@alexmojaki said: Incidentally, I haven't tested any of this on Windows yet, so we'll see what happens when I try there. This might not be over yet. Aaaand...I'm back! Indeed, this solution doesn't really work on Windows, because as soon as window.blur() is called, it doesn't just remove focus from the dialog, but from the whole Sketchup application! Sketchup goes into the background, yet somehow it is the window that is open according to the taskbar, and if you click on it in the taskbar to try and reopen it it minimises it.

Are you still using SketchUp 6 Pro ? There was a bug in the Geom::Vector3d#angle_between() method that was fixed sometime in the 7.x branch.

I've decided to abandon the tool route. By running outside the tool stack I am able to change the view asynchronously, so the user can navigate without having to explicitly invoke or change tool modes. It's a much more fluid experience, and with the exception of a few minor cases that I think I can work around, it doesn't disrupt tool operation. Thank you for the useful tips, everyone. This is a really fantastic forum!

A component is a skp file that is loaded into SketchUp, from either a local directory (treated as a library,) or from a remote website. Encapsulting skp files within another file container just adds unneeded complexity. If you wish you CAN have a database that keeps track of the directory of components.

@tig said: If the text is 'fixed', but occasionally editable by the user to customize settings, then a file named 'Gcode.ini' could be kept with the .RB file: the user edits that and your code reads its contents as it loads. The text is 'fixed' for a single 3D printer. But one user mey have more then one printer. @aerilius said: but load evals in the top level namespace, so you would have to use constants like DFI1::GCode::File_header to access you plugin's namespace (no local variables, no global variables). Well, I put the load File.join(File.dirname(FILE),'Gcode.ini') inside the class GcodeExporter - and it works - no need for "::" just use the constants. That doesn't mean it is good practice nor that it will work in future versions of sketchup but - 1)it works. 2) it is very simple 3) it gets the job done quickly

Which also leads to the conclusion that the Geom::Transformation class needs a properly overriden comparison methods <=>(), ==(), and eql?() ...

@dan rathbun said: My 1st advice.. do not use the SketchUp API's Set class (because it's a thin wrapper around a C++ collection,) and you cannot be sure of the order of it's elements, especially if you will be sync'ing to another Ruby-side collection such as an Array. Yeah, that seemed to be the problem - Sets are not ordered. Thanks Dan.

This @tig said: (pt1.transform!(tr) and pt2.transform!(tr)) worked very nicely. Thank you.

With thanks again to the 3 Ruby Amigos I will work on implementing your suggestions this weekend.

Cheers Dan, I'm sure a timer before but will revisit... for the moment a couple of us have highjacked Jeffs thread, to work a few thing out... I'll post some bits back here when there usable... john

@jasef said: Dan, we tried WebDialog.allow_actions_from_host() with no luck so far. Correction: this is not an IE10 issue; Win 8 uses IE10 as the default browser, but SketchUp is using IE7 for web dialogs: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; Trident/6.0; .NET4.0E; .NET4.0C; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.30729) Google-SketchUp/8.0 (PC) The rules for picking doctype (and hence render engine) is different for embedded IE than browser IE. It's much more conservative in order to preserve application compatibilities. To force WebDialogs to use the latest render mode use the X-UA-Compatible META element. <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"/>

@aerilius said: Maybe there is a way to compile Ruby code directly into JavaScript (without the detour over a slow virtualized Ruby interpreter in JS). @unknownuser said: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RubyJS)":a0zse4if]RubyJS is a port of Google Web Toolkit to the Ruby programming language. RubyJS trans-compiles Ruby source code to JavaScript, which allows running client-side applications in a web browser.

@unknownuser said: No built in method unfortunately, but it would have been nice. I suspected that. And yes, that would have been useful. Clever hack, anyway. Might come in handy, thanks

draw2d and Chunky_png could accomplish the same result with some dynamic options.

@unknownuser said: ](http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/developer/docs/ourdoc/face#reverse!) I had seen that but I never tried it thinking it was like the Skethup function 'reverse faces' which turns the face from purple to white. No I guess not... that will change the faces for ALL instances. (Remember that it is the Definition that owns the component entities, not the instances. ALL instances share the same entities collection from their parent definition.) Actually that works in my situation because I make all my instances unique... but I'm just starting to play around with this and might run into problems later. edit: just took a closer look at my model and yes it does turn the face from white to purple doing exactly like the Sketchup function. So yes it works but not the ideal solution.

I would like to do this, to make a inputbox made with OpenGL, could you please show an example of how to do this?

the idea was not a selection memory , but to select what is being drawn.

Keep in mind that read_default passes the attribute text through eval() before it is returned, apparently with a rescue nil clause (or modifier.) This is why we cannot have any un-escaped embedded double-quote characters in the attribute.

I gave it a shot some time ago and it did not work well. I will see if anything has chenged. Thank you for the suggestion.

Here's my variant: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=41211#p365380 Would be interesting to profile them.