@tig said: You can only really parse through entities 'collections': model.entities/model.active_entities and group.entities/definition.entities AND model.selection... However, once you have a collected set from that, you can parse that set to find just the things on a certain layer, with a certain material etc... Recently the use of 'grep' has been found to speed up entity parsing significantly, I recommend you try it... So to find all groups in a selection use: gps=model.selection.grep(Sketchup::Group) Now 'gps' is an array of all groups in the current selection. To find every selected group that's assigned layer 'XXX' use xxx=[]; gps.each{|gp| xxx << gp if gp.layer.name=='XXX' } If you want to find absolutely everything in the model using that layer, then: gps=model.entities.grep(Sketchup::Group) and process 'gps'... To get matches within a group use: gps=group.entities.grep(Sketchup::Group) and process 'gps'... To find everything in the model using a certain layer try: xxx=[]; model.entities.each{|e| xxx << e if e.layer.name=='XXX' } There are several alternative methods, like 'collect', but here I just show you make an empty array 'xxx=[]' and then we add to it using 'push' [<<] when we get a match... Hello TIG, This is once again very helpful. I think I understand your examples to experiment a bit and report back what I develop using this information.

Hopefully next API update includes this function...Thanks TIG!

@maricanis said: However, I've never used start_operation and Undo related features, so this is good opportunity to look them too. Indeed - they are essential for a good UX so the user an go back and forth. Another note on the ToolsObserver - the tool state of the tools vary and are not consistent so you need to dig a little to figure out their behaviour. I described some of the behaviour of Move, Rotate and Scale in the comments of AutoSmooth. You can view the source at GitHub: https://github.com/thomthom/AutoSmooth

Done.

I did not understand point.offset, with this example I understand a little more, thank you very much Thom, very interesting this

Not is you want to use the native Select tool. But if you want to avoid observers and gain more control over your plugin's environment you could make your own tool.

Everything I have tried in attempting to use Thread in SketchUp has failed miserably. This works for me: timer = UI.start_timer(1.0,true) { start = Time now loop do break if Time.now-start > 0.8 ... long computation involving many loops ... end } ... call stop_timer(timer) when appropriate, perhaps from within the loop My computation is copying a file to a WebDialog; the file is output from another process, and can grow over time to be quite large. This code updates the WebDialog once per second, and permits the "Kill" button (in another WebDialog) to work. Each loop reads 1024 bytes from the file and uses WebDialog#execute_script to append it to a textarea (escape \n and " to keep the JavaScript valid); it handles multiple reads at EOF as the file can grow.

This is the reason the Animation class is there for: http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/developer/docs/ourdoc/animation.php

Make the bolt a group or better a component, edit it and use tape tool to scale it to fit. http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=116447&topic=2458211&ctx=topic [image: vy36_bolt.jpg]

Great, thanks for the update!

TIG, Thanx for your answer, it completely elucidates my question.

As far as I know the FOV frustrum is always symmetrical. Good luck in you endeavors...

so as a consequence, there is no chance to set a own adress for the home-button? To create it as a part of html isnt possible in my case .. its a portal which references to a lot of differet homepages and i can't change them .. and a test with own buttons and an iframe destroyed the possibility to get information from the website to sketchup...

@driven said: for a mac you can create a symbolic link the will show the skps in the 'Components Browser' lnk_skps = %x(ln -s "#{Sketchup.find_support_file("Plugins") << "/your_folder/your_skps"}" "#{Sketchup.find_support_file('Components')}" 2>&1) is there not a windows equivalent? john For Vista and higher: mklink /D LinkName TargetPath XP "supports" a similar feature called junction points, but I don't think it's available by default. For XP: links LinkName TargetPath For Vista and higher: mklink \J LinkName TargetPath

Because SketchUp's circles are in reality finely faceted polygons the real-intersection of two arcs' circumferences is unlikely to be exactly on those arcs' edges, unless by coincidence it turns out to be at one of the arc's edge's vertices. Conversely the actual-intersection of those arcs' edges is unlikely to fall exactly on the arcs' circumferences, unless by coincidence it's at a vertex of those arcs' edges... My TrueTangent tools contain a number of algorithms to find circles/arcs' true tangents, true intersection points etc... Perhaps these will help you find what you need...

@tig said: So ac=**63.0** and then in the equation ad = Math.asin(db * Math.sin(ac**.degrees**) / dc).radians Now 'ad' is in degrees again, so when you Math equation processes it uses ad.degrees I was not confused between degrees and radians. Its the same way angles are treated in many languages, I'm quite familiar having written AutoLisp routines years ago, which also uses degrees and radians. Its more about me learning how to write the same code in Ruby .........I finally see in your example how .degrees gets added, its really simple once I saw your example.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=db27537086288b21706627b112998eff This is a small model built with some code to make it usable for sketchy physics (and perhaps 3d printing). Does anyone know how this would print on a makerbot? http://youtu.be/dqyyQF9gZeM or by just modeling with some pretty bizarre music http://youtu.be/MKrWDNDd62c

@aerilius said: There are many ways to create strings: string concatenation: 90.to_s + " degrees" # slow because it creates a new third string object string appending: 90.to_s << " degrees" # faster because it adds the second string into the first string interpolation: "#{90} degrees" Note that string interpolation is the fastest. (And reads easier IMO)

Ah, ok now I understand. Yes, then Model.active_path is what you need. And checking if Hide Rest of Model or Hide Similar Components is enabled.

What is breaking? What is expected behaviour?