[Plugin] Click2flip v1.0 20110928

byrnebm

You are a genius.

Just to explain why I wanted to know how to do this. I wanted to use your "RelazioneFacce" script for some work I do. I want to select all the inside surfaces of a room (modelled as a box with no top). The "RelazioneFacce" script gives the orientation I am looking for but only when I have all the back sides of walls facing into the box. I can do this manually by clicking on the faces and reversing them so the back side of faces point in. But I thought there might be something I could put into the script so that when I select all the faces and run the "RelazioneFacce" script the code would firstly check if the back sides were facing inwards and reverse any faces that arent.

This click2flip script will greatly speed up my process so thank you. Just wondering if it could be incorporated programatically as I have described?

TIG

To run it on 'all selected faces' is easier - just recast the code so that it isn't a 'tool' that needs to process clicked faces, but rather a method that processes a selection thus...

module TIG
def self.flipBacks()
  model=Sketchup.active_model
  eye=model.active_view.camera.eye
  faces=[]
  Sketchup.active_model.selection.each{|e|faces << e if e.class==Sketchup;;Face}
  return nil unless faces[0]
  model.start_operation("Flip Selected Back Faces...")
  faces.each{|face|
    normal=face.normal
    vector=face.bounds.center.vector_to(eye)
    angle=normal.angle_between(vector)
    face.reverse! if angle > 90.degrees
  }
  model.commit_operation
end
UI.menu('Plugins').add_item('Flip Selected Back Faces...'){self.flipBacks()} unless file_loaded?(__FILE__)
file_loaded(__FILE__)
end

Copy/paste the code into a new file in Plugins called 'TIG-flipBacks.rb', restart Sketchup and the item is in the Plugins menu for you...

EDIT: here's a .rb ready made TIG-flipBacks.rb

byrnebm

Thanks again. When I select the 4 inside surfaces of a box, the script correctly flips all but one of the walls. Do you know what might be causing this? Is it anything to do with my viewpoint when I run the script?

TIG

Yes, if a face is towards the camera it won't reverse because as far as the rules go it IS already facing the right way!
If all you want to do is reverse all selected faces then simply make a Shortcut to 'Reverse'.
Select any face so the option is available in the context-menu list, then use Window > Preferences > Shortcuts, filter for 'Reverse', set a shortcut to it - I also have a similar key+alt mapped to 'Orient'... Then you can quickly reverse a selection of faces.
These tools are specifically for reversing all picked or selected faces that are 'backwards' when considering their orientation 'towards' the current eye position...

byrnebm

Ok thanks. Just a quick question is relation to the script "relazionefacce" which I use with click2flip. For the parameters it returns i.e FACCIA, ORIENAMENTO,AREA and MATERIALE. Where does the Faccia parameter come from and is this something that can be set for each face?

TIG

FACCIA [FACE] is name=face.to_s.split(":")[-1].split(">")[0]
i.e. when the array of faces is made they are by their 'id' e.g.
[#<Sketchup::Face:0x1182fad0>, #<Sketchup::Face:0x1182f9e0>, ...]
The splitting takes the 'id' code so the above list becomes
[0x1182fad0 0x1182f9e0 ...
You could of course just omit that column in the file as it does little of use...

byrnebm

I was just wondering if there was some way of naming the faces. I was hoping to be able to assign the room name to the horizontal face ie the floor of the room. So when i copy the parameters returned by relazionefacce to a spreadsheet I would know what room the results refer to.

TIG

You could of course add an attribute to each face and later match the tabulated values to those, but it means manually adding them all - that's why I used the 'id' - but that only exists per session so isn't that useful later either...
When I code with attributes I usually add a time-stamp id as it's unique enough - if you have two attributes with the value 'office' only one might get found.
Tools like 'flattery' add a unique attribute code to every selected face and then use this in matching parts together later. You could do something similar - add an attribute to every selected face and use the attribute in your tabulated forms. You'd then need a second simple tool to 'find face by id' - it opens a dialog, you'd paste the attribute value from the tabulated data, and it finds the face by its attribute and then highlights that face for you...
Change 'FACCIA' to say 'ID'.
Modify the code thus...

faces.each{|face|
  tid=(Time.now.to_f*1000).to_i
  face.set_attribute('BB','id',tid)if not face.get_attribute('BB','id',nil)
  ### if it already has an id it's kept...
  tid=face.get_attribute('BB','id',0)
  ###
  name=tid.to_s
  ### ...

Now write a new tool to find a face by id...

module TIG
 def self.findfacebyid()
  model=Sketchup.active_model
  ss=model.selection
  ss.clear
  results=inputbox(['ID; '],[0],'FindFaceByID')
  return nil unless results
  id=results[0].to_i
  model.active_entities.each{|e|ss.add(e)if e.get_attribute('BB','id',nil)==id}
 end
end

Usage: type TIG.findfacebyid
or make a second menu item using it - follow the other menu item as a guide...
Copy+paste an id from the table into the dialog
The faces' IDs will persist across sessions provided the model is saved...
I used 'BB' as the attribute-library based on your initials, but you can use anything you want...

