Sweet! Thanks for the help. I'll give it a try. -- Karen

Yes, it works in any plane - the lines must be coplanar and potentially intersect...

Added indication in the edge normals if they are reversed_in? the face the cursor is over. [image: KvB8_reversed_in.png]

Hi Morisdov: As I wrote on the first post, one of the uses of the plugin is helping in the research of how the bodies in the night sky can be used to contemporary design (please do not mistake this for astrology). So a lot of rotating goes along, orienting a single face to various points in the sky until finding the right one. Since this thread, I have simplified my request of the plugin here: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=27876 Regards. @morisdov said: Hi Javier, I cant guess which faces in your 3D model should have the ability to reorient themselves towards anything. The "archeological site construction" which is the only 3D model is frozen by history and must be locked for any changes whatsoever. you should place in that 3D model many Skethcup "cameras" and orient only them to face certain directions towards the sky at a certain date and time point. (like the sky of the longest day of year 500 BC or 1492). You can ANIMATEvia sketchups standard view animation features to "look" form the cameras - this will be your demonstration of this whole idea. You may add lines from the cameras to the cameras target point(star in the sky) to emphesize and "prove" and "explore" that the archeological site was indeed constructed in ancient times in accordance and perspective related to stars positions of specific dates and times. As an unrelated side note - i recommend exploring when "perspective" was first "invented" in each cultures paintings Cheers, Moris

Has anyone found a way to have certain models not affected by inference-snapping? I'm finding a couple situations where I wish the inference-snapping would ignore a model in the scene. For example, I have a large sub-divided plane and I'm trying to extrude a cube in the foreground, the motion keeps snapping at sub-division way off in the background.

STL is also limited to objects of max 32K?

When asking questions about rendering it helps to tell us what render engine you use. Most render engines for SU does not render Section Cuts. There is poor support for that. One has to manually cut the model - on a copy of course. There is plugins to make such cuts.

Alittle more experimentation - by not using the component option and only making into a Group. the conversion went well. On the Sketch up blog it said component or group

You don't need Java for webdialogs. Javascript on the other hand, and HTML + CSS.

Thanks, can't see why i didn't think of that...

@hfm said: You could use Layout for this. Simply load the Sketchup-file; open it twice at a different scale and draw the circles yourself. So, it apparently already exists, if you have SUPro, which you may or may not. Back in the days of graphic cards with CAD drivers on steroids ($$), such a thing existed. Now we have SUP ($$).

Hey thanks, this last one was a very good tip. I think what AdamB proposed is a very professional approach of the problem. I 've tried it out in my code and it works fantastically. Yet, it would be interesting to understand WHY this actually works, does someone know a bit more about the matematical background of this vector based solution?

There is a Unfold.rb with a visual demo somewhere in the forum. See if this can help?

Wow TIG, thank you so much! Both edits work a treat , but yes yours is definitely more succinct - I have always had issues with my code being a tad too verbose, and possibly missing the trees for the forest... After my previous post, I was thinking it did seem odd that I wasn't working directly with the definition, but I'm sure I would never have found it without the help Thanks again - now onto the next tweak... Cheers, Doi!

Thanks Kyyu, will try it out right now. Javier @kyyu said: This should get you started. I really can't help you more. It just happens, I am researching something similar, so familiar with the rotation commands. I am starting from your 2nd picture and assuming the plane normal is the green axis. The simple script just rotates whatever is selected with the assumed normal. About the origin, 30 deg and then 50 deg. So just select the parts, and type this into the ruby console to run the script (correct the path to where you have the script): load 'c:/Rotate_Plane_example.rb'

@mac1 said: I don't know how many tools do this. I expect only circle and arc segments.

I think there was another post about this, and I thought about a clunky solution for this. Have you ever taken an architectural model on a base out into the sun to mimic what shadows would be like at a specific time of day/year (ok this is for those of you who built models prior to 3d modeling apps). There was a little sun dial type of thing you put on the base, and that would make sure you had the proper orientation. So that is an odd kind of SketchUp solution. This would idealy best be done on a copy of your file as it involves moving your geometry. User experience: Setup the camera view(s) that you want for your final presentation. When you run the ruby a dialog box comes up asking the angle and azimuth you want for the sun. The ruby then takes the difference between the current sun location and your requested sun location, and rotates your model in the reverse direction. (Since you can't move the sun, move the model) Cameras for the views requested are similarly moved, so what you see for each scene is still the same. Now maybe this transformation is saved, so that it can be undone, but I wouldn't want to put my model through that. Probably best done by having it open an new file and place your model in it as a component. Then when your model is updated, you can update the component and your desired sun location and cameras are intact.

@mgianzero said: @thomthom said: @mgianzero said: But how do I convert these x, y coordinates into something useful, like RGB (or true x,y,z) cartesian coordinates? I know is has something to do with the InputPoint method. Yes - you create in InputPoint object and call the .pick method with the x and y arguments given from the Tool's mouse events. After the pick you can extract the various data you want. For X,Y,Z use inputpoint.position. Thanks for the comments. But could you please show exactly what you mean by example? Perhaps using my code above and modify it. Sorry but I find that I can follow these suggestions better when I have a piece of code I can work off of. Hi Marc, I have just started leaning ruby and not a programmer, so can't help with programming info. But look at Plugins\Utilities\utilitiestools.rb as an example. You have to activate the extension "Utilites Tools". You use the tool from the Tools menu in sketchup => Tools/Utilities/"Query Tool". It displays cursor position in the bottom title space and the VCB. Using that as an example, helped me to write a plugin. With a little cut and paste and trial/error. My plugin just rotates everything, that is initially selected, to be parallel with an axis. You select, two points to indicate a line. And the line provides the angles for the rotation. -Kwok

"I went to shoe school..."

Plugin also tested on Windows 7 and it is working. So OS's tested are: (1) Mac OS X 10.5.8 (2) Windows XP Pro (3) Windows 7 I uploaded a quick tutorial, that shows how to operate this plugin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_XpB2e-ZDw&fmt=22 Enjoy