Never could understand SWIG much. Cryptic interface language.
If you intended to write a library that needs interfaces in multiple scripting languages, then SWIG might lessen the workload. Or if you are wanting a Ruby interface for some library already written that has SWIG interface files, then again I can see using SWIG.

But for an extension that will be written specifically for SketchUp, since it only uses Ruby, I cannot see much use for SWIG.

Link Preview Image SWIG - Wikipedia

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(en.wikipedia.org)

Link Preview Image SWIG Tutorial

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(www.swig.org)

Link Preview Image Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator

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(www.swig.org)

@medeek said:

What I would like to do is make it possible to hold down the control key or some other key while selecting the point to position the footing, thereby the allowing the user to select multiple points.

(As said also in the other forum...)

The convention for SketchUp is that the CTRL key acts as a toggle in and out of copy mode. (This is why the API defines the constants as COPY_MODIFIER_KEY and COPY_MODIFIER_MASK.

Examine how the SelectionTool switches in and out of add or subtract mode, and the cursor changes to show + or - satellite icons. Or the MoveTool, ... etc.

Also see this other thread here at SCF:
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=180%26amp;t=67837#p621579

You'll need to decide how to let the user tell the tool when they are done picking points.

Another convention is that the ESC key resets the tool to it's initial state, or cancels the current state. (See the onCancel callback.)

The ENTER is another way, detected via a onReturn or onKeyUp callback.

The loading time decreased from 2 minutes to 4 seconds. 👍

Thanks Driven

Until it's fixed how about a clunky and convoluted workaround ?
If the pa=dim.start[0].parent is a component-definition then you need to see if there is pa.instances[1] if not then the one instance is the answer.
If there are more than one instance you need to iterate those, and assemble a list of their transformation.origin positions [ensuring the transformation steps back to match the dim's parent's and of course takes into account any instance scaling etc...] - let's call that 'pvs'.
The pt=dim.start[0] gives you a point inside the definition.
You have ps=dim.start[1] as the point of the dim in 3d space.
Transform the 'pvs' inversely and compare that point with ps, if they match then you could have a hit.
Of course two or more instances where some are rotated or flipped so that vertex is coincident in 3d returns two or more 'hit' points, so it'd not be possible to determine the attachment that way...

So, it's better if it worked like it should !!!

Hi all,

we're still looking for a SketchUp developer to work on our plugin!

Please get in touch with us at contact@indigorenderer.com if you're interested.

Kind regards,
The Indigo team

@ittayd said:

Thanks, I'm asking about ways to interact with the text: getting, setting.

No this is not what you asked!

Such a simple thing (as what method's a class has) can be easily found by looking at the API dictionary.

Link Preview Image Class: Sketchup::DimensionLinear

The DimensionLinear class represents linear dimensions.

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SketchUp Ruby API Documentation (ruby.sketchup.com)

... which is a subclass of (and therefore inherits methods from😞
http://ruby.sketchup.com/Sketchup/Dimension.html

... which is a subclass of (and therefore inherits methods from😞
http://ruby.sketchup.com/Sketchup/Drawingelement.html

... which is a subclass of (and therefore inherits methods from😞
http://ruby.sketchup.com/Sketchup/Entity.html

... which is a subclass of (and therefore inherits methods from😞
http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.4/Object.html

You asked about dims nested inside transformed instances.

I am not sure if the .text getter will return transformed lengths or not. Also not sure what happens when the context is open and not. So test.

The means I showed above avoids the conversion of text ( String) into a numeric ( Length) object, and just gets the length.

@ittayd said:

And, I wouldn't mind the coordinates changing if contains? would have acted sanely, always returning true to a point that is inside the group

BoundingBoxes are always aligned with the model's axes. This means if you rotate a cuboid instance, it's bounding box will increase.

The second thing you need to realize is that bounding boxes have an untransformed state (ie, the definition's entities bounds,) and each of their instances transformed bounds. The transformed bounds are not just translational, they can also be affected by the rotation and scaling of the instance.

@ittayd said:

I would expect the coordinates to never change no matter what entity is opened.

As a coder, most of time when generating geometry, you are just working in the definition's local coordinates with the IDENTITY transform, (ie, everything is 1:1 and you're specifying geometry oriented in relation to the definition's local origin and axes.)

But when the user double-clicks into an instance, that might be rotated or scaled (transparently they are actually editing the definition,) but perhaps not at the 1:1 scale.
Imagine an instance that has been scaled 2x. The user would be drawing edges that are twice as long on the screen. So their needs to be some transforming back to the definition's scale and coordinates.