Gillman

Just wanted to thank you for this great plug-in. It has already saved me a ton of time.

mirale999

A wonderful plugin! thank you TIG！I think TIG-flipBacks.rb is much more easier than other face reversers until now~

3dsmax9

it's great to have a lot of choice thanks TIG, personally i prefer this one FrontFace1-2 : http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=13380

mirale999

@3dsmax9 said:

it's great to have a lot of choice thanks TIG, personally i prefer this one FrontFace1-2 : http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=13380

haha! I'm using frontface and Click2flip, they have different feature~ I appreciate the amazing performance of the former, while the latter is faster when I have so many small faces to reverse at once!

artmusicstudio

hi tig,
i am not a programmer, but as flipped faces always happen in skp and in complicated structures it is sometimes difficult to select them one after another, i had a following idea for this script

could it flip ALL SELECTED faces at once (of course with your "automatic" identificaton?
could it become an option :

make all front / make all back / make all faces the side, which is "higher" represented (sorry for this english....means with 100 faces, when 3 are back and the rest is front, it would make all front and vice versa)

by that i could double-click & select all connected faces and define all at once

thanx stan

TIG

Isn't a pair of shortcut-keys, to 'Reverse' and 'Orient' to match the just reversed face, going to do most of this ?

artmusicstudio

@tig said:

Isn't a pair of shortcut-keys, to 'Reverse' and 'Orient' to match the just reversed face, going to do most of this ?

yes, you're right. maybe for selection (if there is any) or all elements.
so this 'make positive/negative' feature would be great and a real time-saver.
regards stan

clubber2k

Wow, magical!

looked for something like this way back and didn't find.

only issue is that the automatic decision making stress me out. on complex models it might flip the right one facing to me, but also another that should be facing in another direction and I didn't even notice...

can you add an option using the same concept to just label all the wrong facing faces - allowing more precise decision making?

thanks

Dave R

You might find it useful to set the back face color to something more easily discernible. I use a green I'd never use in the model as a color/texture.

clubber2k

@dave r said:

You might find it useful to set the back face color to something more easily discernible. I use a green I'd never use in the model as a color/texture.

Yes - that's a generally good idea but since sometimes you have materials on the back side you need to go monochrome and back too see whats going on.. anyway since this plugin already exist - adding a label option will add great usability if possible..

CadFather

great and simple tool, would be super-fab if able to flip curved faces as well!

...i thought combining the 2 bits of code above might do the trick:

1, click2flip
2, flip selection

the idea being that if i click on a curved face, i'm also selecting it and therefore running the 2nd script might reverse the whole curved face, say a cylinder. (ideally i thought it could be toggled by pressing an accelerator key) a fair bit beyond my christmas powers... surely possible though..?

class TIG;;Click2flip
  @@BEEP=false
  def initialize()
    @ip  = nil
    @ip1 = nil
  end
  def activate()
    @ip  = Sketchup;;InputPoint.new
    @ip1 = Sketchup;;InputPoint.new
    @msg="Click back of face to flip it..."
    self.reset()
  end
  def deactivate(view)
    view.invalidate
  end
  def onCancel(flag, view)
    view.invalidate
    Sketchup.send_action("selectSelectionTool;")
    return nil
  end
  def resume(view)
    Sketchup;;set_status_text(@msg, SB_PROMPT)
  end
  def reset()
    Sketchup;;set_status_text(@msg, SB_PROMPT)
  end
  def onMouseMove(flags, x, y, view)
    @ip.pick(view, x, y)
    if @ip != @ip1
        view.invalidate if @ip.display? or @ip1.display?
        @ip1.copy!(@ip)
        view.tooltip = @ip1.tooltip
    end
  end
  def onLButtonDown(flags, x, y, view)
    if @ip1.valid?
        @pt=@ip1.position
        ph = view.pick_helper
        ph.do_pick(x,y)
        @face = ph.picked_face
        self.flipper() if @face
    end
  end
  def flipper()
    normal=@face.normal
    vector=@pt.vector_to(Sketchup.active_model.active_view.camera.eye)
    angle=normal.angle_between(vector)
    if angle > 90.degrees
      @face.reverse!
      UI.beep if @@BEEP
    end#if
  end
end#class

def self.flipBacks()
  model=Sketchup.active_model
  eye=model.active_view.camera.eye
  faces=[]
  Sketchup.active_model.selection.each{|e|faces << e if e.class==Sketchup;;Face}
  return nil unless faces[0]
  model.start_operation("Flip Selected Back Faces...")
  faces.each{|face|
    normal=face.normal
    vector=face.bounds.center.vector_to(eye)
    angle=normal.angle_between(vector)
    face.reverse! if angle > 90.degrees
  }
  model.commit_operation
end

EDIT: actually just noticed the second script only flips half a cylinder (the side to the screen), the back remains undone.