[Plugin] Perpendicular Face Tools (UPDATED 26-03-09)

taurus195

Amazing plug-in! I've been looking for something like this for quite some time. It really is a time saver, thank you.

snowflake

Hi Chris, I've had some trouble with your tool.
Using a millimeter template i was not able to get under 25,4mm radius for the circle tool
for your information, here is the code from the console.
Error: #<TypeError: reference to deleted Entity> (eval):895:inget_attribute'
(eval):895:in onActivePathChanged' C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/clf_perpendicular_face_tools/clf_perpendicular_face_tools.rb:396 Error: #<ArgumentError: Not enough edges - at least 3 required> C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/clf_perpendicular_face_tools/clf_perpendicular_face_tools.rb:396:in add_face'
C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/clf_perpendicular_face_tools/clf_perpendicular_face_tools.rb:396:in make_face' C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/clf_perpendicular_face_tools/clf_perpendicular_face_tools.rb:306:in onUserText'
(eval):895
Error: #<ArgumentError: Not enough edges - at least 3 required>
C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/clf_perpendicular_face_tools/clf_perpendicular_face_tools.rb:396:in add_face' C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/clf_perpendicular_face_tools/clf_perpendicular_face_tools.rb:396:in make_face'
C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/clf_perpendicular_face_tools/clf_perpendicular_face_tools.rb:306:in onUserText' C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/clf_perpendicular_face_tools/clf_perpendicular_face_tools.rb:396
Not sure what it means, but when i draw a circle (even bellow 25mm) on the ground plane and then use the star tool there is no problem. It works.

Chris Fullmer

hmm, interesting. I'll set up to a mm template and try it to se if I get the same error.

charly2008

Dear Chris,

I used your tool extensively in the beta test of fredos Curviloft. It's a great combination. but at times appears a little error. Some objects are rotated to 180 degrees. At two or three objects, this is not a problem to turn the objects by hand.

Charly

Chris Fullmer

Hi Charly, I never did quite get some of that stuff worked out. When I wrote this I knew very little about vectors/ But, I was aware of the possibility of it adding unwanted rotation to faces. So I built in the ability to rotate a face immediatly after placing it by using the up arrow key.

So if a face is rotated wrong, hit the up arrow key to rotate it 90 degrees. Hope that helps,

Chris

charly2008

Thanks Chris for your quick response. Your tip is a good help.

Charly

DIEGO-RODRIGUEZ

hi chris
long use this tool and I would like to ask you some suggestions.

square perperdicular:
if I enter a single value (for ejemmplo 20) = draws a square of 20 (as it works now)
but if I enter two values (eg 20,30) draws a rectangle of 20x30
circle perperdicular:
add opcion of oval
if I enter two values (eg 20,30) draws a oval of 20x30
custom face:
add opción for scale
if I enter /2 draws face , half the size of the original face
if I enter *2 draws face , twice the size of the face of origin

is it possible?

Chris Fullmer

That would be possible to add. I"m not sure how to handle the fact that different places use . and , differntly in numbers. Is there a way to determine what the decimal delimeter is for a user's location or something?

DIEGO-RODRIGUEZ

using the (,) between numbers. is a performance equal to that of native sketchup.
just for that reason I put as an example (30,20 in visor vcv) for a 30cmx20cm rectangle

Edson

chris,

there seems to be some incompatibility with SU8 as the toolbar does not appear and I cannot find PFT in your folder in the plugins menu, even though all the files are in the plugins folder.

Dave R

Edson, I have these tools on my Mac with SU8 Pro and they work fine. Have you ticked the box for Perpendicular Face tools in Preferences>Extensions?

Edson

@dave r said:

Edson, I have these tools on my Mac with SU8 Pro and they work fine. Have you ticked the box for Perpendicular Face tools in Preferences>Extensions?

nope. I looked for it in View>Tool Palettes and it was not there. but doing what you suggested did the trick. thanks for reminding me of that.

Dave R

It's easy to forget having to tick the boxes. More so these days because you don't have to do it for every toolbar and for those you do, it's only done once until you install the next version of SU. Glad that fixed it.

Chris Fullmer

Glad you got it fixed Edson - Thanks Dave!

Chris

dem

Sketchup crushing very often, when use Ctrl+Z after this tools

Chris Fullmer

Hmm, that is not good. I'll look into it. Thanks for the notice, I'll let you know if I find anything,

Chris

bestmate

What a cracking tool Chris your comitment never stops amazing me Phil

frascati

Would anyone kindly help me install this in Linux?

I'm running Linux Mint 10 on an HP 8510W with
Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 Processor (Santa Rosa, 2.2GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
256MB NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M Workstation GPU
15.4” WSXGA

I installed Sketchup 7.0 with Wine installer. It's working quite well for me so far.

I have found this ruby-script instruction on a page dedicated to Sketchup Linux users...

@unknownuser said:

bug 16511, fixed as of wine-1.1.11: To use the Ruby scripts (sketchup.google.com/download/rubyscripts.html) you'll need to convert them from DOS format to Unix format. (e.g. sudo apt-get install tofromdos; dos2unix -f parametric.rb windows.rb)

... but am pretty new to linux and not certain how to proceed.

Chris Fullmer

hmmm, I don't know. I am not a Linux person. Someone around here should be able to help I think thought.

frascati

Hello Chris.

I second every accolade in this thread. What a great tool! I read and read tutorials until I was quite certain not to embarrass myself before asking how to accomplish this. It's such a fundamental need that I was certain that I was overlooking the obvious somewhere. When I was directed to your plugin I was pretty astonished that Sketchup does not do this natively somehow. Thank you VERY much for your work.

I asked some time back about why subsequent versions of Sketchup don't incorporate more of the most useful tools developed by users. I recall that it was said to be a 'good question'. Do you happen to know? It's not as if it would add too significantly to the size of the download.