Thank you all for your help.

You wouldn't need the Pro version - free would work. The SketchUp/Ruby side of this won't be too hard. You could simply poll for changes in a file, read in the instructions, draw things, and export an image file from a SU plugin. As far as the server goes, if you do not have one setup you could try installing like wamp on your local machine for testing.

@unknownuser said: NO not now, because the vertice positions are part of the definition, and not part of the individual instance(s). Thanks for answering Dan. It could be an useful addition to the API, IMO. What confuses me is that we are moving the vertices when scaling the instance(s) using Sketchup normal scaling behavior. So why would it be different if doing a tapering ? I know the calculations for tapering is much more complex, but... Maybe there is need for some symmetry calculation I havent thought about.

thank you very much for the replies dan and Thomthom, I'll take a look at the code Thomthom experimental, to see if I can use some of this code (google translator)

@unknownuser said: That doesn't produce visual flickering? Nope, at least none that I notice on my Macbook Pro. Even if there was a little, it would be acceptable for the rock solid performance. --J

That would be better for me. I'll try to clean out the rubbish from the script first. BTW, thanks a lot. You are very helpful back soon..

Probably be good to make a wrapper for the add_arc method.

Thanks TIG. I sure there is a logical explination as to why you have to add an instance to the container group and delete the original but seems strange to me. Anyway, using your suggestions, this is the modified code and it works just like I wanted. mod = Sketchup.active_model ent = mod.active_entities sel = mod.selection grpA = ent.add_group; grpA.name="container" tr=Geom;;Transformation.new() for f in ent.grep(Sketchup;;Face) grpB=ent.add_group f; tr=grpB.transformation grpB.name="#{f.bounds.width} X #{f.bounds.height}" grpC=grpA.entities.add_instance(grpB.entities.parent,tr) grpC.name=grpB.name grpB.erase! end puts "grpA contains #{grpA.entities.length} entities"

@algorytmus said: ... except when something is dragged from another application but when moving the mouse (preview drop) over a model (sketchup view) none of those mouse events are fired for me in the Tool implementing class. What is something ??? a SKP file ?? an Image file ?? (1) The application drag-and-drop handler is not directly exposed via the SketchUp API. Instead, native SketchUp tools are activated when VALID objects are dropped: Images: The ScaleTool is activated after the image is inserted, and selected.* SKP file: The MoveTool is activated after the skp is added to the DefintionList, and an instance is inserted and selected. So in both cases, dropping those valid objects, SHOULD cause your tool's deactivate() callback to fire, just prior to the native tool becoming active.

You have confirmed my fear that a simple issue compromises what I can do. Unless there is a way to put an image into an input box it looks as if I will have to put the input which has about a dozen data items into the webdialog.I will have to master pushing data back to Ruby from the Webdialog. Thanks

Thanks Dan, I'll go check that out.

Dan and thomthom, thanks for your time and answer.

Another thing to beware of: SketchUp stores ALL units in inches - internal. Always. It is only right when a unit is displayed in the UI that it is converted into the model units. So all coordinate data you get from SketchUp is in the Length class - which is a subclass of Float with extra methods to convert into model units for presentation. Something to beware of when you output the data. More info on units in SketchUp: http://www.thomthom.net/thoughts/2012/08/dealing-with-units-in-sketchup/

Sorry, i was away for a few days. No, i don't have the time at the moment to post code, but i basically goes like this. I'll use Floor 0/ Wall 1/ Window/ Left Window Frame as an example. I have no idea how many volumes will be added to Left Window Frame until i have completed reading the file. This is important because entities.fill_from_mesh erases everything in the entity it is called from. So i create two "parallel" tree structures, one containing the groups (EG:Floor 0/ Wall 1/ Window/ Left Window Frame &Floor 0/ Wall 1/ Window/ Right Window Frame) and another containing the mesh, texture data for each face, other stuff and a "pointer" to the group this is supposed to go in to. When i finished reading all the data i start using it and create and fill each group.entities with the mesh, then i apply the information to the textures. The most timeconsuming in this is, by far, entities.add_group, taking up to a full 0.5 seconds when the number of groups jumps past 1500. I was hoping i could create an empty project with ~2000 empty groups, which i could just juggle around to create the exact tree stucture i need. There is no "stardard" tree structure for any of our projects, a wall might contain none or dozens of windows. I also understood that the c++ sketchup sdk is no longer supported, so we didn't take the risk to invest time in that.

