Profile Builder released!

jeff hammond · 21 Apr 2009, 23:16

as for the other fix suggested by jeff, it did not work for me even though i did it twice exactly as described. after doing it i had no podium in my plugins menu. so i reverted to the old way in this respect.

regards

hmm,that's strange because it works on my end.. i only have the evaluation version on my macs but it shouldn't make a difference. (?)

just to be a little more clear on that.. did you remove the actual plugin folder in the user library? (not just the contents).. a fresh install of SU will only have 2 items items in: user/library/application support/google sketchup 7

they are a folder named 'Layout' and one named 'SketchUp' both of which contain autosave, shortcut prefs, old colors, and templates.. the license file will also be placed in there once it's registered. the plugin folder installed with sketchup is in the boot drive's app support.

fwiw, i contacted TBD about 2 weeks ago on this issue and linked him to these threads here.. he responded saying he wasn't the writer of the installer and he'd pass the info along.. i haven't heard back yet.

if they do in fact deem the install locations a mistake (which i truly believe is), it's going to be a little nightmare to get everyone straightened out again.. probably the easiest way to do it would be to have everyone reinstall SU and their rubies.

Edson · 22 Apr 2009, 18:49

@unknownuser said:

just to be a little more clear on that.. did you remove the actual plugin folder in the user library? (not just the contents).. a fresh install of SU will only have 2 items items in: user/library/application support/google sketchup 7

jeff,
what i did was:
moved the 2 podium files from user/library/application support/podium
moved everything except the two aliases from user/library/application support/google sketchup 7/plugins to the normal plugins folder
deleted the folder user/library/application support/google sketchup 7/plugins

is there anything else i should have done?

jeff hammond · 22 Apr 2009, 19:55

@edson said:

jeff,
what i did was:
moved the 2 podium files from user/library/application support/podium
moved everything except the two aliases from user/library/application support/google sketchup 7/plugins to the normal plugins folder
deleted the folder user/library/application support/google sketchup 7/plugins

is there anything else i should have done?

that sounds about right.
when you say you moved the 2 podium files, did you move them into the regular SUplugin folder?

basically, the podium plugin works like many of the others.. there's a loader (podium_load.rb) and the package containing all the scripting, UI, prefs, etc. (Podium.bundle)..

those two files go into the plugin folder in the same way as all the others.. if you ask me, i'd rather just receive the two files with instructions on where to put them instead of what the installer does now with creating new folders and a few aliases scattered around the system..

[and just to make sure you're moving the proper Podium.bundle file into the plugin folder and not one of it's aliases, you can right click on it and it will have an option to 'show package contents'.. if that option isn't available then it's not the right file]

marcday · 30 Apr 2009, 15:35

The best plugin ever!

Simple as that.

Everyone go and buy it! Worth every penny!

Sir · 8 May 2009, 08:25

great plugin, going to save me a lot of time.

is it possible to edit a profile which has already been extruded along a load of paths, and have the paths update to the new profile? or do i just have to make the edited one a new profile and re-extrude it?

edit

also the bug that you mention about a profile dissaperaring when reversing direction affects me, but more recently im getting it never apprearing in the first place. (SKP pro 6) any fix for this yet?

edit 2

this bug only seems to affect paths with more than one change of direction. it can be gotten round sometimes by deselecting and reselecting one of the paths, but this only seems to work on simple profiles.

3

sometimes it works tho. weird!

4

it'd be nice to have manual selection of the placement point too, maybe in another version
and to be able to make the profile builder popup dissapear into its title bar, like materials popup. but i guess ruby doesnt control that eh?

5

is there a limit to the complexity of the profile? cos it refuses to do anything with my more complex ones

Sir · 9 May 2009, 17:17

also its now started dropping faces after sending a profile along a path, which i then have to manually add...bit strange?

Whaat · 10 May 2009, 02:14

@sir said:

is it possible to edit a profile which has already been extruded along a load of paths, and have the paths update to the new profile? or do i just have to make the edited one a new profile and re-extrude it?

Well, if you first select all the profile members that you want to change, then click the 'Edit Member Properties' button. If you check the 'Profile' box, then all of the selected members will switch to whatever profile is currently shown in the dialog box. There is no need to re-extrude anything.

@unknownuser said:

also the bug that you mention about a profile dissaperaring when reversing direction affects me, but more recently im getting it never apprearing in the first place. (SKP pro 6) any fix for this yet?
Sorry, there is no fix for this. It seems to only happen in SU6, so it seems like it is a SketchUp bug in version 6.

@unknownuser said:

sometimes it works tho. weird!
yes it is very baffling for me...

@unknownuser said:

it'd be nice to have manual selection of the placement point too, maybe in another version

You have full control over placement point by using the x and y offset values. I am not sure what you mean here.

@unknownuser said:

and to be able to make the profile builder popup dissapear into its title bar, like materials popup. but i guess ruby doesnt control that eh?
Sorry, not possible

@unknownuser said:

is there a limit to the complexity of the profile? cos it refuses to do anything with my more complex ones

I have tried some pretty complex profiles and never had any problems. Can you upload the SKP showing the profile you are trying to use? Maybe you found a bug. Thanks!

Let me know if you need any more help!
Dale

Sir · 10 May 2009, 15:23

thanks for the replies. ive got a pressing deadlin on monday, should be able to uplaod the profiles that are causing problems after.

DIEGO-RODRIGUEZ · 3 Jan 2010, 13:14

Any news about Profile builder? the whole world is waiting for the 2.0 version. Please keep us in touch about the release date and the new features.

Greetings

Whaat · 5 Jan 2010, 16:12

@diego-rodriguez said:

Any news about Profile builder? the whole world is waiting for the 2.0 version. Please keep us in touch about the release date and the new features.

