[Plugin] Shape Bender Beta

Chris Fullmer · 27 Feb 2010, 23:38

Yeah, Simon le Bon put together a fairly comprehensive (and very dense) thread about how he has used shape bender. I think I jumped in a little helped hammer out some of the technical intricacies and quirks in the code (of which there are plenty).

The thread I am thinking of is in the tutorial section, and he was making a wine jug? or a woven basekt? boy, now I don't recall exactly. Plus there is probably more info towards the start of this thread too.

A fairly simple, yet accurate and comprehensive tutorial on this plugin would be greatly appreciated. So a HUGE thanks in advance if you ever get around to it.

Chris

arjunmax09 · 28 Feb 2010, 05:17

@chris fullmer said:

Just go download the newest version of component spray here:

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=11746

And install it. Shape bender will still work, and component spray will work too. It is a very good script,

Chris

I downloaded the latest component spray from the above link... and unzipped its ruby script in my plugins folder... but it still interferes with the ShapeBender Tool. If I remove the compo_spray.rb file from my plugins folder the shape bender works fine. What should I do now??

Chris Fullmer · 28 Feb 2010, 05:48

Hmmm, that is very odd. I have not heard of that before. MAke sure that when you download it and open it, you are not opening an old cached version of the file or something...?

arjunmax09 · 28 Feb 2010, 07:32

no i am not downloading any cached version... internet explorer windows pops up "do you want to save this file??>yes>save in my documents>that's it....

Chris Fullmer · 28 Feb 2010, 07:44

ok, I'll download it and try it and see what I get. I won't be able to do it for probably a few days though.

arjunmax09 · 28 Feb 2010, 13:23

@chris fullmer said:

ok, I'll download it and try it and see what I get. I won't be able to do it for probably a few days though.

okay...

broomstick · 4 Mar 2010, 00:44

using windows 7, sketchup pro 7

I am trying the plugin but it freezes and does nothing

I get a message in the status bar:

->--------------- 5%. End @ ? (1 of 5) Searching for objects to explode.

What am I doing wrong?

Chris Fullmer · 4 Mar 2010, 02:37

Component Sporay is interfering. You will need to remove it for now. THere was a component Spray update a while ago that cleared up this issue, but it appears that the update might not be working right anymore. So for now, just remove it if you need to use ANY script that uses the progressbar plugin.

Chris

arjunmax09 · 4 Mar 2010, 04:59

Thanks chris... wonder how plugins... lose their foolproof performance in few months!!!!

Chris Fullmer · 4 Mar 2010, 05:21

ok, I just went back and tested the component spray myself. It is indeed broken again. I'll have to contact Didier about it (I hate bugging him because he's very busy, but his script is breaking the progressbar!).

So you should be seeing that any script that uses progressbar (some of my other scripts, and most notably make_faces from smustard) are all broken because of component spray.

For now there is no simple work around. You just have to remove component spray from your plugins folder if you want to use shape bender or make_faces, or any script that uses progressbar. And then put component spray back if you want to use it and restart sketchup so it loads (or type load 'compo_spray.rb' into the ruby console after you put it back in the plugins folder if you do not want to restart sketchup). But once its loaded, it will break progressbar until you restart SketchUp.

And for the 1 of 5 error, that might actually be something else. That could be that you have complex geometry and it takes a lot of processing to bend it so it is thinking. OR it could also be that you have lots of sub groups in your component and it is trying to find them all (which it is VERY slow at because I did a poor job writing that part of the script). So I woulod recommend trying a very cimple object like a box first. If that bends then you know it is working. And complex objects take a lot of time. I bent a very detailed corvette once into an s-curve. It took a few hours, but it worked (well the mesh had issues, it was not completely clean, but it did bend it pretty well).

Good luck,

Chris

arjunmax09 · 4 Mar 2010, 08:41

whoa!!! first time ever in my life i've heard that plugins can damage other pluginss.... man...now i understand... once my mirror plugin got corrupt... had to reinstall sketchup all over again... contacted other members to fix the problem but no one was able to ... .maybe that time also the mirror plugin got damaged by some other messy plugin.... anyway.. its fixed now....

arjunmax09 · 4 Mar 2010, 08:44

whoa!!! first time ever in my life i've heard that plugins can damage other pluginss.... man...now i understand... once my mirror plugin got corrupt... had to reinstall sketchup all over again... contacted other members to fix the problem but no one was able to ... .maybe that time also the mirror plugin got damaged by some other messy plugin.... anyway.. its fixed now....

@chris fullmer said:

ok, I just went back and tested the component spray myself. And for the 1 of 5 error, that might actually be something else. That could be that you have complex geometry and it takes a lot of processing to bend it so it is thinking. OR it could also be that you have lots of sub groups in your component and it is trying to find them all (which it is VERY slow at because I did a poor job writing that part of the script). So I woulod recommend trying a very cimple object like a box first. If that bends then you know it is working. And complex objects take a lot of time. I bent a very detailed corvette once into an s-curve. It took a few hours, but it worked (well the mesh had issues, it was not completely clean, but it did bend it pretty well).
Chris

hey chris... how many hours did it take to bend...any idea..??? can you just paste the pic of the corvette here so maybe we can get a tentative timing idea about the shape that we're tryin' to bend

Chris Fullmer · 4 Mar 2010, 16:30

Heh, I don't have a picture of it anymore. I should redo it and time it. But it took about 2 hours I think.

