First of all, thanks a lot, TIG, I really appreciate your help! I've started to ask my friends familiar with programming about how to make a Ruby script based on Jim's advices, but you've actually wrote the whole thing already! It really feels great to be there, in such a friendly community. Plugin works great! Hovewer, I feel really, really dumb for not thinking about the method proposed by RickW earlier. It is really perfect: incredibly simple and producing really great results, especially with high-res gradient image. Still, I think your plugin, TIG, deserves a release: as the default fog control window is perhaps insufficiently precise in some other areas - for example, for some styles of architectural visualization. I imagine it would be very useful with one small addition - the detection of a distance to the camera from a certain point on screen. I don't know if API allows to read that, but if it is, it would be awesome: you just click on some vertex and get a distance to it, allowing you to precisely configure the fog distances for your needs (or perhaps other things, like Depth of Field falloff range in V-Ray). I don't know, maybe distance determination would work better as a separate window (or even separate plugin), or maybe it'll be handy to instantly paste it to the fog values. Oh, well, maybe such a plugin already exists? Nevertheless, great work and thank you again!

I tried with the free version of the plugin, which comes as a single file InstantRoof.rbs. It is confirmed that it must be located in the standard SU Plugin directory(C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 8\Plugins). It does not work when put in another folder 000_AdditionPluginFolders can load InstantRoof.rbs without any problem. The menu appears, and the functions seem operational. However, when trying to load it by hand, there are some errors load "InstantRoof.rbs" Error; #<SyntaxError; (eval);155;in `load'; C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Plugins/InstantRoof.rbs;1; no .<digit> floating literal anymore; put 0 before dot RBS1.0... ^ C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Plugins/InstantRoof.rbs;1; syntax error, unexpected tINTEGER RBS1.0... ^ C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Plugins/InstantRoof.rbs;1; Invalid char `\010' in expression> (eval);155 (eval);155 I could not try with the Pro version. As TIG mentioned, it may come with a different setup (files and folders), and therefore could have other problems. In general, there may be a need for some tuning to load rbs file and I'd like to fix this in 000_AdditionalPluginFolder. By the way, InstantRoof is a superb plugin, quite impressive in what it does. Fredo

Thanks Dan that worked just fine. I think I will only need to show the file once as the joint tools are not extreemly complicated but it is importsnt to know what edges the program is expecting you to pick. Thanks Keith

Thanks Sam, I'll give it a shot and report back. Looks perfect.

That might work as you can get the plane from a selected section-cut BUT then working out the offset for each selected edge etc and the fact that any fudged dimension-adding-tool will not leave its dimensions 'associated', makes it somewhat useless... The built-in tool is already pretty quick to use and gives you the ability to fine tune where the dim is, snap to align etc...

Thanks Dan that actually worked. ! Cheers for the help !

@thomthom said: Nuffin? Just a chain of calls? Maybe. I don't know, I'm asking.

Look at the script's code and see if changing the camera's fov helps?

Well said thomthom... My code snippets will work in the Ruby Console for testing... BUT a typical format for simple code is ` module Kybasche def self.box() box code in here end endThen Kybasche.box()` draws a box You add to it with extra code, like a dialog for its sizes or material[s]... If you want to make a tool [class] where you pick points etc then this can be done inside the module too...

@thomthom said: Have you had a look at http://www.modelur.com/ ? Might that be something for you? Hey thanks thomthom looks looks fantastic I will test it thanks !

Profile builder?

thomthom and kyyu Thank you for you input. My problem, and I will admit it is bad modeling on my part, I will make a sub-assembly that may have from 2 to 15 separate parts. I save this as a sub-assembly. Now as I continue with the overall project, somewhere in my drilling down to make a modification, I may unintentionally drill into a sub-assembly that I didn't intend to modify the interior sub-parts, and may unintentionally move a sub-part a small distance one direction or another. This movement does not become evident until I start to make ACAD drawings, then I see that what should have been identically measurement as slightly off.( off by more than 1/64 which I believe is the tolerance of Sketchup.) Locking will prevent this problem, but locking prevents me from moving or adjusting the location of the assemblies. Well in trying to define my problem I found my solution. I have been locking the assemblies at the outer most grouping, which prevents any movement. I locked at the outer group so I only needed to unlock one group to make changes, leaving the inner groups not locked. However, I noticed if I leave the inner sub-assemblies unlock, make a group of all the sub-assemblies. Than add one small line to this group, make another group of the first group and the small additional line. Then open the top group up, lock inner the group, which does not include the small line, with all the sub-assemblies, than close the outer group, I can move the whole grouping which is unlocked, which allows moving all the sub-assemblies, and I am prevented from moving the sub-assemblies in the inner group. So just by watching how I make my group and where I lock all the sub-assemblies I get what I want. However, being able to determine what is locked and not locked would help also, but I found my work around. So thomthom and kyyu thank you for your help. Thomthom, I am going to look further into the Dynamic Component editor, never thought of this as having a solution. Again thanks