Greetings

um...the whole world? don't think so.... Probably 99% of the SU community does not know this plugin exists.

While an updated version is planned at some point, nothing is in the works right now. SDS2 is my top project right now.

DIEGO-RODRIGUEZ · 6 Jan 2010, 00:10

ok. thanks.
correction
I bought version 1, and look forward to version 2

mikeewilly · 15 Jan 2010, 22:04

Profile Libraries

I know this may be a touchy subject and I'm not asking for a Library Viewer, but is there a recommended way of documenting what each profile looks like in a library to make it easy for me to find one pseudo-quickly. This is most important when I sitting with a customer trying to quickly sketch out their vision.

Thanks for the help,
Mike

Whaat · 16 Jan 2010, 02:44

@mikeewilly said:

Profile Libraries

I know this may be a touchy subject and I'm not asking for a Library Viewer, but is there a recommended way of documenting what each profile looks like in a library to make it easy for me to find one pseudo-quickly. This is most important when I sitting with a customer trying to quickly sketch out their vision.

Thanks for the help,
Mike

Hi Mike,
All i can really suggest is to use a long descriptive name for the profile name and make use of the 'favourites' library. Obviously, this will make it much easier to find the profile you are looking for. (Sorry if this isn't the kind of answer you were hoping for...)

mikeewilly · 17 Jan 2010, 19:34

@whaat said:

Hi Mike,
All i can really suggest is to use a long descriptive name for the profile name and make use of the 'favourites' library. Obviously, this will make it much easier to find the profile you are looking for. (Sorry if this isn't the kind of answer you were hoping for...)

Well thanks for the suggestion, I'll do that. What about any tips for libraries I've downloaded? (Specifically the "Mouldings" library)

Thanks again for a nice tool.
Mike

thomthom · 17 Jan 2010, 19:39

@whaat said:

@mikeewilly said:

Profile Libraries

I know this may be a touchy subject and I'm not asking for a Library Viewer, but is there a recommended way of documenting what each profile looks like in a library to make it easy for me to find one pseudo-quickly. This is most important when I sitting with a customer trying to quickly sketch out their vision.

Thanks for the help,
Mike

Hi Mike,
All i can really suggest is to use a long descriptive name for the profile name and make use of the 'favourites' library. Obviously, this will make it much easier to find the profile you are looking for. (Sorry if this isn't the kind of answer you were hoping for...)

What's the format the profiles are saved in?

I was thinking, is it isn't scrambled, then it wouldn't be too hard to write a little snippet that recreates the profiles as faces in SU which then can be printed....

thomthom · 18 Jan 2010, 11:22

Cheers TIG!

TIG · 18 Jan 2010, 11:27

@thomthom said:

@whaat said:

@mikeewilly said:

Profile Libraries
I know this may be a touchy subject and I'm not asking for a Library Viewer, but is there a recommended way of documenting what each profile looks like in a library to make it easy for me to find one pseudo-quickly. This is most important when I sitting with a customer trying to quickly sketch out their vision.
Thanks for the help,
Mike

Hi Mike,
All i can really suggest is to use a long descriptive name for the profile name and make use of the 'favourites' library. Obviously, this will make it much easier to find the profile you are looking for. (Sorry if this isn't the kind of answer you were hoping for...)

What's the format the profiles are saved in?
I was thinking, is it isn't scrambled, then it wouldn't be too hard to write a little snippet that recreates the profiles as faces in SU which then can be printed....

The data is stored in .plb files in C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 7\Plugins\ProfileBuilder\Libraries\, and it is in the format
SQ0.25x0.25 0.0 0.0 0.25 0.0 0.25 0.25 0.0 0.25 SQ0.5x0.5 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.0 0.5 0.5 0.0 0.5
...this above is from the 'built-in' Squares Imperial.plb and is for a 1/4" square, 1/2" square, etc
It is a line-by-line space separated data set, the first part is the profile's name [for the first one here it's SQ0.25x0.25] and the remainder are paired values that make 2D points, and are used to make the shape, always set off from the first one that's 0,0...
When you make a custom profile it lists the vertices as 2D points starting at [0,0]...
Any new profile you make can be saved into any current profile .plb library or Favorites.plb [you can make as many .plb files as you like with ...Create New option] - a new profile's name always has spaces stripped out [so 'My Profile 1' becomes 'MyProfile1'] to avoid confusion in the data structure...
So it would be relatively easy to read the .plb files, a line at a time and get the profile's name and its points, [converted to 3d by adding a third item to the array as 0], then use those to make a face inside a group and move that group about on the screen to miss any others by their b'boxes and place a text-tag in the center of it giving the .plb_name+profile+name, repeat for all profiles in the .plb - finally take a .png of the screen, named after the .plb etc and repeat for other plb's...
Over to you thomthom...

bagatelo · 19 Jan 2010, 23:39

If can be possible to scaleup or scaledown the profiles stored on the library....
And to create and set layer by profile name...
And... if the plugin can set material for profile, maybe this data can be stored on profiles.
this maybe make me smile.

bagatelo · 23 Jan 2010, 14:51

Is it possible to access and to use the tools of great Dale Martens for other scripts, enlarging Google Sketchup's API or something like this?

slugore · 16 Mar 2010, 14:17

I love this plug-in! As soon as I saw the video I had to buy it.
One question that I think hasn't been answered (and forgive me if it has been) has to do with adding textures to a profile.
I created a wall profile that was then used to create several walls(Placement Point: Bottom Left). When I try to add a texture that has a definite vertical orientation, it seems to rotate the texture to the horizontal(in direction of extrusion). Exploding the group and then adding the texture seems to work but adds a few extra steps that I would rather not take. Is there something that I am missing? Or is this a Sketchup thing? (Follow me appears to keep the orientation right BTW.)
Thanks in advance.