IDEA - Omni Push Pull Tool

halroach

Hi,

I've got an idea for an Omni-Push-Pull tool.
A tool which will enable you to push-pull any visible face no matter if it is within a component (or group) or outside of it. The strength of the tool is the ability to push-pull faces without endlessly clicking in and out of components. Just hover over ANY face in the model, and pull...

I don't know if something like this is possible, but I have seen plugins, like fredo's scale tools, that interact with nested geometry for reference.

A similar tool could be an Omni-Paint tool. You could paint nested faces without thinking in which components or group they are in...

I'd try to write a script like this, but scripting, or programming aren't quite up my alley.

What do you think fellow sketchupers?
Is it a good idea?
Who wants to try to develop something like this?

Cheers!

thomthom

@unknownuser said:

A similar tool could be an Omni-Paint tool. You could paint nested faces without thinking in which components or group they are in...

I've been thinking of this as well. I wanted to make a substitute paint tool that didn't pop up the annoying Materials window every time you activated it. Just haven't got around to it yet.

kwistenbiebel

Great idea, but for some reason I expect a plugin like that to be very slow and a possible reason for bug splats.
Sketchup doesn't seem to work that well when going over the boundaries of nested groups and components.
The slowdowns of having the Outliner open while editing a model or using plugins proves that....

But I might be wrong

thomthom

@kwistenbiebel said:

Great idea, but for some reason I expect a plugin like that to be very slow and a possible reason for bug splats.
Sketchup doesn't seem to work that well when going over the boundaries of nested groups and components.
The slowdowns of having the Outliner open while editing a model or using plugins proves that....

But I might be wrong

Not sure in regard to PushPull, but should be fine for Painting. I already got a tool that digs into groups/components to fetch UV coords.

kwistenbiebel

I am glad I am wrong in this case.
A tool like this would definitely speed up the whole modeling and texturing workflow if it would become a stable plugin.

I have another idea to make this happen.
A 'global' toggle button that switches between 'nested' mode and 'edit all geometry' mode.
Toggling to 'edit all geometry' would enable editing all geometry as if they aren't in groups or components.
It would temporarily lift up all the nesting, but without collapsing/exploding the model.

That way, it would apply for all the Sketchup tools, not just the push-pull or paint tool.
Does that make sense?

halroach

@kwistenbiebel said:

I am glad I am wrong in this case.
A tool like this would definitely speed up the whole modeling and texturing workflow if it would become a stable plugin.

I have another idea to make this happen.
A 'global' toggle button that switches between 'nested' mode and 'edit all geometry' mode.
Toggling to 'edit all geometry' would enable editing all geometry as if they aren't in groups or components.
It would temporarily lift up all the nesting, but without collapsing/exploding the model.

That way, it would apply for all the Sketchup tools, not just the push-pull or paint tool.
Does that make sense?

A toggle button would definitely make things even quicker. Later an additional toggle to turn the tool into a4chitect's Smart Push Pull...

thomthom

@kwistenbiebel said:

I have another idea to make this happen.
A 'global' toggle button that switches between 'nested' mode and 'edit all geometry' mode.
Toggling to 'edit all geometry' would enable editing all geometry as if they aren't in groups or components.
It would temporarily lift up all the nesting, but without collapsing/exploding the model.

That way, it would apply for all the Sketchup tools, not just the push-pull or paint tool.
Does that make sense?

Not doable.
Can't modify the behaviour of existing Sketchup and Ruby tools.

kwistenbiebel

Damn!

fredo6

@kwistenbiebel said:

Great idea, but for some reason I expect a plugin like that to be very slow and a possible reason for bug splats.
Sketchup doesn't seem to work that well when going over the boundaries of nested groups and components.
The slowdowns of having the Outliner open while editing a model or using plugins proves that....

But I might be wrong

I don't think there are issues with performance. FredoScale transforms entities within components for Scale, Stretch and support live deform. Other tools could actually for simple geometry, but the non-standard transformations are too slow for complex ones.
The issue with the outliner is more about component creation / deletion and model navigation.

Concerning the omni push pull, I had this in mind for the refresh of JPP which I hope to produce one day. It is not very difficult to do (it is also an idea for Tools on Surface, though more complex).

Fredo

halroach

@thomthom said:

@kwistenbiebel said:

I have another idea to make this happen.
A 'global' toggle button that switches between 'nested' mode and 'edit all geometry' mode.
Toggling to 'edit all geometry' would enable editing all geometry as if they aren't in groups or components.
It would temporarily lift up all the nesting, but without collapsing/exploding the model.

That way, it would apply for all the Sketchup tools, not just the push-pull or paint tool.
Does that make sense?

Not doable.
Can't modify the behaviour of existing Sketchup and Ruby tools.

unless you rewrite the ruby tools into one all encompassing tool that does exactly what all the others did...

kwistenbiebel

Wuaaah...wouldn't that create a temporal anomaly in the subspace field ?

halroach

@kwistenbiebel said:

Wuaaah...wouldn't that create a temporal anomaly in the subspace field ?

It depends on how much dilithium crystals we put into it...