Thanks TIG - just what I was looking for. You are a legend!! Cheers Sam

@jolran said: You have to update the scenes when making changes. That way you set up the scenes any way you like it, regarding hidden geometry, sections , layers etc. This is the correct way of doing it. Styles and Scenes stores the active cut - make sure you check these settings. You can set your styles not to store Section Cut styles. (btw, there is not way to set/unset the active section cut via the Ruby API)

thanks TIG, I'll try those techniques. sorry about the double somehow I got some text pasted into a code box and was trying to correct it so it would not be confusing.

You can readily do group.locked if not group.locked? once somehthing has changed and been observed, as you would have given 'group' a special attribute etc... My HolePuchTool has various observers, including a selection observer - so it a selection contains an instance with a certain attribute then the selection is adjusted to include all other entities with the matching attribute. So if you highlight a cutting-component that's been punched all of the geometry to its reveals are highlighted to, so when you move one the others move - thus it's like them being grouped - however if you select part of the reveal all of the reveal geometry is selected but the instance isn't - to allow for adjustments etc ... but as I said it's all pretty much academic for locking'.

Thank you so much ruby tiger. What drives me mad is why I didn't asked it 5 years ago. It'd save me a couple of millions enter hits.

no worries, Sam. Thanks for your input...

Very limited Section Plane in the API. You can get/set the active cutting plane. That only thing you can do is find them and get/set their plane orientation. So your selection cycle would work, but that's about it.

Andrew, Try this plugin, hopefully it will do what you need. The profile to be extruded, must be made into a curve. Use Weld or simuliar plugin to combine the entities defining the profile. The profile should be at the start of the extrusion path. If a path is pre-selected, the start and end will be labled. Use right or left arrow keys to reverse the line if needed. If a path is not pre-selected, click on the profile and drag to extrude the profile to any length and direction. FollowMe using an Edge

Andrew, I think I have incorporated all the changes you suggested except make the treads components. Maybe in version 3. Stair Maker

@oricatmos said: Open Asset Import Library Thanks, I was not aware of this library, but it looks like a nice thing.

@chris fullmer said: Majid, it is supposed to capature camera movements in real time, and then be able to replay them. Are you saying it is adding additional tail to the camera? Is that automatically, or only after a camera path? mate, when I replayed the animation, saw that the scene camera is rotated... it is maybe over my IQ , is there any easier tool?

Thanks guys for the advice: I did search in my plugin folder & couldn't find the offending yaml.rb... Not sure I have the patience/time right now to hunt further, it's not a major hassle: However, if i do find out, i will post the answer here ! I actually need to spend some time working out how to get a sketchup model as a mesh onto a friend's grid in OpenSim (like 2nd life) as the viewers that support mesh import (2nd life v3 & Kirsten's) do not seem to be able to be forced to find the ip address of the friend's grid which is hosted on another mate's serveur grrrr & lovely viewers like hippo won't do mesh... hého, such is life, real life

I do vaguely remember discussion about the Undo Stack for Sketchup. I do not believe they solved your issue however. I'm talkin' heavyweights were knocking this around. I wish Autocad would remove navigation(zoom, pan) from its Undo Stack--it doesn't completely. Sorry for the off topic slant.

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.