group, and it is replicated back in the active_entities... group.entities.add_line(...) group2 = entities.add_instance(group.definition, group.transformation) Now explode the original 'group' back to the edge in the active_entities... The second copy 'group2' remains, it contains the replicated edge...

Hi fredo6, can u update XRaySelection ? ty !

Hi TIG, sorry for the late reply - I have been busy finishing another project project. I have just tested your code and it works perfectly! Thank you million times! Best regards, Stan

Use this : http://ruby.sketchup.com/Sketchup/Entities.html#add_image-instance_method

Thanks to both of you for a very useful code snippet. Especially helpful when you're making a component from loose geometry and forgot to check "Replace selection with component", and have to go through the process twice. Always good to save clicks and annoyances.