Jim Foltz has a custom toolbars script that you might want to look at. http://sketchuptips.blogspot.com/2008/06/custom-toolbars-release-08-06-01.html It doesn't necessarily dock the window like you want, but it would allow you to open/close it with a toolbar icon. Jim's script doesn't actually include the Entity window, outliner, etc but it's pretty easy to create them. Look at the format of the Model Info button and use the sketchup.send_action # that TIG also mentioned. Other send_actions can be found here: http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/sketchup.html#send_action. I actually set up all my dialogs like this recently. I'm not sure yet if it's a huge time-saver or not, but we'll see. Another thing you could try is assigning a shortcut key to Window/HideDialogs. This will close all the dialogs that you currently have open. Repeating the shortcut will open them again.

Also run it with the Ruby Console open and report any error messages from there...

@alpro said: Well forget the Blender route. Exported obj out of SU, imported to Blender, selected verts and changed tris to quads, no problems. Well a little problem, it only converted about 85% to quads, see pics. However the real problem was importing back into SU, like thomthom said the quads have to be coplanar in SU so when I imported your quaded head, SU put a hidden line everywhere it wasn't coplanar thus making quads into tris again. Mike Technically, all quads in any 3d application consists of triangles. It's just a matter of how the 3d application presents it. Internally each quad will consist of two triangles. SketchUp makes no effort to provide any form of quads and instead exposes the triangles directly to the user and leaves the responsibility there. Further more, just having a set of quads as you do in your screenshot provides no real benefits as the topology isn't regular. It's going all over the place with a mix of quads and tris at random. To have an efficient topology you need the quads to be laid out in a manner so they make nice loops around the characteristics of the shape. Then you can use tools that makes use of this regularity of the quad mesh to perform actions such as selecting rings and loops so you can quickly and predictably modify the geometry you want. To put it simply, quads has no benefit over tris unless the quads are laid out with a good topology.

Hi Mike, Very nice to hear you are a fan of Tgi3D SU AMorph. Yes you can upgrade to the latest version on your current license, and as Rich had already answered (Thanks Rich!) you simply login to your account and download the latest version and install. Go to the Downloads page (the link in Rich's post) on Tgi3D website, click on the "updates" link at the bottom where it says @unknownuser said: For latest versions of Tgi3D SU Amorph and Tgi3D SU Photoscan, please visit the updates page. I am not sure if we can be as fast as Rich here (wow!) , but you can always contact us through the support page on our website as well.

I've mailed to the geosketch guys as advised by Rich. Awaiting reply

@tig said: You can't add 'arguments' to a UI.openURL() - it's a 'path' only tool. BUT you can write a cmd/bat file with the needed data and then open that [it 'executes'] and that can pass/use arguments written into it thus... START mailto;"someone@somewhere.com?subject=The%%20Title&cc=%%20&bcc=%%20&body=Hello%%20testing%%20123 See here for more details http://www.robvanderwoude.com/email.php or http://www.paulsadowski.com/wsh/cmdmail.htm There are ways to escape the used special characters if you want... Just compile the message File.write to a temp file called say 'C:/Temp/emailer.cmd' then UI.openURL('file:///C:/Temp/emailer.cmd') to run it. You can even make it erase it self as it ends... i am not familiar with batch programs, but i shall try to understand the way to do it; thank you!

Not sure what the problem is? What are you trying to do?

It can't automatically be used with other tools. It'd have to be explicitly integrated with the tool by its author.