For UVs I won't matter. It was just odd to see a one segment Curve. I noticed it because the Smooth and Sort property was gone in the Entity Info when I selected one of them.

@aerilius said: Looks good so far. I haven't seen anyone using ² in a module name (but if it works, though Unicode characters like ᚠᚢᚦᚨᚱᚲ are not supported in our version of Ruby in SketchUp, otherwise my plugins would be full of them). ² also exists in the ANSI set - so I could be a simple one byte character is he used that encoding. @aerilius said: Looks good so far. I haven't seen anyone using ² in a module name (but if it works, though Unicode characters like ᚠᚢᚦᚨᚱᚲ are not supported in our version of Ruby in SketchUp, otherwise my plugins would be full of them). I copied the example from this page: http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/10/fun_with_unicode_1.html <span class="syntaxdefault"><br />module&nbsp;Kernel<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;alias&nbsp;λ&nbsp;proc<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;def&nbsp;∑</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">(*</span><span class="syntaxdefault">args</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">)<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxdefault">sum&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">=&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxdefault">0<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;args</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">each</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">{&nbsp;|</span><span class="syntaxdefault">e</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">|&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxdefault">sum&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">+=&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxdefault">e&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">}<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxdefault">sum<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;end<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;def&nbsp;√</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">(</span><span class="syntaxdefault">root</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">)<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxdefault">Math</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">sqrt</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">(</span><span class="syntaxdefault">root</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">)<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxdefault">end<br />end<br /></span> And it worked: ` # A real lambda λ { puts ‘Hello’ }.call => ‘Hello’ Sigma - sum of all elements ∑(1,2,3) => 6 Square root √ 49 => 7.0` You can also do this: <span class="syntaxdefault"><br />module&nbsp;MyTest<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;def&nbsp;self</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">ᚠᚢᚦᚨᚱᚲ<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;puts&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxstring">'world'<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxdefault">end<br />end<br /></span> But not this: <span class="syntaxdefault"><br />module&nbsp;ᚠᚢᚦᚨᚱᚲ<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;def&nbsp;self</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">hello<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;puts&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxstring">'world'<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxdefault">end<br />end<br /></span> Return an error: Error: #<SyntaxError: (eval):516: compile error (eval):516: class/module name must be CONSTANT module ᚠᚢᚦᚨᚱᚲ; def self.hello; puts 'world'; end; end ^> (eval):516 That seem to be related to ᚠ not being recognised as a capital letter. Because this works: <span class="syntaxdefault"><br />module&nbsp;Xᚠᚢᚦᚨᚱᚲ</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">;&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxdefault">end<br /></span>

Thanks for your replies. This isnt directly connected to SU and is from a C++ project of mine. However I solved it. Turned out I needed a custom fmod function since the one built into C really is a remainder function and not a modulo function.

I use font DejaVu Sans Mono. Zerro not look like a "O"(Dotted zerro). In Consolas font "l" look like "1"(It's bad)

@yorik1984 said: Can I use 1.8.6-p420? See: Ruby Interpreter DLLs (Win32) @yorik1984 said: And more. The latest stable version is 2.0.0. Rails(framework) used ruby 1.9.3. NO. SketchUp 8 and lower, cannot load Ruby 1.9.x and higher. Currently you must stay in the Ruby 1.8.x trunk.

Ahh yes. Working on that type of thing too, as of speak. Tough stuff. Maybe this can be of help as well, regarding getting the face rotation in space. http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=33862&hilit=plane+on+plane I'm doing something similar to Cleverbeans solution currently to find a face edges rotation in space. However it is difficult to exactly tell what a face have for "intentional" rotation depending on several matters. Where the edges are in relation to face and so on. Scewed, tapered, N-gons and quadrilaterals faces etc that may not be perfectly square need a lot of testing if you are going to align geometry on to them. Its quite frustrating business. As soon as something gets fixed some new problem arise and need further testing. There are of course mathematical formulas to calculate all this, but honestly. If one has that kind of knowledge one shouldent be sitting and programming Sketchup plugins for free. It's damned rocket science as I see it.