New API doc - typos and questions

Dan Rathbun

A TEMPORARY fix for dealing with the differing formats of color integers.

Adds 4 methods to Integer (and subclasses Bignum and Fixnum.)

Get it in the main Ruby Discussion forum, thread:
[Ruby Extension] for Sketchup color integers

thomthom

PickHelper.path_at
PickHelper.depth_at
PickHelper.path_at
PickHelper.transformation_at
All these are described as index 1 being the root element. But that's not in my experience. I was using PickHelper.path_at and PickHelper.transformation_at for one of my scripts where I was drilling down through groups/components. When using PickHelper.transformation_at(1) to get the global positions I would get nil half the time. PickHelper.transformation_at(0) worked instead.

http://code.google.com/intl/nb/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/pickhelper.html

thomthom

PolygonMesh.uv_at
http://code.google.com/intl/nb/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/polygonmesh.html#uv_at
There are two arguments:
PolygonMesh.uv_at(int_index, bool_front)

PolygonMesh.uvs
http://code.google.com/intl/nb/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/polygonmesh.html#uvs
This requires a boolean value as argument.
true returns front UV data set.
false returns back data set.

thomthom

PolygonMesh.add_polygon
http://code.google.com/intl/nb/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/polygonmesh.html#add_polygon

I can't seem to add points like the example does.

Instead, I must first add each point using PolygonMesh.add_point and then provide PolygonMesh.add_polygon with index values that refers to the points.

In general this PolygonMesh seem to have many errors in the description of the methods, arguments and usage. Recommend a closer revising of this section.

thomthom

Entities.fill_from_mesh
http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/entities.html#fill_from_mesh

smooth_flags does not default to 0. Seems to default to 12 (soft and smooth)
weld_vertices - what does this really do? I can't see any difference in the resulting geometry.

thomthom

Entities.add_faces_from_mesh
http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/entities.html#add_faces_from_mesh

@unknownuser said:

Returns:
faces
an array of Face objects if successful

In my tests it returns 0 - not an array.

cjthompson

@thomthom said:

PolygonMesh.add_polygon
http://code.google.com/intl/nb/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/polygonmesh.html#add_polygon

I can't seem to add points like the example does.

Instead, I must first add each point using PolygonMesh.add_point and then provide PolygonMesh.add_polygon with index values that refers to the points.

That's weird. It works just fine for me.

thomthom

Can you post a quick example?

thomthom

Ah! That's what I tried. Using a normal Array as substitute of Point3D. How odd that this method suddenly don't let you interchange arrays and Point3Ds...

cjthompson

now I see why it doesn't work with arrays:


mesh = Geom;;PolygonMesh.new
mesh.add_point([0,0,0])
mesh.add_point([1,0,0])
mesh.add_point([1,1,0])
mesh.add_point([0,1,0])
mesh.add_polygon([1,2,3,4])
Sketchup.active_model.entities.add_faces_from_mesh(mesh)

you can use an array to index the points directly (for some reason, starting at 1)!

Can you test whether this is faster than point_at?

thomthom

I will see over the weekend. I found some slowness by having to use .add_point and then later use .point_index to build the polygons. building my own hash of Point3Ds and the index I got from add_point was faster.

Hopefully adding points in the add_polygon methods directly will be faster.

Oh yea - the index start at 1 is annoying as well.

cjthompson

I think I found what your problem is.

This works:


mesh = Geom;;PolygonMesh.new
mesh.add_polygon(Geom;;Point3d.new(0,0,0),Geom;;Point3d.new(1,0,0),Geom;;Point3d.new(1,1,0),Geom;;Point3d.new(0,1,0))
Sketchup.active_model.entities.add_faces_from_mesh(mesh)

This doesn't:


mesh = Geom;;PolygonMesh.new
mesh.add_polygon([0,0,0],[1,0,0],[1,1,0],[0,1,0])
Sketchup.active_model.entities.add_faces_from_mesh(mesh)

EDIT:
You can put the arrays inside of another array to get it to work:


mesh = Geom;;PolygonMesh.new
mesh.add_polygon([[0,0,0],[1,0,0],[1,1,0],[0,1,0]]) #this works
Sketchup.active_model.entities.add_faces_from_mesh(mesh)

thomthom

Using .add_points first and using index references for .add_polygon seems faster than using Point3d's.

RichMorin

General

Class and method names could be turned into links
to the appropriate API page, for ease of navigation.

Sentences should begin with a capital letter and end with
a period (etc). Phrases should not.

If a modifying phrase is used at the end of a sentence,
a comma should be added for clarity:


  the name of the attribute dictionary  if successful
                            dictionary,

Specific

http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/animation.html


animation -> animation
ruby      -> Ruby

... to pause, only certain ...
       pause;

http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/appobserver.html


... a 2nd    model ...
      second

Useful for if you need ...
---
This is useful if you need ...

http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/array.html


The SketchUp Array class adds ...
---
SketchUp adds ...

Specifically, it contains methods ...
---
Specifically, it adds methods ...

... arrays of 3     coordinate ...
              three

... vector. it returns ...
            It

http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/attributedictionaries.html


... all of the attributes dictionaries.
               attribute

http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/attributedictionary.html

Although the page does not discuss this, setting a
custom attribute with a key that contains upper-case
letters does not work.

The page does not indicate how to set an attribute
(eg, '=LenX+20') to be used as an expression.

In the entry for AttributeDictionary.each, the "value"
argument is being formatted as part of the description
for the "key" argument.

Ditto for AttributeDictionary.each_pair.

Dan Rathbun

On the API docs pages, in the left nav column, whenever you have made a link bold, the cursor changes to a caret instead of the hand cursor. I suspect it's the <b> and </b> tags doing this.
example from the API HTML source:

<li><a href="/apis/..../model.html"><b>Model</b></a></li>

Perhaps if the bold tags were outside the anchor tags?

<li><b><a href="/apis/..../model.html">Model</a></b></li>

If the css specifically set a tags such: a {cursor:hand} the nested bold tags should inherit their parent's cursor setting (according to the css reference.)

thomthom

The bold tag should not interfere with the cursor regardless if it's inside or outside the link element. It's default cursor property is inherit. It's either some override or other quirk. Could be a browser quirk.
In FF3.5 I don't see this behaviour. What browser do you use?

Dan Rathbun

@thomthom said:

In FF3.5 I don't see this behaviour. What browser do you use?

Currently still using MSIE 7

P.S.: at MSDN it indicates if the cursor is not explicitly set, the browser decides; so it may indeed be a MSIE quirk. (I have MSIE 8 and FF on the computer in another room, I'll check and see how the site looks on that machine later today.)

thomthom

@dan rathbun said:

Currently still using MSIE 7

Tried with IE8 - cursor is normal.

@dan rathbun said:

so it may indeed be a MSIE quirk.

It certainly wouldn't surprise me!

thomthom

@dan rathbun said:

Point3d.<
http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/point3d.html#%3C

@unknownuser said:

Returns:
true if the point2 is closer to the origin.

Following the example, I get he opposite result.
The Returns: should probably read,
" *true* if the point2 is **farther** from the origin; *false* if the point2 is closer to the origin (than the receiver.)

And the anchor link http://code.google.com/intl/nb/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/point3d.html#%3C doesn't work for me under FF3.5. Might be due to the < character.

Dan Rathbun

@thomthom said:

And the anchor link http://code.google.com/intl/nb/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/point3d.html#%3C doesn't work for me under FF3.5. Might be due to the < character.

I suggest the Google webmeister change the anchor to "#lessthan" instead of "#%3C".

I would suspect that links to - and + methods may have problems with some browsers as well.