@matteo said: I suppose that these rubies work directly on the rendering engine (opengl) parameters. Afraid not. They are simply setting the Style and Fog settings available in the API. No control over sun or shadow colours.

@jclements said: Related to Chris Glassier' posting. A possible UI which is relatively easy to use is shown below. A 2-D application I use, XaraPro, uses a "Profile" dialog with some of its tools. **A.)**shows a drop down list in the dialog of basic presets. **B.)**shows how the user can tweek the presets by using slider or typing in values. Not only does the plot-graphic change instanteously, but the graphic of tick marks adjusts instantaneously depicting the dispersion of data along an interval. Just an idea of how choosing the proper the acceleration from scene to scene (or camera to camera) might be done. Me likes!

Hi Jax, Thank you for your post, glad the fix worked. Just to let everybody know that Shaderlight for Sketchup has now been released as an open Beta. Please give it a try and let us know what you think. It is available to download free from http://www.artvps.com This is not yet the complete product as we are going to be adding advanced features such as enhanced lighting and our trademark MELT interactivity which is the ability to make interactive changes to materials, environments, lights or textures at any stage in the rendering process without having to restart the render. This will available later this year. Martin

@unknownuser said: It may be that groups, when just duplicated, and before any edition still behave as components. If edited via the Ruby API, they do. One has to call .make_unique on groups before editing.

I'll be glad to test it! @jim said: It does sound cool, and it is certainly possible. What I am not sure about is whether it would be heavy and slow like copy & paste, or fast like the outliner. I'll write a prototype "insert into" tool if you don't mind testing it. -- On second thought, it would be simper to write a "Pull out of" tool for if it's for testing performance.

Hi Mike (and welcome to SCF)! Please, have a look at JointPushPull and ToolsOnSurface plugins. You mention "offset" but what you describe is rather the PushPull function (can be done with the first plugin linked) however to make it complete, the second one can do offset on curved surfaces...

uh . . .no. I guess that would be "Explode" I am not by any means a plugin guru. I just have about 500 of them on my machine __(see topic "how many plugins is too many?" ) I am sure there is something that does what you are talking about. seems to me there was a recent post that listed all of the plugins and their authors with all the links to all their little toys but danged if I can remember what is was titled, and I can't find it.

I was tryin' just about everything and the best results (and the easyiest way) are when I extrude edges of curved face with "extrude lines along a vector" and then just copy the face.

Regarding the extra faces after import to sketchup: Could this be a result of overlapping, or multiple instances of vectors with the same endpoints, but on different layers that were created in the cad program?

Yes, exactly, thanks. And now I even remember...

Plugin posted here: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=28851

Try this require 'sketchup.rb' def cpointseqxy() model=Sketchup.active_model ents=model.active_entities layers=model.layers tlayer=layers.add("cpointseqxy") sel=model.selection sela=sel.to_a sel.clear vec=[10,10,10] ### change these values for arrow length model.start_operation("cpointseqxy") cs=[] ca=[] sela.each{|e| cs<< e if e.class==Sketchup;;ConstructionPoint ca<< e if e.class==Sketchup;;ConstructionPoint } th=[] ch=[] lh=[] ca.each{|c| cx=[] cs.each{|e| next if c.to_s == e.to_s if c.position.x == e.position.x and c.position.y == e.position.y cx<< e ch<< e t=ents.add_text(" =XY",e.position,vec) th<< t l=ents.add_cline(c.position,e.position) lh<< l end#if } cs=cs-cx } th.each{|t|t.layer=tlayer} lh.each{|l|l.layer=tlayer} sel.add(th+ch+lh) model.commit_operation end This has arrows for the text: vec=[10,10,10] sets the arrows 'vector', adjust the value of it to change the leader location, length etc...

Slicer exports the slices as individual groups, the 'lay flat' option makes copies of these flattened onto the ground spaced apart by an entered amount, set in a logical h/w arrangement and numbered to match the original order, and these are also grouped. You can adjust where these are by editing the group and of course make plan views of each as desired as scene-tabs ? Then export them as jpegs using once of the batch image exporter tools available...

Interestingly, the more I use Sketchup the fewer plugins I use. For new users I suggest the following. Start a text file in your Plugin folder, and every time you install a plugin record the following information Name of plugin Date of installation List of file and folder names associated with the plugin URL links to usage (YouTube, SketchUcation etc) The really useful plugins will become obvious, and those you hardly ever use can be tracked and moved to a 'just in case' folder, the 'just in case' being just in case you decide you need the plugin after all. It is important to list of the files and folders so that you remove the plugin cleanly. Regards, Bob

After scanning the FloMoCo plugin, it don't see how it can be reporting the correct dimensions.

Offset.rb is a script that runs in the background and is required by a couple of other plugins. There are some similar scripts required to run in the background. You can download it from here: http://rhin.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDepot/Ruby/em_edi_page.htm

@unknownuser said: I haven't had any problems with the graying out of the context menu since I have re-installed my plugins. Removing what I don't need. The disabled plugins is most likely one of Fredo's plugins. It has been resolved with updates. If experience that issue it's most likely due to an older version.

@unknownuser said: FrontFace will be handy. Exactly. Best (such) tool I have ever seen!

Hi, @unknownuser said: when creating the component, do we have to glue it on a selected plane and define to cut a hole already? (like glue vertically, per exemple) No. @unknownuser said: the wall stays in 1 piece, and no hole is appearing Dropping the window in the wall doesn't automatically create the hole. Right-click on the window (or on a selection of windows) and select "Window and wall > Cut wall from window". See chapter 2 of the PDF, everything is in there

Dave R Your workflow solution will work just fine i guess... In the meantime I have been thinking about this and figure that there could still be use for a 'paste on layer' in much the same way that components are dropped on the 'current layer' when bringing them in from the component console... That way we would get an object instance and layer change in one easy step. Could be good for bringing in CAD reference info into a model which is often multilayered.... Thanks for sharing the knowledge Dave