[Plugin] Three Line Tools (Updated March 9th, 2009)

pilou

And if you can make the same for the Greeble that will be also a super crazy cool plug!
Ergonomic must be the first thing to think for a plug!
Keep the good work!

Chris Fullmer

Hey Frenchy, I know you have issues with too many plugins cluttering your menus. Would it be helpful if I tried to make all my plugins register themselves with the extension manager, so you could disable them or enable them as needed? That way you wouldn't have to have all my plugins showing in the menus until you need them. Would that be useful?

Chris

Edson

definitely, yes.

pilou

Yes that can be helping, but it's not possible to create a new Menu something like "Plugins2"?
Then it's easy to put inside this new menu some numerous plugins

thomthom

@unknownuser said:

Yes that can be helping, but it's not possible to create a new Menu something like "Plugins2"?
Then it's easy to put inside this new menu some numerous plugins

Nope. No way to create new top level menus in SU.

Panga

Chris you rock !! This tool'll help a lot. Thanks again !!

Panga.

Teezer

Nice extension! Very useful. Thanks...

watkins

Dear Chris,

I have just viewed your video tutorial. The plugin is much, much more than I was expecting. Excellent work! It is going to be a very useful construction tool. Perhaps CADFather, or A.N. Other, could make a small toolbar for the three options and one could be selected/deselected either in View>Toolbars or Window>Preferences>Extensions.

Thanks once again.

Regards,
Bob

Ben Ritter

Always grateful to those who share their plugins, and you're no exception.

Thank you very much.

Chris Fullmer

Thanks for checking it out folks. Thanks for normals idea Bob!

I would like to implement the toolbar in the next release, or maybe the one after that. This would be a good tool to have in a toolbar I think.

Right now I am working on making be registered with SU extensions so it can be turned on and off easier. Also I am working on the VCB input. Its going pretty good. Currently it works like this:
(Note: this is in development and is not the posted version yet).
Run the plugin for the first time (per SU session).
Prompt box asks for initial height
Then click anywhere to create lines of that height.
Type a new height (into the VCB) and hit enter
All new lines will be made according to that size. (this also resizes the last line drawn)
Keep going until a different tool is activated.

Chris

thomthom

You can do it with no prompt at all, just use a default value until the user inputs anything. (Can you tell I'm not a fan of prompts? )

Chris Fullmer

I thought about that option, but I couldn't decide on a starting value. I'm having some VCB display issues which are making my VCB experience rather trying. Hopefully I'll get it worked out (I feel a new newbie ruby question thread coming on shortly).

Chris

Chris Fullmer

Oops, I think that I don't have it set up to accept clicking on nothing. I think it gets confused and does whatever it feels like doing. Thanks for finding that John, look good

Chris

JClements

Chris, keep it as a "Feature".

JClements

Chris, I got this unexpected "cool" result.

I drew a cone-shape and turned on hidden edges.
Used the draw vertical line to Normal.
After doing a few lines I started clicking on white space and and hitting the Return Key.

Since the cursor is clicking on white space its registering to elevation zero on the X-Y plane and drawing a line back to a common vertex [Edit(the end-point of the last line drawn as a "normal")[/Edit]]. See red lines.
j Normal drawing.png

Try it and see what happens.

Normal drawing.skp

pilou

@unknownuser said:

Nope. No way to create new top level menus in SU.

Chris Fullmer

SCRIPT UPDATED
All right, I got the VCB integrated now, and it is soo much better! No more prompts, just click click click. When you enter a new value into the VCB and hit enter it will change the length of the previously drawn line.

I also updated the video to reflect these changes (but if you're already familiar with the tool, it shouldn't be that hard to get working).

Thanks for the suggestions.

Chris

Oh yeah, there is a known bug where the undo counts every line change as a separate undo command. So if you use the vcb to change the length of a line multiple times, each change will get its own undo. Sorry, its turned out to be trickier than I thought to fix this in this script but I have some ideas to fix it if its a big problem.

pilou

Seems quasi perfect

jmmad

Thxs a lot Chris for this plugin
Really usefull

Chris Fullmer

UPDATED (again)
Just in case you were'nt sick of updating this script, I thought I'd make yet another update to it today!

This is the new Visual Graphic User Interface Edition. Or in other words, I added a toolbar.

These are (1)Vertical lines of the same length. (2)Vertical lines with the same elevation. (3)An N (for Normal) and 3 lines coming off of its normals.

Also, I made it so it registers with the extension manager. (Go to Preferences>Extensions and you'll see "3 Line Tools" listed. You can uncheck it and it won't be in your Plugins menu the next time you run SketchUp.) Hope these frequent updates aren't obnoxious.

Chris