Julia wrote a really good explanation of this recently (ie past few months.) Need to find this and give you the link.

Thanks a lot guys for the tips ! the script work fine.

But really no one have any idea how to batch-adjust the tiling of the material ? Other ways it will take me days to manually adjust each one of them 😕 (I have like 500 skm tu adjust)

Thank you Dan!

Ah okay, 3 years and two months ago, Fredo was noticing these same issues in the following topic thread:

onKeyDown: getting the charcater value from key

In that thread, post # 9, I noted several other related topic threads, and the one that I just remembered by Jim Foltz, which was back in 2009.
flags on onKeyDown?
(Note that at this time Chris Fullmer was not yet a member of the SketchUp Team, and had not yet learned much programming.)

See other related threads:

My Apple Keyboard VK_KEYS

very difficult key codes!

keycodes intelmac

Jim's KeyTool.rb is also posted in this topic thread, but not sure if it is the latest version ?

Key sequence in ruby

Now, @Anton_S posted a Windows only method that calls Windows API C functions, in this post:
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=180%26amp;t=57450%26amp;p=522915%26amp;hilit=keytest#p522915

🤓

Thanks that works

Thanks for the info.

@ittayd said:

Is there a way to utilize sketchup's own selection tool?

The only way is to attach a SelectionObserver, activate SketchUp's native SelectTool Sketchup.active_model.select_tool(nil), collect the object references, detach the observer, and activate your tool.

But trying to leverage native tools via code has been problematic in the past. So, this is why they finally added (SU2016) the two window pick methods to the PickHelper class.

ThomThom wrote a tutorial and created a graphic helper chart for using this class.

Link Preview Image PickHelper — A Visual Guide

I’ve put together a visual guide to the PickHelper class in SketchUp’s Ruby API. When I first tried to use the PickHelper class I was confused over what the different methods did, and f…

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Procrastinators Revolt! (www.thomthom.net)

Other than that, you best learn by reading the example extension by the SketchUp Team (EW) or others like ThomThom's plugins.

@boom02 said:

Do you guys think this is the right way?

NO. The spacebar is pre-coded to activate the native SelectionTool. Many users are used to it this way, and do not want to change it. Those that have changed it, have done so for their own choice of command.

Secondly, you cannot affect how the built-in place_component works as it is a native tool, most especially not when using the repeat mode. (Ie, there really is no way to trap the spacebar and prevent it from bubbling-up to SketchUp's shortcut handler.)

The way it is designed, when not in repeat mode, is that once placed, the normal MoveTool is active, and it's hover rotate mode can be used. Just hover the MoveTool cursor over a the side of a component's bounding box, and 4 rotate handles will appear. Move to one of the handles and you'll see the cursor change to a protractor.

I myself, also kinda miss the ACAD spin before place feature.

@boom02 said:

... how can I get the key press from the user?

The best way is inside a custom tool class written in Ruby.
http://ruby.sketchup.com/Sketchup/Tool.html

And you'd need to create a menu item pointing at a method object that rotates the selected object. Then that menu command can be assigned any shortcut, by users according to their own desires.

A workaround we employ is to stick a temporary cpoint into the entities (at it's origin,) and then delete it later after we've loaded it up with geometry. The temp cpoint stops SketchUp's garbage collector from deleting the object.

BTW, the answer to the original question was that

input = UI.inputbox(@prompts, @defaults, @list, "Select Attribute Target")

returns an array of values because typically the inputbox would present more than 1 option. In my case there was only one input or prompt so when I put input into

set_result = Sketchup.active_model.set_attribute("dynamic_attributes", input, att_string.to_s )

I was actually sending in an array and thus setting a new key in the format ["whatever user put into inputbox"]. Even .to_s did not seem to help...

set_result = Sketchup.active_model.set_attribute("dynamic_attributes", input.to_s, att_string.to_s )

The answer was to get the first item in the array like so:

set_result = Sketchup.active_model.set_attribute("dynamic_attributes", input[0], att_string.to_s )

@thomthom said:

Would that be at the event of copying? Or when pasting?
Can you describe the scenario you'd use it in?

when copying
i am trying to find a way to control the difusion of dynamic components
if such an observer would be available, it would be easy to prevent unauthorized copies
selection observer can be used, but it is less direct, and probably less efficient than an observer on copying
more dynamic components would be created if there was a way to crypt them, just as ruby plugins

Thanks, that worked.

Thanks.

I have PM'd you a possible solution to #7