And plugins don't really damage other plugins exactly, but they can interefere with other plugins. What happened is that Didier used some code from progressbar in his component Spray plugin. But he did it in such a way that it messes up the original progressbar methods that are loaded inside of SketchUp. So if his plugin is loaded, progressbar does not behave the way Todd wrote it, it behaves the way Didier changed it. But everyone that uses progressbar writes their plugins to wokr the way Todd intended - which fails if component spray is installed.

Didier did some cool stuff, he just implemented it poorly so that it clashes with the original code. BUt it does not actually damage any other file.

Chris

arjunmax09 · 4 Mar 2010, 19:02

i see... happy to know... no boxing match is goin' on 'tween plugins he he

jakinodesign01 · 6 Mar 2010, 02:43

where can i download a copy of the shape bender or fredo scale plug ins?

jakinodesign01 · 6 Mar 2010, 02:44

@chris fullmer said:

Heh, I don't have a picture of it anymore. I should redo it and time it. But it took about 2 hours I think.

And plugins don't really damage other plugins exactly, but they can interefere with other plugins. What happened is that Didier used some code from progressbar in his component Spray plugin. But he did it in such a way that it messes up the original progressbar methods that are loaded inside of SketchUp. So if his plugin is loaded, progressbar does not behave the way Todd wrote it, it behaves the way Didier changed it. But everyone that uses progressbar writes their plugins to wokr the way Todd intended - which fails if component spray is installed.

Didier did some cool stuff, he just implemented it poorly so that it clashes with the original code. BUt it does not actually damage any other file.

Chris

Chris am new here, where can i get a copy of the shapebender plugin?

Chris Fullmer · 6 Mar 2010, 02:50

Hi Jessi, welcome. The plugin is at the bottom of the very first post in this thread. That is how most plugins work on this forum. So go to the first post anmd download the zip file. Unzip the contents into your sketchup plugins folder. You will also need to install progressbar from http://www.smustard.com

Chris

August · 6 Mar 2010, 20:18

@chris fullmer said:

The plugin is at the bottom of the very first post in this thread. That is how most plugins work on this forum.

This takes a little getting used to and is one of the very cool things about the software that SCF uses for the forum -- you can go back and edit a post to update it, correct typos, add that little bit that you remembered just as you clicked "Submit", etc. Every other forum that I spend any time with at all, once it's posted, it's posted, the most you can do is delete and repost.

I hope this helps,
August

August · 6 Mar 2010, 20:32

@chris fullmer said:

... plugins don't really damage other plugins exactly, but they can interefere with other plugins. What happened is that Didier used some code from progressbar in his component Spray plugin. But he did it in such a way that it messes up the original progressbar methods that are loaded inside of SketchUp. So if his [Didier's] plugin is loaded, progressbar does not behave the way Todd wrote it, it behaves the way Didier [accidentally] changed it. ...

It might help your understanding to have a little more behind-the-scenes, under-the-hood perspective.

The most likely cause of the problem is a variable name conflict. When someone adapts code for a different purpose, usually they change all the function and variable names to ensure that their new code uses unique names. The most likely cause of the problem is that somewhere in the block of code there was a variable or two that Didier missed and didn't rename, and possibly Todd's code has some presumptions where he uses the same name and is assuming that if that variable already exists, it means that his code created it and therefore is in the middle of what it's doing instead of being at the beginning.

It really could be a very wide range of things. I'm just offering a suggestion to give the flavor of the problem and of how hard it could be to track down, not to point at anything specific.

The point is that when either of the scripts are loaded by themselves, there is no problem, it's only when they are both installed that they trip over each other.

I hope this helps,
August

driven · 6 Mar 2010, 23:15

@chris fullmer said:

'' So if his [Didier's] plugin is loaded, progressbar does not behave the way Todd wrote it, it behaves the way Didier [accidentally] changed it. ...

@august said:

        ''The most likely cause of the problem is a variable name conflict.    August

Cat among the pidgins here,

as you may be aware, I've had problems with ShapeBender and VWS clashing on the Mac, so (considering this CompoSpray discussion) I ran both through my editor looking for the words 'ProgressBar' and it was indeed in 7 of the VWS rubies, and as it does not require"ProgressBar.rb" I renamed all to vwsProgressBar and the problems have disappeared...

I then got to thinking that I have CompoSpray installed through SCFPowerToolbar but haven't had any problems from it, so I did a test, and it 'CS' wasn't working??? I don't actually have it as a separate ruby and it's encoded and called "cd_power_m.rb" which fails to load due to a line code error on the Mac, so can't hurt anything....

to make long story, longer. I removed all references to "cd_power_m.rb" from SCFPB and download CompoSpray and installed it, and now all of them work together properly...

maybe others have two copies of CompoSpray, the SCFTB one of which has a code error??

hope that helps someone....

john

NB. pidgin |ˈpijən| noun [often as adj. ]
a grammatically simplified form of a language, used for communication between people not sharing a common language.